#caleb10

      Then, there was a boy. He was only fourteen when he’d died, trampled by a horse. The way she saw him now was how he’d been when she’d found him ---chest caved in, head covered in too many wounds to count. He was bruised and battered to the point of being unrecognizable, but Rose knew him. Michael. He may as well have been her own flesh and blood. She felt a sob rise up in her throat, burning and scraping at the back of her gums to be released. When she opened her mouth, only a whimper came out. 

      Finally, she saw Caleb. He was coming to help her, running towards her, a look of concern on his face. When he reached her, he opened his mouth to say something. Instead of words, blood poured out of him. She looked down, and it was her own hand that sat within his chest, fist wrapped around his heart. She withdrew in horror, but all she did was tear the organ out. This time, the noise that came from her mouth was one no person should have been able to make. It was shrill and pained, like she herself was dying with the people around her. 

      Caleb’s body fell to its knees, and Rose followed. Her hand pressed against the hole in his chest, trying with all her might to put his heart back inside him. She was muttering the words as she did so, put it back, put it back, put it back, tears freely pouring down her cheeks. When his body finally toppled over with the force of her efforts, she fell with it, head on his bloody, empty chest. She buried her face there, that inuman sound not stopping once, and shut her eyes against the visions of her dead family. Everyone was gone, then, she supposed. She would lay there until she died, too.