Page 28

She had lost all hope of starting again and keeping her commitment to herself to forget the past and move on. The darkness that was coming eventually wrapped around her like a lot of dirt around a body.
She started to cough violently after taking a difficult breath. The old bitter taste of blood came back to the roof of her tongue and swiftly went down her throat, where she spit up part of the warm crimson liquid. As she inhaled again, blood flowed from her nose as well. She wiped the blood off with her shaking fingers, brought them up to her eyes, and watched with fuzzy vision as one life faded away.
She took faltering steps toward her bedroom, but halfway there, it felt like everything around her was spinning out of control. She leaned against the wall next to her and walked forward, leaning onto the wall for support and leaving a trail of blood behind her.
But her trip was cut short as her hands hit the first set of paintings, the green ones that Damien had put there. When the glass frames broke into hundreds of pieces, they fell to the floor with a huge bang.
After her greens broke, she fell to the ground as well. The many shattered pieces of glass hurt her flesh all over.
She could feel the warmth leaving her slowly, maybe for minutes or hours, until the cold that made her head hurt more than the ache in her brain took over.
She heard her phone ring, blinked her blurry eyes, and her whirling vision centered on the phone that was nearby. If she reached out a bit, she could hold it, and aid would arrive. Whoever was phoning would know she wasn’t feeling well. Her fingers twitched as they started to go for the phone, but suddenly they stopped.
“I can’t stand looking at your face anymore. You make me sick, Lena, and all the memories I have of you and you.”
“Now go back to your child, Lena, and pay attention to it instead of chasing after my Kellen.”
All the hurtful things others had said to her up to that point touched her skin with their frigid fingers. One by one and then all at once. Their quiet words were too tempting to ignore.
A sweet smile of poisonous strength emerged on her lips.
She closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall into a state of semi-consciousness, letting her empty hand lay still next to the phone, which was going crazy. The ringing in her ear got louder and louder, much louder than her phone’s ringtone.
A soul can only go through so much.
She had reached her limit and was looking forward to finally putting an end to this sad story.
*****
The police came quickly with an arrest warrant. A female officer put handcuffs on Selene, who looked quite confused. Ryan was engaged in talking to one of the officers he knew personally about the cases he had filed against Selene.
Kellen was so sad and sorry for himself that he didn’t even see what was going on around him. He felt like the sky had split into pieces over his head, and there was nothing he could do about it. It was clear that he had already lost everything, but it was ridiculous that he just now comprehended and subsequently acknowledged it. And sadly, this now looked to be a bit too late.
His own words and actions turned into lethal vines that soon wrapped around his neck and sucked the life out of him.
Suddenly, he felt something inside him. He felt a peculiar type of emotion in his heart that was stronger than the remorse and sorrow he felt. It was a lot like when the vase broke into pieces near his feet before the party. He felt like something dreadful was about to happen, that what had occurred so far wasn’t enough, and something was slipping away from him. He had beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Lena—” he exclaimed, suddenly finding his voice and an overwhelming need to get to her.
Ryan, Celeste, the guests, the cops trying to calm down a very intoxicated Selene, and the paramedics working on Isaac Arthur were all in different kinds of frenzies in the background. Kellen couldn’t see any of it.
He ran down the corridor like he was in a dream and staggered out the doors. He could hear someone calling his name from far away, but he didn’t care about anything else in the world. He jumped into his car and drove it out of the parking lot, making a fast and screaming slide.
His eyelashes felt sticky as he blinked quickly to clear his foggy eyesight while he raced down the street at night like a bat out of hell. He was so eager to get out of the automobile that he almost fell face-first when he saw Lena’s flat.
The elevator moved slowly, like a turtle creeping up, and he felt like a confined animal within the metal box. He rubbed the dried tears on his cheeks and dragged his quivering hands up to his messy hair, stopping himself from hitting the buttons with his fist. But when the elevator finally got him to his destination, and he ran out, he was confronted by something he didn’t anticipate.
Lola was banging on Lena’s door with a worried look on her face. When she saw Kellen or more like the mess he was in, she took a double take.
But soon, her fear won out over her amazement. And she hastily said something when he looked at her questioningly. “I’ve been calling her for a while now,” she said, showing Lena’s number still being called on her phone as she spoke. “She’s not answering, and she’s not even opening the door! I don’t like this, especially when…”
In a haste, Kellen cut her off. “Get out of the way.”
Kellen hit the door with his fist a couple of times while Lola retreated away. “Lena! Open the door!” But nothing happened; there was no sound of anything moving inside her apartment. All that could be heard was quiet.
Kellen grimaced, and his stomach fell with fear.
It didn’t feel nice. Not at all.
Kellen took a few steps back, then abruptly sprang forward and slammed his shoulder against the door. It broke beneath the attack, and he fell inside.
Everything was really silent, and everything smelled like death. Kellen could hear his heart beating loudly in his throat. It took his eyes a while to get used to the faint light that was undoubtedly emanating from someplace in the living room. He moved forward slowly, looking around. When he heard something crunch under his sneakers, he suddenly stopped. He looked down and saw fragments of broken glass from a picture frame that had fallen and broken on the floor. His eyes slowly followed the glasses until they stopped on something that made him feel sick with fear.
His heart stopped pumping, and his feet felt like they were locked to the earth and wouldn’t move.
He had been scared before, like when he was a child and a stormy night thunder cracked down on a tree right next to his bedroom window while his father was dying. He had also been scared when his bike crashed into a careless car, and he thought he was going to die. There were a lot of people on the list, but none of them could make him feel as panicked as he did now.
He stared in horror at Lena’s still body lying among the broken glass fragments. It looked like hundreds of daggers were stabbing his heart at once. Her face looked pale, which was different from the red blood that was flowing from the corners of her lips. He felt sick when he saw the little pool of blood on the floor, along with the scarlet spots of blood that the broken glass shards had made as they pierced her flesh.
He snapped out of his frozen condition when he heard Lola gasp in the background.
He pushed his shaking feet toward Lena, breaking additional pieces of glass beneath his shoe along the way. His brows were twisted in pain. The noise made him feel terrible in every manner, and it was strange how much it sounded like how he felt inside at the time.
Kellen knelt next to Lena, not caring that the glass was stabbing them. He carefully put her upper body on his lap.
“L… Lena,” he said, tapping her cheeks softly with shaky fingers to get her to respond. “Lena? Lena! Please open your eyes. Oh God, Lena! No, no, no. Don’t. No!”
He shook her shoulders, begged, sobbed, and begged some more. His tears streamed from his cheeks and hit her forehead.
But this time, she wouldn’t listen or answer. She had closed her eyes for a long time, and now she had closed them for good. The tranquility in this darkness was worth a lot more than the violence among the living. It was almost difficult to bring back the soul that had finally found the road to freedom.
He cried out like a crazy person, “What have I done to you, Lena!”  “What have I done to us?”
The paramedics had to actually fight Kellen off of Lena’s lifeless body. And then Lola, who was swearing, threw a glass of water at his face to get him to calm down. Lola didn’t know what Kellen’s genuine connection to Lena was or what Lena’s background was like. If not, the glass would have probably had acid in it instead of water.
It was like a bad dream that was hard to see after that. He drove to the hospital after the ambulance. Lola offered to drive right away when she saw him shivering. He didn’t say anything, but he agreed.
He saw them take Lena away on a trolley with an oxygen mask over half of her face. Her hair was matted, and her skin was pale save for the places of her body that had blood drying on them.
He saw red specks that hurt the back of his eyes.
As nurses rushed to help Lena in the emergency room, a specific doctor showed up at a very fast pace, and Lola started chatting to him right away.