THE SILENCE AFTER THE SCREAM
1162 Words
CHAPTER THREE.
THE SILENCE AFTER THE SCREAM.
The scream hit first.
Not mine. Hers. A sound that didn’t belong in a place like that. I had barely stepped into the bathroom stall when the scream erupted from the next cubicle over, sharp, wet, like something had snapped.
Then silence.
And then, a low thud.
I didn’t breathe. Not out of fear, but because the air itself felt dangerous. Thick, humid, as if the tiles and pipes had soaked up the scream and were suddenly pulsating with the sound.
Whoever had screamed wasn’t screaming anymore.
I pushed open the door of my stall with shaking fingers. My heart was a fist in my chest, punching walls. The bathroom mirror flickered under the dying fluorescent light, one of those shitty bulbs that always made your face look worse than it was.
And there she was.
Lillian.
Collapsed on the toilet floor. Her mouth slightly open. Eyes closed. A trail of something red slithered from a side of her face, going down her neck, until it touched her shirt, staining it.
The light above flickered once, buzzing like an insect caught between walls. The air was heavy, almost soupy, with bleach, piss, and something metallic.
My throat closed. But I walked to her. One step. Two. Knees soft. Something inside me wanted to run, call for help…. but my body… my body was calm…..too calm.
Outside the stall, the world went on, footsteps echoing down the halls. A girl laughed too loud, someone sprayed cheap perfume in the air, masking nothing.
But in here, everything had stopped. Time, breathing maybe? something felt different. She looked smaller, fragile, like her fight was leaving her maybe…..the last little ember that says, keep going.
Her body lay awkwardly on the tiled floor, her limbs splayed in angles that looked so painful. Her right foot was still tangled in the leg of her baggy trousers, suggesting she may have tripped while trying to put them on.
But why did she take them off in the first place? I thought to myself
Her neck was angled wrong.
I dropped to my knees.
“Lillian,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”
No response.
I reached out, stupidly, like in the movies, touched her cheek. It was getting cold.
Is She dying?….. something whispered in my head.
No.
She’s dying. Her body’s still. She’s dying.
No…..No!
But yes!
Yes! One of my enemies has finally been vanquished I thought to myself, smiling at my use of the word “vanquished”
But then…..I immediately pushed it away…..it was evil, full of hate.
And it scared me, the way it came so easily. The way the word felt so good to think of…..vanquished, like victory, like freedom. But it wasn’t supposed to feel like that.
Her lashes were clumped together like wet feathers, and there was this smudge of mascara trailing toward her temple, like a black tear that never made it down her cheek, her lips were parted, soft, trembling and stupid like she wanted to say something snarky, something cruel, something so Lillian.
I stared. Not moving. Not breathing. Just… watching.
I looked around, Nothing…. No one, Just the hum of bad electricity and the violent scene literally lying in front of me.
“Lillian,” I whispered again….. “Can you hear me?”
She made a sound…..a little one, the kind of sound that didn’t belong in this world.
Lillian wasn’t just anybody. She was the girl who made me hate waking up in the morning. That b***h spread rumors horrible rumors, she once told a lie so cruel it made my life a living hell for months, everyone in school literally loathed me……She called me “Swamp Thing” in front of the boy I liked once…..she made everyone laugh at my acne, my figure, my wide face. She had made pain an extracurricular activity.
She once told everyone I had an STD, like it was some kind of punchline. I was thirteen and I didn’t even know what half of that meant then. But the damage was done, people whispered behind their lockers and side-eyed me in the cafeteria like I was a disease, like I’d rub off on them if I so much as breathed their way.
She made my life a living hell for years, and when I say “hell,” I don’t mean the kind with flames and pitchforks…..I mean the slow, smoldering kind. The kind that eats at your insides while you smile or cry through it, cause you’re too scared to do anything about it. Every hallway felt like a battlefield, every classroom was just another place I had to hold my breath.
Funny thing though, some part of me still wanted her to like me.
Lillian, Queen of venom. Goddess of high school cruelty. She who reigned in rumors and reeked of perfume and spite.
Lying there….small.
Crumpled like a bloody rag doll. Her breath was shallow, mouth still open, I was so sure she was trying to say something.
I waited for her to move, for her to groan and call me a freak, for her to open one eye and roll it dramatically. To ruin everything by being her usual smug self. But she wasn’t doing any of those, and part of me wished she would.
“Come on,” I whispered, even though I hated her. Even though she once made me cry in the middle of the cafeteria just by existing. “Don’t be a b***h”
I looked around…… nothing…..no one.
Just the hum of bad electricity and the violent scene literally lying in front of me.
The urge came again, my conscience fighting so hard to make me see reasons why I should make a move.
Run!
She’s dying!
This is evil!
You’ll surely rot in hell for this!
Help her!!
My conscience sounded just like my mom, which made my refusal to listen even way more agreeable.
And I didn’t move. My knees were still on the cold tile. I stared at her face….still so pretty, even in this disgusting half-dead way. Her perfect skin, her long lashes, even though they were all clumped up now, she was still beautiful. Even in the dirt. Even in blood.
The silence in that bathroom was unbearable, like the walls were listening, Like they knew. The tiles felt cold under my knees, the stupid flickering light overhead that kept buzzing like a dying fly distracted my thoughts incessantly, making it even harder to decide…..or so I told myself. My fingers were still hovering near her face, unsure…..useless.
Would she do the same for me?
Would she kneel if it were me lying there?
I already knew the answer. I had known for years.
No.
She would have stepped over me like a used condom.
Either way, I had to make a decision….and I needed to be fast about it before someone came in.
- Writer
