Free Transcend by Christine Fonseca Page B

agreement?” she finally asked.
    “Yes. We will give it a little more time. Perhaps the prayers and medicines will still work.”
    A cold chill wove through Ien. He knew that a few weeks would solve nothing. After all, it had already been four months since the accident. A few more weeks would make no difference. He would never heal.
    He stood and paced the room. Do something . He tried the door.
    Locked.
    He looked at the slit of a window
    Too small.
    His mind swirled, searching for an answer, some way out of this hell. Every thought brought him to the same conclusion—he was trapped.
    Again he fingered the small bandages engulfing his face. He may be trapped, but that didn’t mean he had to hide behind them and wait for death to arrive. He spied a tiny mirror that hung on the far wall over a small basin. Ien looked at the reflection of himself. His hair hung in thinning strands around his face. His eyes appeared to be held in place by the bandages themselves. They were still clear, still blue, but they held a craziness that seemed to rise from somewhere in the abyss of his soul.
    Nothing about the boy looking back at Ien seemed familiar. He took a deep breath. I have to do this . Squaring his shoulders, he reached for the bandages and began to strip them off. One by one they peeled back, no longer sticking to his flesh. The cool air hit his skin like knives scraping against exposed nerves. His flesh, hard and dead, hung from the bone in some places. In others, it had melted off completely, exposing his skull.  Tendons and ligaments replaced muscle and skin. His eyelids were missing in places and his lips were charred. None of his face had been spared save a small section of cheek and jaw on the right side. He looked more dead than alive.  
    Bile swirled up from Ien’s stomach, settling in his mouth. He emptied it into the basin and closed his eyes. His hands shook as he traced his face. Bones. Muscles. Tendons. Blinding agony riveted through him, mixing with the bile still churning. He again emptied the mixture into the basin. The air thinned around him. Tears welled in his not-so-human eyes and spilled over what was left of his face.
    For the first time Ien understood the reaction of those around him. I should have died , he thought. “I should have died!”
    Ien continued to stare at his reflection for a heartbeat, too numb to react, until a blood-curdling scream ripped through his throat, slicing the air around him. “No!” he screamed over and over, unable to stop. He pounded the mirror with his fists, sending shards of glass deep into his skin.
    The door swung open. Mother and Sister Agnes plunged into the room.
    “You let him loose?” Mother yelled. “I told you to keep him bound.”
    “But he is in no danger here. Since the day he came, he has only ever slept.”
    “You ignorant fool! Look at him! He is the danger.”
    Ien continued to scream, shifting his attention from himself to Mother. “You did this to me. YOU!”  Images of the explosion flooded Ien’s senses, forcing him to relive every terrible moment.
    The clicking sound.
    The fiery rain.
    The laughter.
    His mother’s laughter.
    He lunged forward, rage filling every cell. “I’ll kill you!”
    The room erupted into pandemonium. Sister Agnes blocked Ien’s path as several attendants rushed into the tiny room. Mother backed away from him, a mixture of pain and rage coloring her face. Ien released a feral growl, clawing through the crowd and pinning Mother with his wide eyes that he knew must look crazed. A familiar river of fire invaded his veins. “No,” he screamed. “I’ll kill—”
    Ien’s voice stopped mid-sentence. His body crashed to the floor with a thud, tossing him back, into himself.    
     
     

 
    12.
    “There’s no art
    To find the mind’s construction in the face.”
    ~William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
    ~~
    Chaos swirls around me as I run through the emptiness that now defines my existence. Mother caused this curse,