Free Breathless by Kelly Martin Page B

because it gives me something to grab onto.
    Everything feels funny.
    I feel funny.
    My arms and legs both feel like they have weights attached to them. It’s hard to move, hard to get motivated to move.
    I hear screams. They aren’t mine. At least that’s something.
    The last thing I remember?
    I was home. In my room. My mother was possessed. Hart was fighting Lucien. I tried to save my mother. I stabbed Hart, and I thought everything would be okay. I thought… and then he died. And everything inside me felt like it was on fire. Then, I was thrown out the window and ended up here.
    Here on the ground.
    Here in gray world.
    Here where the screaming is so loud it hurts my ears.
    Here where I can’t find the ability to move really well.
    The image of Hart looking down at me and smiling flashes in my mind. I know exactly what he’d say to me if he were here.
    I decide to suck it up, buttercup and try my best to roll over. It takes about five tries, but finally I do.
    The next scream is mine. Not some random noise far away, but me. Mine. My voice.
    The body is looking right at me. A woman. I know her. Marcy, Professor Mitchell’s Teacher’s Assistant. Marcy, who had always been nice to me. Marcy with the gay goldfish and the plans and the life. She’s staring at me. Her eyes fully open. Unseeing. Her body broken. I crawl over to her and try to shake her, but my hands go right through her, causing me to back up until my back hits the tree I’ve grown to like. I scream again.
    This isn’t real. It’s another dream. Hart’s doing this to me, right? He has to be. It’s Hart or the demon blood or something. It’s not real. It can’t be real. It can’t be real.
    “Marcy,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
    I know it’s my fault all of this happening. I know it before I see me walking down the middle of the street. Her hair is black, black as night. That’s not all that’s black. Black wings extend out of my back, so big they extend from one side of the street to the other.
    “No.” I don’t say it loud. Not loud at all. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t hear me. She—I—turn toward my direction. My eyes are white, pure white. Pure evil.
    I duck behind the tree just in case. I don’t know if she can see me. I don’t know if it would be a good thing or a bad thing if she can or can’t. All I know is that I don’t want anything to do with any of this. She turns away from me and keeps walking down the middle of the street. I see people screaming. I see people falling. I see their souls leaving their bodies. They don’t go up or down. They are stuck here like me. Either that, or they don’t know how to go up or down.
    “Gracen Sullivan?” I turn and see the gray, ashen face of Marcy the TA staring at me. She looks terrified. I know the feeling. “What’s going on?”
    I shake my head. I can’t tell her. Not because I don’t know, but because if I say it, it means it’s true. If I hear the words coming from my lips, then it means that it’s really happening, and I can’t live in my incredibly screwed up bubble.
    “Gracen!” Her voice is shaking. “Am I dead? Are we dead?”
    I don’t mean to, but for a split second, I look down at her body. She does the same.
    She falls to her knees without a sound, without a scream, without a whimper. “You did this,” she says as simply as the sky is blue, or rather gray. “I saw you.”
    “We all saw you.” A voice from behind me makes me stand up and face it.
    Not just an it … a bunch of its.
    A bunch of people.
    People looking at me.
    People remembering me as the last thing they saw before they died.
    “We all saw you.” A man who looked to be over six feet tall is leading the pack toward me. I don’t think they’re going to put me on their shoulders and carry me around like a hero.
    I shut my eyes and ready for the inevitable impact. This is going to hurt.
    The pain never comes.
    I open my eyes, and I’m not on street. I wish I were. Facing that mob