I did not wake up the next day.

For a very long time, I was dragged beneath a heavy veil of senselessness.  A wintry breath whispered across my limbs, easing the numbness on my skin. In the darkness of my coma, echoes of distant visions blurred my mind, drowning me in its icy embrace.

Each and every memory was as cold as frost.
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I remember standing in the backyard of my house. The last wisps of faint summer wind brushing against distant trees. I remember the cobalt blue of the sky. Ushering a tranquility as deep as the evening ocean.

I recall staring at my own shadow, trying to hide the countless wounds that I knew I would never forget. The crimson stains punctured my skin, bringing back dangerous visions of my last relationship. The gashes and tears were testament of my former boyfriend's anger, his hatred at a girl who never truly loved him. I could still hear his icy blame within my ears, cold, tormenting, lethal.

Of course you don't love me. You don't love anyone but yourself.

A smoky sky grumbled coldly above me, bringing forth a state of numbness.

I sighed. In the distance, a lone light from a cigarette shone, its smoke trailing the wind. Then, long, slow exhales twined through the air, accompanied by hoarse breathing.

My thoughts bled cold, draining and pricking at the deepest corner of my mind. I was submerged in their shackles, shackles that pierced a hole deep into my skin, again and again.

I can't get them out of my mind.

It was then I heard her screams.

Terror, like the dreadful Arctic cold, seared me like blistering fire. They crippled my body, etching and coiling deep within my chest. I remember all my thoughts dissipating at that moment, bleeding into confusion, shock, then despair. I remember convincing myself that everything would be fine, although I knew that wasn't true. My mother never screams.

The next thing I knew, I was rushing desperately towards the front door of the house. It was bolted shut.

My body was drenched in cold sweat. I would never forget stumbling around the locked house, crying out my mother's name. Dread melted and thawed within my heart with every step. When I finally lurched in from the back entrance, scanning the dark interiors of my household, everything had become strangely quiet again. It was almost as if I had imagined those screams.

A sudden, bitter feeling gushed to my heart. The living room was drenched in a murky gloom, one that seemed to replace the air of normality previously prowling in its expanse.  I scanned all intersections.

Something was bizarre about the house.

I turned to my mother's bedroom. And I see---

Crimson. Writhing across the gray carpet. It was a familiar shade, almost too familiar... I closed my eyes, tried to convince myself that it was just paint, paint I used to create illusions of----

Blood.

It was a dimly illuminated room. My mother was curled up by the bedside, shivering. Blood spurted wildly across her hair, threatening to spill across the apron she wore across her chest. As I entered, she looked up, her eyes entrapped with a look almost devoid of feeling. It was the same feeling that punctured my mind now; paralyzing, drowning, suffocating me.

Nothing.

Her arms reached towards me unsteadily, her fingers involuntarily grasped mine, as she numbed me with that similar unfeeling gaze. I knew that look. It was the remnant of an empty shell, one crippled raw by terror and hopelessness. My heart raced as she slowly touched her tender lips to my cheek.

"What happened?" I urged, terror creeping upon me again at the ghastly sight of blood. She didn't reply to my cries, and only brought me closer towards her, until we were in a stiff embrace. I trembled at her warm touch. I was so close that I could smell the fiery scent of her blood. It was creeping down her own soaked clothes, and dripping onto mine.

"Lily," she whispered feebly, clutching me against her chest, "just tell me one thing. Promise me that you'll be silent about this. Please." She embraced me tighter, and an acidic premonition rushed to my heart. I wiped the tears streaming down her cheeks, as she attempted to draw out those last, despairing words. "Get away from here, Lily, and tell no one."

I gazed, perplexed, at her curled composure before me. She suddenly seemed so strange and distant. It was almost as if she had left me. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but something held me back.

I endeavored to protest, but she only shook her head, terror scintillating in the deep ocean blue of her eyes. "Go," She whispered."When they come, just say that I've killed myself. You can do that, can't you?"

I remember staring fixedly at the growing cascades of blood, immobilized by shock and desperation. The curtains in the room were drawn; my surroundings were blanketed in gloom. It was so dark I could almost convince myself that the gory lines feathering across the blotched carpet could've been nothing but paint. Nothing but an illusion.

The next thing I knew, my mother was quivering in an excruciating, breathless state. Her lips were trembling rhythmically, yet I could tell she was trying to say something beneath her breath. But before she could finish, a terrible spasm constricted her mouth, and at last, a lonesome tear slithered out from her eye. I was able to make out the final sentence she whispered, although it was stifled in pain.

"I... I love you, Lily."

After that, everything ended quickly. The spasm that clenched her body died away, and her tremulous breathing drained into silence. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing away from my mother, yet I could envision everything that had happened. Her painful, despairing struggle, which soon ceased into ice-cold lifelessness. I was scared to look back at her figure one last time. Outside, the ambience of wind and growing rain thrummed against the roof of the house, indifferent to the tragedy that had just left a blotch in my heart.

Very soon, after my mother's death, I heard ear-splitting sirens resonating outside the house. I recall standing in the backyard with my father, gazing coldly at the sky now shrouded by dark, intimidating clouds. At the rain that now pummeled down a smoke-gray sky, like all the tears sealed inside me. My father's eyes were drenched in somber darkness, yet I could interpret a hue of bitter insanity clouded behind his stony expression. I ignored his dazed look, and buried myself in the dreary shadow of the clouds.
It was only at the last moment that I registered my glistening apparel, now snaked and doused with crimson blood. My mother's blood. A voice inside me screamed and mocked and hissed, as though rising from the ashes and attempting to swallow me whole.

You left her there to die.

You killed her.

I feared that it was true.