She Knows Death

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The piece I'm posting takes place after a traumatic experience my MC had with somebody who's supposed to be one of the good guys. Here she is having a conversation with her aunt.

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“Unpleasant doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what it was like. I can’t even describe it and I don’t think I want to.” I shuddered but shook it off. “He knows everything?”

“Yeah, and so do I. Why didn’t you ever tell me? Maybe I could have helped you.”

“And what would you have done. Made it go away? Patted me on the head when I was seven and told me to stop telling stories like my parents did the one time I told them that somebody was about to die? I was a child and being rejected by my own parents was enough. I wouldn’t risk you doing the same.”

“You’re still a child,” she said sadly.

“I haven’t been a child in years.”

We sat in silence, uncomfortable, until she spoke again. “Honestly Kaila, I don’t know what to say to you. There’s no way I can fix this but-” She went quiet and narrowed her eyes. “What’s wrong? You’re pale.”

“Well, if you know everything then you should know that Night has been giving me trouble lately and she’s very unhappy about what I did yesterday.”

As soon as I finished that sentence I followed it by a groan as the walls of my stomach tried to hug each other. I made it to the sink in time not to get any coffee on the floor. Max walked over while I was preoccupied with emptying the contents of my stomach, and rubbed my back.

“I’m so hungry,” I whispered. My head was resting on the cold surface of the sink’s rim.

“What?”

I straightened up and looked at her. “I’m hungry. All the time. But she doesn’t give me enough time to actually keep anything down, much less digest it. I eat all the time but somehow her timing is always good enough not to let me starve to death. I’m at my end, Max. If this doesn’t end soon…”

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