White

White
by I.J. Blake


         Click.
         There used to be days in my mind. Lost days. Long forgotten, the mind purging the unwanted memories to protect me. To protect all of us.
         Hum.
         You must understand, we were fools. Children dressed in the skin of adults, left to frolic in the world before the time was right. We didn't see the future, couldn't fathom the end. There wasn't time for consequences. There was only time for the wind. And fire. And the rain. Oh god, the rain.
         Click.
         I won't bother you with the details of how we ended up together on that fateful day. I'm not sure I could if I wanted to. Like the innocence that twirled in fields and scooted through playgrounds and tree-forts the memories are gone now. Forgotten. Purged. I try everyday to burrow through the dark, volcanic ash covering see-saws and merry-go-rounds, but all I find is torched plastic, fractured springs and gutted horses.
         And nothing.
         Hum.
         There were six of us in the field that day.
         I watched the others shiver in the cold November air. Why we didn't bring jackets I don't know. But the wind, such the fickle mistress, was not forgiving of our folly.
         I don't remember their names. Nor would they have mine. We never spoke of them, afraid of the bond that would form, and the danger that could bring.
         I was one of two girls, the rest boys. All of us in our teens, beyond driving but not college. At least I don't think anyone was. You had to be a fool, like I said, to have arrived here.
         “I'm sorry.” said one of the boys.
         “Me too.”
         “I..I..yeah, right.”
         “It looks like it might rain.” said the other girl, pointing towards the ominous bulge of a heavy gray horizon.
         The tallest of the boys, with a yellow ball cap an scruffy curls, sniffed at the air and said, “We could run.”
         None of us spoke. We looked away at the dense, barren woods that surrounded the field. Lurking.
         I remember trying not to look at the tall boy after that. He was already gone, and we all knew it. Even he seemed to realize it, as the first cold drops of rain littered the field.
         “I'm sorry.” he said, the words sticking against his throat. “I didn't mean...”
         “Don't bother.” said the boy next to him.
         “But...”
         An Olympian crack of thunder shattered the sentence from his lips.
         I didn't see the lightning. My eyes closed under the weight of the sound. When they opened the rain was a fury of downward motion. I could barely see the world a foot away, lost in a fluid sheet of gray.
         But I could feel the space. The loss of a familiar memory, unsure of what your mind cannot place—but knowing it was gone.
         My arms were almost numb when the rain slowed enough to make out only four figures in the field adjacent me. It was impossible not to acknowledge what had happened. The mind is too fast, unrelenting in its redirection of sensory data into interpretive thought. I forced my lips steady. Do not scream. Do not speak. Do not move.
         My eyes caught those of the smallest remaining boy.
         He stood just a few feet away. But I knew in truth it was miles.  Maybe a lifetime.
         I watched the muscles in his face stain under the tension that clenched his jaw shut. I wanted to smile, to let him know I understood, that I too had become a statue of skin and bone. But I couldn't. None of us could.
         Click
         I wonder now if it was in this moment, in the fleeting connection the two of us shared, that things became certain. Could the outcome have changed had the small boy and I missed glances, by just a fraction of a second? Would I have moved? These are the questions that rattle along the few neural pathways still free to my own thoughts. Sometimes I'm glad they take the rest away.
         Hum.
         It was the other boys that moved first. Like brothers at arms, one then the other, bolting away towards the shelter of the forest.
         I remember watching them running, hands shielding their heads from the rain as it grew heavier with each wet, mushy step.
         They are just boys, I told myself. They don't own that skin yet. Why must they pay?
         The thunder erupted again. It shook the rain, turning it sideways upon itself.
         I tried not to close my eyes this time. I had to see it, to watch it come.
         For the briefest of seconds I remember that blur. A dark, massive blur, cutting through the knifing rain. Such speed, such size. Such emptiness.
         I closed my eyes and trembled as the thunder roared again.
         There were cries this time. Short, muffled shrieks. The rain washed away the life from them, buffered my ears so that it was as if a Nat called out to the shoe to halt. But I knew it was them. You would be surprised the truth that cannot be hidden, no matter the intentions of the world.
         There were three of us left. Drenched, terrified, and defenseless. We stood in the rain, in the long grass of the field, waiting for the crack of thunder to come and take us. Wondering who would be next, how it would choose. I remember my stomach turning upon itself, poisoned by my own mistakes. Regretting whatever it was that lead me to that exact moment, in that exact field. To the doorstep of death.
         The other girl had begun to cry when I opened my eyes.
         “Please no, please don't. Please let me go...” she begged, hysterically.
         The thunder erupted with venomous onerous. The girl had begun sobbing, failing onto her hands and knees. She had nothing left to carry her. No spirit to run, and the knowledge that it was not going to help. I wanted her to stop crying. Not because it was painful, it wasn't. I wanted her to smile again, just once. If she could smile in the face of death, then maybe there was...
         Blood ripped through the dense rain abruptly.
         My heart skipped more beats than I could count, as I watched the crimson tide surround the boy and I.
         The boy screamed. Footsteps rustled through the wet grass. I couldn't see him, as the heavy rain vanquished the other girls blood and now rendered my arms useless.
         Then it all stopped.
         The rain, the wind, everything.
         I stood in the field, drenched to the inner most core, alone.
         The thunder cracked again. Then it swelled slowly, over a few seconds, gradually beating louder until my ears felt as though submerged suddenly into the depths of the sea. The pressure grew, blocking out my sense of balance, of time, of space. The vacuous dark blur held my gaze along the edge of the field. Like a swarm of bees, hundreds of thousands of them, scheming and rioting in a cloud. The silence a deafening wall pressing against my skull, my brain, my soul. It was all the world, and the next, and my mind, filling with lives, with pain, with memories that I didn't own.
         I remember the blood on my hands. But it wasn't my own. It was never my own.
         Then blackness.
         Click
         The days are filled with whiteness now. I'm not supposed to look at colors. They tell me it's not good for me. Someone even paints the pills. And it does help. But my eyes close, and everything is black again, and I'm back in the field, with all of them. And the rain begins to fall again.