Desperate to Touch

He still hasn’t answered me; he’s just walking to the windows.

“Seth!” I scream at Seth to look at me, my eyes burning and my throat sore from screaming. He doesn’t answer me, but the blood circle is growing. He’s shot. My lip quivers. “Seth!”

He ignores me, stepping over a body to get to the window.

“Fuck,” Seth hisses as a loud ringing wails. “Why are they here so fast?” he questions out loud, moving to the window and cursing again. It takes me a moment to even understand. Everything is ringing, my blood, my ears. Shock and fear still have their grip on me.

Sirens wail outside. Loud and they’re only getting louder.

“Check them,” Seth grits out, his jaw clenched as he breathes in deep.

“You need a doctor,” I beg him to let me help him, but he grabs my hand as I grab his shirt. “Check them first.”

My eyes are wide with disbelief. “For what?” My head is spinning and my thoughts are scattered. I don’t understand. “Make sure they’re dead,” he yells out and then leans against the wall.

I could argue with him and I almost do. My body leans forward subconsciously, wanting to go to him and give the gunshot the attention it needs.

“It’s in and out, Babygirl. It’s not a big deal, just annoying the fuck out of me,” he talks calmly, although his breathing is still labored. Heavy and deep.

I take a step back to do what he tells me. Check them. Dead bodies. Three dead bodies all in masks.

The sirens get louder and Seth tells me to hurry, dropping to his knees by one man behind the sofa.

“Dead,” he calls out loud enough for me to hear him.

I have to crawl on my knees across the thick carpet to go from one dead man to the next corpse. My shaky fingers dig into their necks, waiting for a pulse that doesn’t come.

I stare into the eyes of the man closest to me through the ski mask. He’s white, his eyes are hazel and they stare at nothing. Pulling his mask back, I note that I don’t know him. He’s just a man.

“Who are they?” I question in a hushed breath and Seth only replies asking if they’re dead. My body trembles, not knowing what would have happened if Seth wasn’t here. What would they have done to me? What did they want?

“They’re dead. They’re all dead,” I reassure Seth as he grips his side. I don’t know how I’m still standing, or how any of this happened. Three men lie on the floor of my living room, all shot. All dead. Bullet holes litter my walls, the coffee table is broken from one of them trying to use it for defense, I don’t know. It all happened so fast.

“Let me look,” I demand, not waiting for an answer. I run to him as quickly as I can and pull up his shirt. He doesn’t protest, holding up his shirt and seething.

In the front and out the back of him. Two holes and too much blood.

Laura

The blood is so dark. Dark blood is never good. “Seth,” my weak voice utters his name as tears fall down my cheeks. “Put pressure on it at least. Gauze, let me…” My hands shake and I try to remember everything you should do for a gunshot. I don’t have anything here to help him. I need supplies. “You need to go to the hospital!”

It’s surreal.

Holding his gun, still facing the dead men on the floor.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Even as he turns away from me, I stare at the blood seeping into his shirt. It grows slowly, pooling out and then sticking to his side.

He doesn’t mention the pain as he opens the window in the living room. The way his face scrunches though and the way he’s breathing make it more than obvious to me.

“Seth,” I whimper and cover my mouth with both hands. Through the gaze of tears, I see the wreckage. The bodies lying dead, men who came to kill me.

Men Seth killed to save me. We shouldn’t be running, he should be getting help.

“Out here, Babygirl,” he commands as the knock at the door gets louder.

“Laura Roth,” a voice calls out. “It’s the police! Open up!”

My feet are cemented where I stand.

“Someone called them?” I blurt out as my head spins. They’re here too fast. It all happened so fast; why are they here already?

“Laura.” The urgency is clear in Seth’s voice as he closes the distance between us and grabs my arm. “We have to get out of here.”

It all snaps into place when he looks at me like that. The same way he used to look at me back then. Like he was put on this earth to save me. The desperation swirls in his eyes and it breaks me down to the only piece of me I truly know.