Gillian Manning

I cut the corner into the cobblestone-laden alley. It’s bumpy. The brick walls on either side are rough, as is the area I sift through. I’ve been here before, though, plenty of times. I’ve smelled the dumpster that sits at the mid-point. Its rotted leaking always makes me wrinkle my nose and cover my face with a sleeve.

As my boots wobble down the uneven road, that familiar smell begins. There are no street lights here, but I see them begin again on the other side of this dark side street. 

I’ll make it there. I always do.

I squint my eyes, though, as something shifts. That light looks further and further away, like a warped hallway with no end. The dimming street light is eclipsed by the figure of a man. 

I have nothing on me. I don’t have anything to give. Still, the shadow approaches with a face obscured by the darkness and he points his gun. But I have nothing on me. I don’t have anything to give. 

First, I feel it in my chest. It’s like a two-ton truck just rammed through it. Then, my chest is warm. An electric pounding from my sternum pulses and resonates and breaks me as my mind tries to play catch-up.

I look down at my trembling hands when I feel a familiar pang hit my stomach. 

My knees smash against the cold, jagged cobblestone and I double over. I feel a wave of nausea, like every bite I’ve ever taken is ready to spill out of me. What I see before me, though, is not my own putrid bile, but red drops dripping on the stone.

I feel my brain re-frame, trying to find some grasp of reality. There’s something kind of pretty about it – the red beads pooling beneath me. They provide focal points for my blurring surroundings.

The pain in my chest and my stomach become one. Like the electrical pulses of my body are undergoing their own sort of osmosis, until the only feeling in my body is pain and weakness. 

I can’t breathe. I can’t speak.

A cold wave washes over me and turns the blood still pumping through me into ice. And that’s where I stay. Mute, frozen, and feeling the waves of what I can’t understand flow through a body that no longer feels like my own. 

When do I lie down? When do I accept that the street lights on the other side are just too far away? Maybe they aren’t there at all.