Words Left Along

The old:

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeee. My ears dampened and deaf with the sound of nothingness amplified tenfold. chest pounding, drenched in sweat. Legs trembling, feet iced over. Face warm, hot flushed and worried.Stomach twisted and tied in knots, though the pain might have one seem that it’s somehow torn itself in two. Hands trembling, chilled to the bone. With one uninterrupted motion a man falls. The earth shook seemingly, as if an elephant just fell. His head bouncing off the wooden floorboards cracking his teeth loose. One may consider this man faint, but as the pool of blood began to manifest, like a rain puddle on a sidewalk, there was no room for doubt, he was dead. The clothes he was wearing slowly transformed into a sponge, soaking up whatever blood that it encountered. His eyes remained open and lost. Like an old blind man looking but not seeing. Mouth out and tongue bleeding. My first instinct was to run, but I knew if I did that then I’d be shot next. 

The first draft:

It had hit my ears as if a crack of thunder had just exploded overhead. This however was quickly lost and washed over by the piercing humming harmonizing ring of an eardrum’s traumatized scream; rendering my hearing all but gone for the time being. 

My heart began to beat with a pressure that felt as if it were to rip arteries open while beating with the speed only found in the hearts of rabbits who are about to die of fear. 

My hands and legs trembled with an intensity not too dissimilar from a seizure. 

Between the rain of sweat, fear and blood leaving the limbs faster than they can process, my limbs were sickly white and colder than a corpse. 

As if it were replacing my own mind’s flight or flight, my stomach made its opinion known. Twisted and tied so tight it felt as if it may have ripped itself in two. 

As all of these sensations hit me within incalculable movements after hearing this cracking boom, it wasn’t until a crash that it felt as if an elephant had just crash landed in the room did I begin to remember a world outside my body. 

His head bounced off the wood floors like a bowling ball; producing a spray of spit, blood and bits of chipped teeth. 

To those just entering to investigate the noise and thud, all suspicions of this being a fainting spell were quickly dismissed by the slow circular encroachment of blood that began to expand around the man’s torso. 

As quickly as the blood expanded, it began to stop before it recessed back towards the man. His clothes, like a sponge drew in the blood, leaving a thin puddle of where it had expanded too. 

The man’s eyes were open but nothing was there. No fire, no intention, just open. Like a blind old man, looking but not seeing, open but lost. 

The man’s face had the twisted expression that entombed the last thing he felt and expressed: fear. 

I wanted so desperately to run, but I knew if I did, that I would be the next to be shot. 

The final piece:

IIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNEEEEEEE-

Ears ringing, deaf to all noise but the howling cry of an overloaded ear drum. Worse than deafness, it’s a silencing of everything but a torturous resonance. 

My heart pounded in my chest like an animal caught; frantic and confused. 

The sweat poured out. Beads and streams rolled their way down my body. My face flush with heat as if I were looking into a fire. 

What parts of me that weren’t nailed town trembled from pure fear. 

My finger, cold as icicles, ached with a frostbitten like burn. 

My stomach wrung wretched in stress; tying itself so tight, it felt as if it ripped in two. 

THA-THUNK 

Bouncing off the wooden floors like a bowling ball, a head, spitting blood and teeth, shook the room.

Blood began to pool, like a puddle from the rain, out from the man’s chest; there is no doubt, he’s dead.

As quickly as the blood began to pool, like some macabre sponge his clothes began to lap up the blood; staining them dark cherry red. 

His eyes, oh god his eyes, they were open but closed of warmth. They looked but didn’t see. They were blindly glazed, not even the blind’s eyes looked as hollow as his. 

His mouth was open, disjointed, broken from the fall. A bit of tongue laid bitten through and hung out from his slung mouth 

Every ounce of my body screamed to run, but I knew if I did, I’d be next to get shot