EXCERPT #3
by Abigail St. Clair Thomas
At first, all I saw was the blood. I came to feeling cold porcelain on my bare legs. Blackness. Red spilled over white. Blackness again. They were laughing, maybe, a disassembled razor lay cocked toward me on the side of the sink. Whispers. Laughter. Blackness. The girl I always thought was the most beautiful of all of them stood there making small incisions into the scars over the very top of her breasts. I watched her skin burst open. I was too dizzy to feel faint or sorry. The other ones took turns dragging their mouths over her chest, pulling away with red lips and chins before they went to work on their own arms, their own thighs. Blood fell over the floor, smeared by foot prints eventually. I came and left there in the bathtub, caught between what was in front of me and the visions from the back of my head. Finally everything I had reached my hand out to touch her. I only got a few inches closer but she noticed. She took my fingers and moved them over her arm, now torn apart like the rest of her. My eyes closed again. Darkness. Darkness. A patch of wet warmth and then soft skin, a patch of wet warmth and then soft skin again. My eyes surfaced on her face before I lost her to tears that blurred her away. She told me not to worry. I mouthed something inaudible. I wanted her to know I always thought she was the prettiest.