Ira

Three. Two. One.

Boom.

Steel and brick exploded out destroying the concert hall's foundation. Structure cracking under its own weight, a thousand pounds of building rained down on its inhabitants. Glass shattered, sharp edges cutting arms thrown up in protection as the roof came crashing down, crushing flesh too soft to hold it.

Cuts and bruises. A broken arm. Shattered leg. Punctured intestines. Crushed foot. Ruptured spleen. Perforated artery. Concussion. Burnt skin. Dislocated shoulder. Broken ribs. Collapsed lung. Split lip. Ruptured eardrums. Fractured wrist. Cracked skull. Shrapnel pierced flesh. Broken back. Another broken arm. More cuts. Seared lungs. Twisted hip. Cut tendons. Torn muscles. Severed hand. Sprained ankle. Dislocated jaw. Pinched spinal column. Another concussion.

Twenty-nine injured.

Twelve dead.

So many buried alive. Some gone in a breath, others bleeding out before help could come. Alarms blaring and a man calling out as he reaches blooded hands toward his little girl. She wasn't moving and when they found them, he was stuck; pinned beneath a concrete slab. They were taken to the nearest hospital and desperate surgeons did their best to save her.

Tubes and wires, monitoring, and sustaining. Blaring monitors. A Man's hushed murmurs. A woman sobs. Bright lights fading.

Thirteen dead.

Sundays had never been my favorite days but this one seemed determined to be my own personal hell. After the fiasco of Friday night and sleeping through most of Saturday, everyone else had gone home while I dozed. My head felt too full and still wary of the darkness I couldn't bring myself to give in to unconsciousness, but lack of sleep made my eyelids heavy, and I was constantly nodding off. But every time I closed my eyes, I'd see the aftermath of the bomb and would snap awake.

Needing to do something, I gave up on sleep and cleaned. I managed to fold the laundry, clean out the fridge, scrub down the bathroom, reorganized Emma's closet, much to her annoyance, and vacuum the entire apartment by the time Mindy got home. Running on just a couple of hours of sleep and too much caffeine, I was just going to continue on my crusade, but then Mindy had come in and the moment she'd walked through the I'd seen her aura.

I didn't know what else to call the light surrounding her, but I didn't feel the burn that normally accompanied my eyes lighting up and she didn't mention them. Only asked how our night had gone and smiled like nothing was wrong. Disturbed I went to check in the mirror and found they were glowing brighter than ever.

"Chillout, it was fine. They look normal." Emma told me after I dug her out of a pile of blankets.

It was only after she was uncovered that I saw she had an aura too, dimmer than her mother's but there. And when River had shown up with Autumn on the back of his bike, both glowing with their own auras, and told us we were meeting Wes and JD at the mall they hadn't seen anything either. I didn't know why they didn't see the glow anymore, but I added it to the list of other things I didn't know and the pointless facts I did.

Now we were wandering around the strip mall waiting till showtime for the newest movie in some space series Wes was obsessed with. Apparently, his grandparents weren't that big on celebrations, and to make up for it we were going to do a little of our own now that he was back. Except I could barely see straight, and everyone I looked at was lit up like a Christmas tree.

I hadn't wanted to come, but a distraction sounded like a better idea than sitting around all day with nothing to do but think about all the things I really wanted to forget. Like what happened on Friday or the fact that Emma was going to die in a car accident and River was killing himself with cancer sticks.

A guy in a hoodie bumped into me and I had to clench my jaw to keep from screaming when his death shot through my brain like a ricochet bullet.

The crake of a gunshot. Pain flaring and a cold wave of shock before darkness flooded in.

This was the real reason Sunday was turning into another nightmare. Anytime I come into contact with one of those oh so pretty lights they would show me the person's last moments. I tried not to let them overwhelm me, but it was hard to focus on anything else.

Another stranger brushed past just a little too close and another death flashed. Air. They needed air. Each breath rattled with the fluid collecting in their lungs. The ventilator hissed as it forced oxygen in and out. Struggling to inhale I nearly ran into Emma who'd been walking in front of me. Jerking to a stop I managed to avoid crashing into her.

"I think Arby's sounds better. What do ya think?" Emma asked. I blinked and tried to remember what they had been talking about.

Food: we were supposed to decide on what to get for food.

"Chick-fil-A is better." River interjected.

"I don't really care" I shrugged "Both sound fine."

"Then chick-fil-A it is" River called with triumph.

"Arby's is closer." Wes pointed out when Emma gave him a look.

"Dude, please reclaim your balls before she cuts them off." River begged Wes then turned back to Emma and informed her "The man is clearly under duress because nobody in their right mind would choose cow killers over fried chicken."

"So says the person who's responsible for the murder of hundreds of poor innocent birds and for your information Arby's has chicken tenders if want to murder a few more."

"But is it good chicken? I mean has their death been truly worth the sacrifice of suboptimal seasoning?" River was completely serious as he delivered his questions with all the passion of a speaker addressing the jury.

"Whatever" Emma rolled her eyes and turned to JD and Autumn "I'm going to Arby's. Do you guys want anything?"

As everyone figured out what they would get I squinted past them looking for an escape from the noise and lights. As usual, Autumn was draped on JD and their auras were doing a weird twisting thing, warping to mold together into a colorful swirl. Autumn's was strangely brighter than JD's yet seemed to be feeding his almost constantly. Probably because they were always touching each other. An affectionate habit they had for one another that I was grateful didn't extend to anyone else.

Like everyone else's auras, both were like a personal sphere of influence. Varying in size strength and color, the way they interacted was almost mesmerizing. When in contact with someone else's, one person's aura would absorb a little of the other and change. When in contact with me it showed me their death and after watching Wes slowly waste away from liver failure, I'd carefully been avoiding other people, but a crowded mall wasn't exactly conducive to personal space.

"What about you" Emma nudged my arm, making me tense and forcing me to focus on her over the internal screech of tires. "What do you want?"

"I don't know," I told her spotting a restroom sign. "You can order for me. But I need to use the bathroom."

I didn't wait for her to respond. Taking off I made a beeline for my escape. I got to the bathroom door and thanked my lucky stars it was a family bathroom after narrowly avoiding the lady coming out. Flipping the lock, I leaned against the door and breathed through my nose. It smelled like piss and too much bleach, but I used the assault on my senses to ground me in the here and now.

I shouldn't have come.

I hated this constant download of dumb ways to die and wished I had the knowing back. the knowing made things bearable. It made the visions too surreal to be true. It gave me a distance from what I saw and made nothing personal. Without it, my mind was too full, and too many memories crowded my head making it hard for me to think past them.

Distance.

I needed distance.

Shoving the images away, I tried to remember that empty place I had existed in before the first vision before it had shown me my mom's death. the place that showed me too much, where I watch within the dreams. I needed that place. I needed its quiet, its stillness. I needed the sense of self it had given me even when I was everything.

Squeezing my eyes shut I reached desperately for that place.

And found something.

I knew at once it wasn't the space I was looking for, but it was separate from the visions I was drowning in now, so I clung to it. It was different, not a place but a thing. And where the place had an emptiness that was like a blank page waiting to be filled, this thing was empty because it was hungry and there was nothing left. It pulled at the visions of death and pain, making room for my own thoughts. Happy to let them go, I fed the thing all the images until my mind was my own space occupied by me only.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I felt the tension leave my aching shoulders. Head falling back against the door, I looked up at the ceiling and enjoyed my rare moment of peace.

A shimmer out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. Heart stuttering, I turned my head to see what it was hoping beyond all reason it was just the mirror. Instead of my reflection, I saw him.

Uriel

His image wavered like a mirage as he stood watching me, brows furrowed to match his frown. He was in an alleyway, and it was day wherever he was. His plain white shirt and coat were an odd contrast to the blazing heat of a midday sun, but he didn't seem to mind.

Standing, I took a step closer to the mirror. He lifted a hand as if to touch the translucent surface and without thinking I mirrored his action. For half a second, I almost thought he could reach through the glass but just as he would have touched the barrier between us, he suddenly began to fade, his form disappearing into the pattern of the mirror's glass that grew across the wall like a flowering snowflake.

A knock made me jump, and I swung around expecting someone to come in before remembering the door was locked.

"Hey, you still alive in there?" Autumn asked through the door.

"Yeah" I called back a bit breathless.

"Good. Could you hurry it then, please? you're not the only one with tiny lady-bladder issues."

I opened the door, perhaps a bit too quickly because Autumn startled before she shook off the look of surprise and squeezed past, not even bothering to wait for me to exit.

Shaky hands and sharp edges. She watched the blood drip down her arm and bloom into a crimson cloud in the water. She was so tired, she just wanted it to end. Just wanted to fade away onto nothing. If only she'd been a boy. If only she wasn't pretty. If only she was stronger. she heard someone call out. Her River, her twin, her other half, he was calling her name. She knew he wouldn't want her to leave but he had suffered so much, and it was all her fault.

He would be better off without her.

But he wouldn't let her go. He kept begging her to stay, his voice an anchor that kept the darkness at bay. But there were others. They were trying to save her. They took her away from her River and without him there to hold it back the darkness enveloped her.

I blinked as Autumn shut the door in my face, suddenly understanding something about the quiet artist that she had never talked about. The long sleeves she always wore no matter how warm it was. How she was always with River or someone else, never alone. Even now JD leaned against the wall waiting for her. How she never drove. And the meetings, she was always having meetings with the school counselor.

All because once she had wanted to die, and for a little while she had.

"You, okay?" JD asked and I wondered if he knew.

"Yeah, just still a little off from Friday." I explained, "didn't really get much sleep." And I doubted I would any time soon with the way things were changing.

Up till now all the visions I'd seen were of things that hadn't happened yet of people who were still walking around and very much alive. But Autumn had died, just for a minute or two, but that was something from her past. A curious part of me wondered if I would see the same thing if I touched her again or if I'd see how she really died, and I spent the rest of the day battling between curiosity and fear.