though.
“Found you.” He said.
Her eyes grew wide and he moved towards her, not knowing how he was going to get her loose, but knowing that he had to.
He reached for the duct tape, carefully grabbed the edges and began to peel it back. “Shh…” He whispered. “Sorry…I’m sorry.” The duct tape was pulling against her skin, and leaving behind it a red rash. He finally finished removing it and she took a huge breath of air and looked sighed.
“Trisha.” He struggled to form the word correctly, for some reason it was having a problem making it through his mind.
Everything around him was going dark.
“Look out!” She suddenly screamed.
Tom looked behind him and saw a hand reaching forward, a bent, bloody hand, several fingers hanging limply in unnatural directions.
Oh please no, please oh please oh please.
The other hand appeared, struggling like the other one; it was almost completely limp though, unlike the other one.
They pulled forward, carefully sliding toward them.
Please no oh no oh no oh no…
A face appeared, Mother’s at one time, but this time it was the face of a demon. “You’re mine! She rasped, the jaw hanging crooked, obviously broken. Blood poured from a wound on her forehead. “MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!”
Tom looked at her, unable to believe that she was still moving.
There was a sudden pounding on a door downstairs, he didn’t know what it was, but it was loud and pulsing.
“MINE!”
He looked at her. “No, Mother. I’m not.”
The pain.
Please oh please.
Tom shut the closet door, pulling it gently with his fingers; it closed with a faint, but distinct click.
He leaned back on the floor, looking up at the chair, looking at his angel seated there, battle scarred, but heavenly.
Mother’s broken hands pounded against the door, her screams becoming unintelligible, moist slurs.
“Trisha?”
“Stay with me, Tom…Please don’t die, oh please don’t die.” It was Trisha. Wasn’t it?
“Trisha?”
“Tom! Hold on! Hold on, Tom, you gotta stay with me.”
Trisha?
The world faded into cold oblivion. His angel was staring at him until she faded slowly into black.
Before…
THE BENCH was one of the nicer things in the yard of the church. It was placed under a large oak tree that forever stretched its long arms into the sky. It was there that Tom had proposed. It was there that Trisha said yes.
—You think it’s God’s will for us to be together?
Trisha was staring at him, always with questions like that; she would look at him to gauge his expression when he responded.
—More than I’ve ever known anything.
She smiled, a childish, assured and overjoyed smile.
—Okay.
After…
THE HOSPITAL room was nothing like that bench. It was loud, and it was cold. The only thing like the bench in that tiny hospital room was that he had Trisha next to him, who was hooked up to an IV and staring at him with the faintest traces of a smile on her face.
Tom looked at her, hooked up to numerous machines himself; unsure of what to think or do, all he could do was look at Trisha’s smiling face, which was fine with him. More than fine.
Her hand was clasped tightly in his, forming a bridge between their hospital beds. The thin sheets and flimsy gowns did little to keep them warm, but their palms were warm in each other’s grasp.
Across Trisha’s wrist was a dark scar mark where she had been tied down; the wrists were circled around with red. It made him wish it had not happened to her, but he thought they were fine on her. They would fade in time, but it did nothing to take away from her beauty. Her beauty was in her spirit, not her wrists.
The neighbor had popped in on them a few times; he had been pounding on the door when Tom had passed out. Heard some racket and came over to check things out, make sure they were okay. He called the police when Trisha began to scream and they found Mother dead in front of the closet after following a ghastly trail of blood. She had died of head trauma from her fall down the stairs. They couldn’t explain how she made it to the closet, and Tom was glad that they hadn’t tried, he had nightmares about it enough.
They had been there for days. Trisha had joked about it being the most time they had spent together yet, even when her parents were there, which was most of the time with the rare exceptions of a moment here and there. It was one of those moments.
She had suffered severe malnutrition and dehydration. Mother only took her out at night to the bathroom and didn’t seem to feed her much aside from Lance snack crackers and cheap, packaged lunchmeat. It would be a bit before they recovered.
Tom couldn’t wait.
He was staring at him and he was staring at her, pleased to just be near each other. He smiled and asked, “Trisha?”
“Yeah?” She responded.
“Do you think it’s God’s will for us to be together?”
People rushed by in the hallway outside, the thunderclaps and faint taps of hundreds of footsteps echoing in the sterile and chilled corridors.
Her smile was the same girlish, trusting smile. “More than I’ve ever known anything.” She scanned his face carefully with her wide, glowing eyes.
He nodded and squeezed her hand. “Okay.”
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