agirllost

Her mom fades away and then all else vanishes. She opens her eyes, finding herself laying down on the bed, the temperature back to normal and...

"Mom?" She sits up, wiping away tears, looking at the room. It's silent, no one else is there, she's alone. The picture by her bedside keeps shifting, the woman...the girl in the picture is so different from the face she's seen in the mirror for almost the last week.

She holds out her hands. 'Am I capable of violence? Would I hurt anyone I loved?'

It'd break my heart if you did.

"Please come back." She says out loud. Her heartbeat sounds magnified in her ears, her eyes hurt, and she can't stop tearing.

"I'm so tired. I just want this to end."

In her dresser is a knife. For self defense. Just in case. And what her mom said is true, if she's a danger, she should keep people from getting hurt. 'I might have hurt Angie.'

She flips through the notebook for a moment.

'I can't trust my own mind.'

Suddenly, she's calm, all doors closed and one left to open. This is better than waiting for a prophesy or for some psychopath to take revenge for things beyond her control.

She walks over to the dresser, her hand not even trembling, and opens the drawer.

Kim opens her eyes. At some point during the night she might have fallen asleep but time just ceased to have meaning. She remembers last night in detail but still doesn't know how she feels. Sometimes her thoughts overwhelm her, they make it difficult to move forwards. Instead, there are no thoughts, she encounters only empty space.

After she read the letter it was like the world began to move in slow-motion. She looked down at her own wrists, afraid to find them bleeding, and she thought she had to be dreaming because what was happening couldn't be part of reality. Tony couldn't have written her a letter where he blamed her for his impending death. It was just part of her dream and she would wake up at any moment.

Tony's dead, she thought and that felt wrong, but it was because she didn't get there in time, didn't try hard enough. He was right. So if Tony was dead, she knew her dad must be dead too, but there he was in front of her before he vanished again. She expected the bar to melt away, to turn into her bed, for this to all just be a nightmare. But as she sat there, time just kept passing and she barely noticed until Tony was suddenly in front of her again and he was so pale. And cold. And his wrists were bandaged and she had known it, had seen it, had imagined it but had done nothing to stop it. He was right to blame her.

Everyone else was a blurry picture she couldn't make out, their words a language she couldn't understand, and she suddenly needed silence more than she thought possible.

No one seemed to understand. No matter what they did. No matter how hard they tried to save them. One or both of them would die.

It is a truth she feels, bloody images she sees and can't erase from events that haven't happened - most likely will *never* happen.

No one is ever safe.

Kim knows that, understands the meaning of those words better than most people. She's allowed herself to forget, to live life without consequences, speak without thinking and now everything is in danger.

She probably won't respond much to company but feel free to bother her anyway.