The smell is the first thing I notice. Invisible and lingering, it curls on the edges of my soul, choking the oxygen beating freely in my lungs. She isn’t so lucky. Who would ever imagine a lump of medical equipment replacing your own breath, pumping your body because you can’t? The wires, too. They are ugly and twisted, hooked up to the mortal machine. It looms, a coiled and hissing predator, threatening me with its very presence, so I long to make it fall away. It could be cut at any moment, and then she’ll be gone. As if reacting in response to this thought, my own heart, its own beats start pounding, hammering on my chest in a movement that would surely break the skin of any chest. That’s the thing with skin, isn’t it?
The thing with everything. Reality is a quiet vampire; twisting and bending and slipping ever so slightly out of reach.







Everybody is stone. The girl, lying fragile on the bed, oblivious to the world around her, the lack of it when she isn’t here, not really, not the person inside. My parents, sitting woodenly on helpfully provided chairs, tracing every freckle on her nose as though she’s about to disappear.



















And that’s it. I know how this is going to end. Fate has claimed her. All they need now is the rest of her.





















Funnily enough, the impending doom does not force me to my knees; send tracks of tears seeping out of my eyes. Because I am stone too.












As long as I am nothing, there is not a thing in the world that could hurt me.