ANDERSON, CRIS
3:00am – 3:10am
They brought me in on the stretcher.
I don’t know how they got me there, all I saw were the lights… and the snow. The snow drifts that were as tall as the average ceiling and getting taller by the second. And it was so cold, the whole time it had been just so cold.
The police officers had taken me themselves all the way to the main road before having to pull off. They were yelling about a car accident that had blocked the road. So, they had turned and gone down a different road and of course… got stuck in a drift. I had been blacking in and out, but not of consciousness. It was of memory. The flashbacks of that man, of him standing in the dark with the green liquid running down his chubby belly. And the way he spoke, the way he looked, just like some sort of god. Or maybe just a demon. All I knew was that he had taken my friend, and soon was going to take me… too. But then the ambulance had shown up, they had gotten me inside and didn’t forget to leave out the “how the fuck is he still breathing?” part. Those cops, men who I had always despised from a young age had done everything they could to keep me alive. And as I left they were still out there clearing the street with shitty shovels, just to give the ambulance an easier ride.
And now I was here.
Pushing through the broken front doors over the small glass fragments. My head swiveling from side to side as we went past the people. The people who were all seated against the wall… their hands cuffed… behind their backs.
I heard the voice but couldn’t understand why it… sounded so familiar.
“Hands up, fingers spread.” The footsteps came towards my head, the sounds coming from behind the stretcher, but above my preference of reality. And it was all so surreal, for every sound, every breath, every word seemed to echo through… me.
“He’s dying, he’s been shot.” The EMT sounded, different than before.
The man, the other one, I could feel his eyes look over me. I could feel his lips as they parted, as his breath began to escape and push out words that sounded like I said them.
“Follow me, keep your mouths shut and your hands visible.”
Then the stretcher started moving again, changing directions as it avoided invisible objects. And my head bent down to see anything, to get any perception. And I could see the people, scared shitless, and staring either at me or the people I was with. I heard a door, a broken door by the sound, being opened and then we were through. One of the EMT’s holding it open as I passed. Just then my eyes caught something and I focused on it. For in the crowd of huddled people there was someone’s head, someone’s head facing the opposite direction with the same haircut and hair as… me.
Then the person started turning.
And I started to see my skin, my jaw, my chin, my…
But then the door shut.
And we were stopped again.
Though the voices this time were too muffled to comprehend.
There was a sound in the nearby room with the words “REGISTRATION” on the plaque above. My eyes looked to it and I saw an arm just below the sleeve of a nurse shirt. The person was black like me. And they were on the phone speaking so quietly I couldn’t understand. But then I started to hear the little wet slaps of their lips with each word said.
That was… I made those noises.
“move on bruh.” The voice came as the stretcher started to move again.
I was taken past a man, dressed like a SWAT member, with his dark brown eyes staring behind the visor. His black skin marking him for my understanding. The way he stood, the way his right hand swayed and his boot angled that way were all so familiar.
We started to go in a circle around the ER center station. Past the people who were all looking down. These were doctors, nurses, EMTs, and firefighter’s now. They were all handcuffed and shoved against the walls. The soldiers patrolling them slowly with the rifles held tight to their chests.
I tried to move but I couldn’t, and suddenly I felt… cold again.
Real cold.
We went around the station again.
Now there were some staring at me.
Staring at me… with my face.
They watched as I was rolled past, almost lifelessly as if… as if they didn’t care. Soon it was the soldiers too, my skin and eyes behind those gas mask visors. All of them standing or sitting in positions that… I would.
We went around the station again.
It was all of them now.
They all wore my face, they all were me. Staring at the dying one as he was helplessly dragged around.
And all of them… were looking at me.
We went around the station again.
I started to cry and they… and they stood up. They stood up and took off their masks, hats, and glasses. Then they started to strip down, taking off shirts and jackets, bras and necklaces. Finally pants and shoes and socks till they were bare to me.
I screamed without sound.
Begged without words.
Then they started bleeding, their chests running red with my blood down to the floor. Then one by one, they started to fall.
We went around the station again.
I couldn’t save me. I could only watch as they drowned. Their eyes screaming at me as the blood level rose and drowned them out. I tried to beg it all to stop, but it was getting colder now. It was getting cold and I couldn’t… I couldn’t take anymore.
The blood started to run over the bedsheets and pool at where my body sunk.
Then we stopped.
And I looked ahead, I saw the little girl with blonde pigtails in the patient room watching me, from her bed. She watched like she wasn’t seeing anything… anything but me. And I felt her, I felt her listening to me and only me. For I was the only thing that existed.
Then the EMTs walked over to the foot of the bed blocking her from my sight.
And I looked up into my own faces.
And then they spoke as the heads rose from the blood, and the white eyes turned everything to cold.
“He dead.”
“He dead man c’mon.” The officer stood his partner up, “there’s nothing you could of done.”
He patted him on the back and turned walking back through the empty house. His partner still looking down on the kid, the dead kid. He wanted to save him, would have done anything more if he could have. But it was done.
The kid was dead.