Needs More Blood

Does the title really require explaining?
Hmm... I suppose it might.
The above pictures outline how I have the ability of getting myself in trouble without meaning to. There are many more blood-dyed accidents than these (i.e., flipping off a bike and skidding to a stop on the asphalt on my face, knuckles, and knees), however these are the only ones I managed to document.
The first picture in particular exhibits a very unexpected turn of events during a vacation at the beach with my best friend a couple years ago. The place we were staying (right on the beach) also had a pool in case we got bored of the sand and surf. So I went up to the pool with my best friend's little sister and we swam around for a while. Well, I love to dive into pools, so taking this opportunity, I did so a few times joyously. However, I began to figure out a cool "twist" I could do to spice up the otherwise average dive. Right at the lip of the pool instead of simply springing forward, I spun my body around in a corkscrew fashion and ended up under the water upside down, smiling up at the sky through the chlorine.
Well, I did it a few more times and then was going to show another friend who appeared and I botched it.
Not on purpose. The pool had it out for me, I know it.
I ran to the lip and pushed off with my feet and my big toe caught between two pieces of broken PVC pipe that make up the edge. Thus, I was missing a chunk of toe when I surfaced.
Yeah.
As for the second picture, it was simple shaving accident. I had been carrying on my merry way in the shower, probably singing along with the music playing, and scraped the razor just the right way to peel off two inches of skin.
At least the first one was kind of cool/interesting. This one was just dumb.

Random blog post of the week. A little window in my life.
Hope you enjoyed. (Also, if you click on the pictures they get bigger!)

Ta
V

Death by Butterscotch

I walked into psychology class past only a handful of other students, plenty early, and sat dead center in the front row at my usual perch. Withdrawing my laptop and a notecard from my bag, I realized I still had some butterscotch hard candies leftover and decided to grab one so as to occupy my mouth. Unwrapping it and popping it between my teeth, I went about my business and unknowingly inhaled strongly.
The candy launched back and lodged itself in my throat. I sputtered and gasped, acutely aware of what had happened and panicking thoroughly. My heart hammered, stuttering in my chest and my body grew warm as adrenaline flooded my bloodstream. So fast.
I swallowed, alarmed, and found it was very difficult to do so. The candy remained in place.
I sat there, clutching the edge of the desk harder than meaning to, wondering if this was the end. If today was the day my clock ran out. What would my classmates think if I suddenly quit breathing and slumped over on top of my computer? How long would it take for anyone to realize what was going on?
Forcibly I had to calm my pinging nerves and tell myself to breathe, that my windpipe was clear and I could still breathe. I snatched my canteen from the ground and attempted to gulp down some water to move the candy along, but the clog was too great. All the liquid came back up through my nose, having no other exit.
I coughed and gagged numerous times while trying to control myself, my breathing, and my swirling thoughts. Did anyone in the room know the heimleich maneuver? Would they even try to help if I made it known I was in desperate need of it?
Desperately, I swallowed hard several times in rapid succession, resolute on getting the stupid piece of sugar down. It seemed to help, if only a minuscule amount.
Dissolve faster, I thought. Dissolve, dissolve, dissolve.
Gradually it lowered and lowered until I could feel it beside my spine like a swallowed wad of gum. It felt as though, if I dug hard enough, I could pull it out right from under my skin. Pain radiated in soft waves from it, but I was just relieved it had left my throat and proceeded to my esophagus.
The panic slowly left me and the alarm bells going off in my head died away. I heaved a sigh and prepared myself for today's lecture just as my professor walked in. She greeted everyone and asked how we were. I replied, "Good" and it was only after I'd said it that I agreed it was true.
I was glad that dumb piece of butterscotch hadn't been the death of me.

-----

True story. This was the highlight (and by that I mean something I wish to never experience again) of my afternoon. I literally thought today was the day I was meant to die.
Didn't happen, though, so I guess its not quite my time yet.
Moral of the story? Don't swallow an entire piece of butterscotch hard candy unless you desire to be scared out of your wits.

Until next time,

V

Do You Dare Dream a Dream of Me?

She stands tall, elegant and graceful in her black leotard at the very center of the floor. Music begins to play and she leaps and tumbles to the violent tempo, the notes seemingly tossing her about, as if in control. The audience in the bleachers doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, it doesn’t make even a sound. Perhaps that’s because they're lifeless dolls, mannequins that only begged to be freed from their inescapably plastic existences.

No one notices as red water slowly fills the room, coming up the girl’s ankles as she splashes through it, uncaring, or perhaps just utterly oblivious. 

The desperate cry of a baby booms like thunder through the place and the babe writhes on the lap of a still mannequin. There is no one there to calm it, or shush it, so it continues to wail for the relief that will never come.

The girl pays no mind and flips high into the air before landing on her knees. Her small body falls backwards into the water, now up to her waist, and she lies still for a breath or two. The music fades out like a dream when you awake and she stands, tall and elegant before the motionless audience. The baby continues to scream and fuss. 

No one notices.

The girl walks neatly off the blue performance floor and into the bathroom. She stops in front of the giant mirror and leans her elbows onto a counter made of liquid fire. Her skin blisters, cracks, and peels under the heat’s intensity, but she doesn’t cry out in pain even as the fire boils and sloughs the skin and muscle off her, leaving only bone. The water, up to her shoulders now, gives no mollification, no healing.

She sees that her face is crowded with innumerable white heads as she scrutinizes herself in the mirror. She poises two sharp nails by one, pinching it until it pops, revealing the shiny, pearl head of a pinning needle. Undistressed, she pulls the two inch needle from her face and examines it like a foreign object. Blood begins to drip down from the hole it left. Again and again, she pops the needles from her head and lets them fall down into the flaming liquid until not a trace of them remains. She’s weeping blood now.

The water is way beyond her head, but all the same, she walks back out to the performance floor and finds the bleachers empty, all but for the skeleton of a small infant. 

Where have they gone, she wonders, as her gaze pulls down to her chest to reveal a gaping crater of missing muscle and skin. Five left ribs are snapped off, leaving splintered edges, and a number of unattached arteries hang down like bloody threads over her stomach. 

And where, she wonders, is my heart?

Accident

I can't sleep. Tossing and turning, clamping my eyes shut only for them to flutter open sleeplessly again. I bury my tearstained face into the worn, tear blotted pillow beneath me, trying desperately to quiet the shrill sobs scratching at my throat. The pitch black darkness of my room suffocates me, but I don’t have the strength to pull myself up and flip on the light switch. The silence surrounds me; it scares me to death only because it screams the truth: I am alone. As I lay here in a feebly tangled heap of blankets and body parts, unable to sleep and crying like a despairing insomniac, I can't help but wonder. I can't help but wonder what it would feel like to die.

Do we get swept away under the relentlessly crushing black oblivion, our bodies melting away from our souls which begin flitting around mindlessly like faeries trapped in little glowing orbs? Or do our entire beings; mind, body, soul, get erased from the system called life, deleted like broken computer programs? Or, even, do we get copied and the duplicate of ourselves is like a ghostly reflection and we all transfer to a kind of waiting room where we anticipate our turn for being judged by God? No one knows for sure what happens after our hearts stop beating.

I wish he could come back and tell me so I know. I wish he could just come back. Fresh tears spilled from my eyes as I pathetically bit my lip against the cascading waterfall. Why couldn’t that red truck have been more careful?

The whole scene played out perfectly in my head again, as it had so many times before.

I shivered, rapidly rubbing my gloved hands up and down my arms to try and ward off the cold. Bouncing on the balls of my feet, I breathed out a visibly translucent sigh of air. “Where is he? If he doesn’t get here soon he’ll be late for his meeting.” I whispered to the night air, a lazy gust of wind brushing past me, sending unwelcome chills up my spine. I hurriedly slid back the fuzzy sleeve of my coat to check my watch. I sighed again. “What’s taking him so long? He’s already ten minutes late. Maybe I should call him…” I voiced my thoughts to the icy air.

“I’ll call him." I concluded, reaching my hand into my purse to rummage around for my phone. Breathing on my frozen extremity to warm up my fingers, I poked out his number on the lit keypad. Holding it to my ear, I waited while listening to the rings. Once, twice, three times... "Hey babe, sorry I'm late. I'll be there in a few minutes." I smiled; it sounded like he had been expecting my call. "Alright honey. Drive safe; I hear there's patches of ice everywhere on the road. See you soon, love you!" I replied quickly, wanting him to focus on driving. "Love you too, see you soon." The line cut out.

I flipped the phone shut with a snap and slid it back into my purse. I quickly rubbed my hands together and breathed on them to defrost my poor, stiffly frozen fingers. I stood there like this for only a few more minutes as the wind bit at my ears and nose.

A smile broke out between my rosy cheeks as I saw his car shoot around the bend. I felt the wind from a red truck that had just sped past lightly push against me and I watched it zoom in the opposite direction that Lyric was going in.

What I saw next will always be burned into the backs of my eyelids; a memory I will never be able to forget even if I wanted so desperately to.

Then a sound met my ears. It was not a pleasant sound. I gasped as I watched the wheels of the red truck spin, sliding and unable to stop as it hit a deadly patch of black ice. The sound of squealing tires filled my ears as I screamed "No!" As much as I felt the urge to run, to do something, I couldn't; I was utterly rooted to the spot, only able to look on and watch what happened next.

Lyrics car swerved as wide as it could, tires screeching in protest to the huge arc, trying desperately to dodge the spinning and out-of-control truck, but unfortunately it wasn't enough.

The two cars collided with each other in a flash of silver and red; a horrible crunching boom rang through the trees and off the mountains. The silver car was launched sideways by the red truck, briefly hanging in the air before smashing to the pavement on its top, rolling and spinning in a ceaselessly dangerous tumble. Awful scraping noises shrieked from the silver car as it finally skidded to a halt. The red truck had only spun a few 360’s before smashing front first into a tree 20 feet from the silver car.

Then the road was ringing with a haunting silence.

I stood there, speechless and utterly terrified. I couldn't feel my feet or make them move; I stood rooted to the spot, trembling. I managed to get a hold of myself enough to shove my hand into my purse and shakily rip out my phone. It fell from my quivering hand and onto the frozen ground; I swore loudly. Crouching quickly to pick it up, I jabbed my numb finger at the numbers 9-1-1, hurriedly putting it to my ear.

I was finally able to move my feet, surging forwards and losing my balance. I fell face first, catching myself on my free hand, cursing loudly again as I scrambled up to my quaking feet. I ran to the silver car, the shrill ringing of the phone intruding into my ear. My heart pounded against my ribs, fluttering like a winged thing trapped in a cage. My mind raced with dark, terrifying possibilities.

What if...he was dead?

"Hello, 9-1-1, what is the emergency?" A calm, business toned lady asked me, making me jump at the sudden voice. "Um, there's been a cr-crash. P-please send help immediately. T-two people inside damaged v-vehicles." I replied shakily, tears filling my eyes. "What is you location?" The business tone asked me again. I spun towards the stop sign and read our whereabouts to her, stammering and trembling as I spoke. "Help is on the way." The lady replied. I snapped the phone shut and shoved it back into my purse. I threw myself to the ground by the driver’s side window of the silver car, crouching on shards of glass and twisted metal. They cut sharply into my skin, making it cry crimson tears, but I didn't care.

"L-lyric?" I whispered hoarsely, hesitantly looking through the window. I cleared my throat roughly. "Lyric? Are you a-alright?" I asked again, this time louder. I reached my trembling hand up, poising it just over the window. I drew in a shaky breath and knocked. I heard an odd, gurgling and moaning noise come from inside the car. "Lyric? Hello?" I yelled louder through the window. The moaning sound greeted my ears again, but this time it was stronger.

I sprang up onto my feet with more grace than I thought I had, given the current circumstances, and tried yanking open the driver’s side door. To my luck, it was unlocked. I tore it open, falling to my knees to examine the damage and see how badly Lyric was hurt. I gasped, sharply sucking in a gust of air and put my hands to my face. “Oh my God.”

He was suspended upside down by his seatbelt, head almost touching the roof of the car. Blood was gushing from a wound on his head where it hit the windshield and a crimson waterfall was spilling from his mouth. His arm dangled, bloody and shirt ripped, over his head. It was more than likely broken from the impact of the red truck on the driver’s side. His whole dress shirt was dyed a sick scarlet color; you would’ve never known it had been white. Tears filled my eyes and spilled over as they scanned his broken and bloodied form. “Lyric, baby…” I whispered, reaching my arms out to him. His eyes slowly looked over at me and he made that dark, moaning sound again. I finally realized that the gurgling noise was because his mouth was full of blood when he tried speaking.

“What do I do? What do I do?” I jumped up, asking myself quickly, eyes wide and full of disbelief as I ran my hands through my disheveled locks. I heard sirens in the distance and prayed that they got here quickly. “Help is on the way, honey, just hold on.” I whimpered, collapsing to my knees again by his head as tears streamed relentlessly down my cheeks. I sobbed pathetically by Lyric’s helplessly trapped body. If I tried moving him it would only hurt him more, so I had to wait for the paramedics to get here. I hated feeling so…so useless. My love was injured and in pain and all I could do was watch and wait.

Useless.

The sirens shrieked their shrill cries as the ambulances approached, breaking through the frozen air surrounding the scene of the crash. All I could do when they stopped quickly near both vehicles was scoot back on shards of glass and watch with a tear-blurred gaze as they pulled Lyric’s body from the car with such precision and skill that no one other than a practiced paramedic could have achieved. One of the blue clad women walked over to me and kneeled by my pathetic form, asking me if I could tell them about what happened. I just broke down in sobs, feeling my throat going sore as they ripped from my lungs.

It had all happened so fast. Too fast.

His heart was still beating when they got him to the hospital and that was a very good sign. He had lost a lot of blood though, and that wasn’t the best of news. “He’s got a strong heart.” A doctor had told me while we were speed-walking down the white, overly clean hallways of the hospital that always smelled strongly of bleach. “If we can get him patched up quick enough, I’m sure he’ll be fine.” He had smiled at me, a reassuring smile that I’d imagined he gave to every other distraught relative of an injured loved one in the hospital. Although his words had been somewhat reassuring at the time, since I was no doctor I couldn’t verify whether he was sugar-coating it or telling me the cold hard truth, so I believed him.

He was wrong.

Lyric died in the hospital shortly after he got there. They underestimated how much blood he had lost and weren’t quick enough with patching him up. I didn’t even get to say goodbye or see him one last time while he was alive.

He was gone from me. Violently ripped away in a flash. Now all I’m left with is the pile of broken pieces that were once my heart cutting sharply into my hands and a lap full of cold tears.

What could be worse?