kajsa ㅇㅅㅇ

The world spun around Thia. She shut her eyes tight, desperately wishing it to all go away, for it all to have been a bad dream. But dreams don't leave blood drying on your skin. Her stomach lurched and she opened her eyes to see what she had been dreading. 

There was nothing around Thia anymore. Only an infinite reflection stretching out into the horizon to stand on. She took the slightest step forward and the surface rippled and distorted like water. The ripples continued outward with nothing to impede their motion.

"No you didn't."  

Thia spun around to address the faintly metallic parody of her own voice. The only other living thing in that place was Thia's own shadow, formless and shifting endlessly.

"Wha-? Of c-of course I did!" 

"Then why is his blood soaked into your clothes?"

She brought her eyes downward, just to look anywhere but the glowing holes on the shadow's face. Thia didn't have an answer. She could have saved Matt, of course she could have. If she had simply tried harder, been just a few minutes earlier. If she had just done more. She wanted to cry, scream, say something, do anything but she stood there motionless. 

The shadow moved closer. There were no ripples radiating from its footsteps. 

"You could have saved him and you know it." It's face was smooth and had no mouth to speak, yet it spoke anyway. "If you had been there, he wouldn't have died."

Thia tried to move herself away, or push it away, anything to get it away, but the only movement she made was for her head to look back up. Her eyes met those awful, soulless white eyes of her shadow. It was unbearably close and she could feel the chill that emanated from it.

Thia knew what it was going to say next even before it said it. She refused to say it aloud, but that didn't matter.

"You are the reason he died." 

The silence was deafening.

The words echoed in Thia's head. Both in her voice, and her shadow's. Though the two had become almost indistinguishable.

Thia collapsed onto her knees. The ripples flowed right through the shadow. She began to sob, tears falling in new paths down her cheeks. Her body heaved and her breathing became uncontrollable. There was complete silence and her stomach lurched again, but she remained exactly as she was. Her knees felt the roughness of the asphalt beneath her, indicating she was back in the world. She didn't move though. Rain fell heavily from the sky, drenching her but she barely even noticed it.

Blood slowly washed off her face and shirt and swirled in the rain on the ground. There was no one around to see Thia there, and Matt wasn't there to comfort her anymore. She kept crying, but there were no tears to fall anymore.