Winona

Waterfalls of Pain

There was a scream, and a pulse beat within my veins, sudden fear obscuring thoughts and panic bursting to life like a roaring lion inside of my heart.

I could hear a thousand voices at once, each octave a foreign enemy, one I desperately wanted to claw out of the throat of whoever it belonged to. My face soon became wet, and I was no longer the leader—any sign of bravery had vanished as soon as the first drop of realisation fell upon me.

My feet, small and worn, carried me to the ledge of the window, air stuck between my teeth. My lungs gasped in pain, squeezing shut as floods of anger and pain rushed to fill the empty chasm. His feet were so close to the ledge, and mine were only inches away, and if I could—if I could reach out for him and save him—

I was trapped in a jail of hands, paralysed to the ground. My bones were stiff of uncertainty, and despite my love for him, I couldn't bring myself to jump. My face grew wetter still, and strangled cries erupts from my mouth, but all I hear is the aching plead inside my chest for me to be with him.

Kyle pried my fingers, clenched around the bars of the window, away, pulling me from possible doom. My chest was still rising and falling in dramatic manner, the rhythm equating that of African drums—complicated yet so full of power.

“Serena,” I hear my brother whisper, somehow overpowering the beats of my heart. “Serena, please look at me.”

I didn't know what I was saying. I felt no motion on my lips.

“Serena, please,” Kyle begged, and I could sense the tears in his eyes as worry curled beneath his tongue. “I need you to look at me.”

I heard my voice for the first time; it was loud, vibrating against the walls with authority. “No!” Kyle's body shook with hurt. “Somebody save him! Somebody save him!”

“Aella’s getting him,” he promised, fighting to keep his arms around me despite my struggling. “Aella’s getting him, Serena. He’ll be safe soon.”

“You can’t!” The meaning behind my words were incomprehensible. “Somebody save him!”

A new voice joined the commotion, a calm, soothing voice. It was as though the event had not phased him, as though he was, despite battling his own demons inside, nonchalant about the whole occurrence. “He’s safe.”

I stopped my struggling, falling straight into Kyle’s arms. His grip on me tightened as the cage around me closed me in.

Ryan walked away from the ledge, stepping away slowly, as though just standing by the window opportunity, he would somehow be poisoned to his death. I looked at him for the first time. His face was distorted with tears.

I escaped my confinement, and approached Ryan carefully, quickly embracing his tower-like figure and letting go of a few sobs. His body still shook with his own waterfall of pain.