Flowers in Her Bones: by J.R. Erickson

Author:J.R. Erickson [Erickson, J.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

I woke in the morning with an optimism I hadn’t felt since the days before the dark night.

I’d stood in front of the open doorway two more times the night before. The second time I’d lasted three minutes.

Now, without even making coffee, I strode to the door, unlatched the bolts and opened it. I stood and gazed at the morning light, which dramatically changed the color of the blue carpeting, revealing the faded checked pattern. By most accounts, it was ugly, but I found it oddly beautiful. My chest ached as I stared at it, at this hall I’d rarely seen.

I braced my hands on either side of the door frame and took a tentative step onto the thin carpet. It was prickly beneath my bare feet. I took another step and another until I could turn and press my back against the opposite wall, not staring back into my apartment, but rather out from it. My pulse thrummed; my knees felt wobbly. Terror and elation gripped me and I clung to the elation. Dr. Fry explained such emotions on a spectrum, all essentially versions of the same thing—excitement, the brain sending signals to the body for the nervous system to light up, take notice.

I pressed my palms into the wall behind me, flattened myself and focused on the carpet.

“Just breathe. That’s all you have to do.”

After a while, I inched sideways, one step, pause for five breaths, another step. At the top of the stairs, I faltered. A dark veil fell over my eyes and the ground beneath me tilted. I flung out my arms, grasped for the wall or the hand rail. Nothing. I pitched forward and suddenly my hands landed on something firm.

I blinked the dark spots away, my breath stuck, unable to squeeze into the pinhole of my throat. The thing beneath my hands shifted. I stared and a head materialized. A man with short dark hair, a blue hooded sweatshirt. My hands were on his head and I realized his hands were on me then, on my waist, keeping me from tipping forward and plunging headfirst down the stairs.

“Gloria.” His mouth made the shape of my name, but the world had gone silent. I couldn’t hear anything, not even my breath, my heartbeat.

I still couldn’t breathe.

His voice broke through then, the sound deafening. “Gloria. It’s okay…” He wasn’t shouting but somehow it registered that way, loud, booming.

I reeled away from him, fell onto my hands and knees and crawled back to my apartment. He followed me. I heard his footfalls, felt the movement of the floor. He was in my apartment, getting closer.

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