Chapter Thirty-Nine Darkness

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE DARKNESS

They told me I was in shock.

I didn’t feel the shock. There was just emptiness, like someone had tipped me over and rattled me until everything fell out. My arms were red, the skin behind my wrists rising in angry blisters towards my elbows. I couldn’t feel it. I studied the white gauze as it encircled my flesh, pressing against the angry wound. A nurse cut the ends of my singed hair. They put salve on my ears. I hadn’t noticed they were burnt. They gave me tablets and I took them.

When they talked to me, their tones dipped, and I watched chapped lips moving around exaggerated syllables. Is there someone we can call? Brows creased. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Sophie? A gentle hand laid on top of mine. Do you have someone you can stay with?

A policewoman escorted me to my house. I don’t remember what time it was when I shut the door behind me. I trudged upstairs, my brain still thick with fog. I sat beneath the showerhead, feeling cold beads sprinkle away the smoke that clung to my skin. My body was blotched with red. The shampoo lathered away the rancid scent of rotting and I emerged, naked and zombie-like, into an empty house without understanding why it was empty.

As morning dawned, grief reached its fingers inside my head and plucked me from my deadened sleep. Understanding hit me like a slash of sunlight through my curtains and I sprang into wakefulness, coughing black sludge across my pillow.

Screams ripped from my chest as the pain soared, every memory colliding at once until she was everywhere, her face etched behind my eyelids when I blinked.

I collapsed on to the floor, curling my arms tight around my knees until I was as small as I could make myself. Tears pooled inside me, blooming across my chest, but I couldn’t get them out. I couldn’t weep or cry and the tears bled inside me, icy and unshed.

I slept alone. I missed the soft padding of my mother’s slippers in the hallway, the appearance of her face at my doorway wishing me goodnight. The darkness was a gift, but the silence that came with it was crushing.