Page 12 of Borrowed

T he smoke clawed at my throat, choking the life out of me. The fire had taken everything. The flames consumed the house, leaving nothing behind but charred wood and embers that smoldered in the darkness. My body, burned and broken, couldn’t move—paralyzed by the heat, the pain.

I couldn’t even scream.

But then…

I heard it, a soft, frightened whisper, breaking through the haze of my consciousness.

“Toby…Toby…please, come back.”

Tabby.

She had come back. She was holding two dead rabbits in her grip, clutched in her arms like a child.

Her voice.

Tabby.

Why did she come back? I got her beneath the floorboards. She found the way out.

I was still alive. At least, I think I was. The pain was sharp, but the air was thick and suffocating. The heat was there, but my body didn’t respond. I was trapped somewhere between death and life—locked in an unbreakable shell.

Tabby’s breathing was ragged and uneven as she stumbled toward me. My vision was blurred.

“Toby, I found the bunnies. Come back, Toby.”

My head was swimming with fog, but I managed to focus on the sound of her footfalls. She was coming closer, even as I wanted to pull away to stop her from seeing me like this. I wanted to protect her, even now, from the horror of what this had become.

But I couldn’t move.

I could barely breathe.

She reached me. I felt her hand brush my cheek, tender but trembling and dragging the rabbits’ bloody fur onto my skin.

“Toby,” she whispered again, this time barely audible. Her fingers dug into my skin, searching, terrified.

She didn’t know what to do. Neither of us did.

And then, just as the chill from the smoke began to creep into my bones, I felt her grip tighten, her fingers pressing against my pulse. It was as if she could feel me slipping away.

“I can’t lose you,” she whispered, her voice breaking. I could hear the panic in her breath. “Everyone leaves. Please stay, Toby. I’ll be good.”

I wanted to tell her I was here. That I was still fighting. But my body refused to listen.

And that was when I felt it.

A sharp sting, a flash of pain that pierced through my side. I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t do anything.

Tabby.

She was crying. I could hear it in her voice even though my eyes were failing me now. I could feel it in the way her fingers dug into me, like she was trying to anchor me to this world.

“Don’t leave me…Don’t go,” she whispered, her words desperate.

Then the pain hit again, more intense this time.

A deeper blazing cut.

Her breath was ragged, and she had something sharp.

Stabbing me.

“Tabby…” I wanted to say it.

I wanted to scream at her, to beg her to stop. But I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t obey me. My vision was gone. My heart slowed with every drop of blood that left me.

The blood.

It seeped from the wound, warm and thick, against my skin, but I couldn’t even feel it anymore. I could only feel her trembling fingers on me, shaking. Her tears mixed with the dirt and soot, staining the skin she touched.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I saved her…and now…she was killing me.

“Please,” she whimpered. “Please come back…please be with me.”

She didn’t know what she was doing. But I could feel it, the desperation in her. She needed me, needed something to hold on to, and I was slipping through her fingers like sand.

Then, without warning, I could hear her as she smeared the blood across her skin. I tried to focus on her ragged breath between the sobs, and I realized with horror what she was doing.

She was painting herself with my blood.

Not for revenge, not for anger, but to feel me.

To feel me close.

To keep me close.

Mother was so afraid of Tabitha being a monster one day, so afraid she would hurt someone…and now, she had. Mother had forced Tabby to become this. Her heart wasn’t black, just confused. Even with my body so broken, my death nearing with every shallow breath…

She was trying to hold onto me, to make me warm again.

To make herself warm again.

It wasn’t right. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t bear the thought of her doing that to herself. But I couldn’t stop her either. I couldn’t save her in the end.

I was paralyzed.

She kept rubbing her hands in the crimson that oozed from my wound, desperate, frantic. The sticky sounds continued as she coated herself in my blood. I could feel the coldness creep through my veins.

And then I knew it.

I wasn’t going to make it.

But she couldn’t know that. She couldn’t understand that I was already gone.

Not yet.

“Tabby, don’t…you aren’t a monster…” I tried to whisper, but nothing came out. The words were trapped in my throat. My voice was nothing but a memory.

Her breathing hitched as she pressed harder against my wound as if she could force me to come back…to her.

But the warmth was fading from me.

And she didn’t understand that it was too late.

Still, she clung to me. With every tear, every drop of my blood smeared on her skin, she clung tighter, refusing to leave me. Refusing to run.

The last thing I heard before the world went black was her voice…

Soft.

Sweet.

Broken.

“Toby, please come back…I love you. Love me too.”

But I couldn’t say anything.

I could only pray that my spirit could do what my body could not.

Save my sister. Keep us together. Forever.