stillborn ;
Charlotte was uneasy. It seemed like an understatement in the world that they lived in now. That everyday was a cycling misunderstanding of uneasiness in a life full of destruction. Somehow they had gotten out, and somehow even beyond that they were able to live to see another day, but Charlotte wouldn’t be the same. She always cut herself from the world when she felt the pressure to much. It was the assault in the alley, it was the blood on her hands, and it was the fact she struggled to breathe. She sat in the car that Adam drove. She thought by now she would be used to the driving, to the way that Adam sped across the land, how everything blurred uneasy. It happened like it always did, a hot wire, a quick few pulls of cables, and they would be off again. But this time she didn’t pull for a book, for any pieces of paper, for anything to distract her mind. She had enough on her mind. She had the screams of a teenager underneath her hands. The Walker family was a brutal one. They were full of anger, an rage, and fear, but she couldn’t leave him, and in turn Adam wouldn’t let her go. He squeezed her to her death and she strangled him right back. But the car kept moving, On and one, forward as they went to another mistake.
She hadn’t known how long they had been going, for any sign that she saw seemed to twist into patterns she couldn’t understand, into long blurs of things she couldn’t see. Charlotte began to tap again, against the side of the car, against her own broken knees. Her bones felt older now, and her soul heavier as she watched the quickness of the car going by outside that was still slower than her own mind. Another stolen car, another strong sense of stress overtook her body. Her life was always this, was always the slow turn of the clock going down, clicking and clicking over again in her mind. It was telling her to stop everything, it was telling her to give up. There was always that voice in her head, there was always the thought that she would never be able to make it. After the things they have seen, and the love they created out of heavy breathing and desperation, Charlotte knew nothing but to love Adam Walker. She knew nothing more than leaning against him, about teetering so close to falling that it hurt. Everything hurt. And death, sweet and painful, was the only thing that was real. Death and worry and longer nights and shorter days. Snow that would fall less so than it had since the attack, and the memories of the strangers and the strange that she had killed along the way. Charlotte was never going to get it off. She was never going to find a way. Once again time seemed so unnatural. That hours or minutes or months could have past against the window, and her eyes closed for seconds to years. Every moment flickered over her eyes, and the snow and broken trees and houses that scared her were far away from her thoughts. There was nothing to say to Adam. There was no explanation for what the two had done. Over the people she was sure she killed, over the bloodied fists that Adam clutched the wheel of the car with, over the bits of blonde hair that still cling to her clothes, and stuck to the blood that was on her hands as well. They were a violent pair. They were trouble, but it wasn’t anything of the guilt that ate her.
There was no easy way to say what she had to say. Cutting her, the stress became violent against her throat. Her hands continued to shake, and her body seemed to never be able to relax anymore. There wasn’t anything worse… there couldn’t be anything worse. There was no way that her words could make any sense, especially with the blood on her hands, especially with the stress on her mind. This was the longest she had been without the drugs, without the mind changing feelings, without the sleep after sleep and the pleas of her husband. She nervously tugged her finger at her ring, spinning it around on her finger as she started to pace. Adam had asked her not to get out, but she had to stand on two feet. But she was uneasy, in the cold earth and the lightly snowy sidewalk of the empty gas station they stood at. There was no easy way. There was no easy way to express her how broken she was, and there was no understanding of her chaotic feeling. She moved right to him un easy steps.
“Adam… Adam!” her voice was sharp, louder than she even expected it to be as she stomped over to him. Her hand went to his arm, pulling him from the tangles of the car as he did his best to steal the gas. It was more insanity, it was more craziness that Charlotte had found herself in. Dark, thick bangs had grown too long to cover parts of her eyes as the wind picked up around them. But she pulled him, pulled his attention to her, the attention that she craved too much. They were too codependent, they were so needed to live. She looked with the same constant madness, and she needed the blue to calm her. She needed someone to calm her down. “Adam, look at me,” she huffed out, shaking her head as her fingers quivered upon his wrist. “I need to.. I need to tell you,” she said. There was oil on her hands now, another layer against the blood that has stuck to her. She wondered if her hands would ever be clean. “Adam… I’m pregnant,” she told him finally. The words thick off her tongue, and her mouth dry as soon as she said it. Her eyes widened as she said it out loud. It’d been the first time she heard it from a mouth other than the doctor who poked at her skin. It didn’t even seem real when she said it, like a horrible dark twisted story told to scared to image. There was something breathing inside of her, something that was so awful it might as well have been a the monsters that wanted to eat her flesh. There was stillness now, and a moment of nothing as she looked up at Adam. The risk was overpowering, and she could almost think of what the words would be in a different world. For a second she could image the joy it should bring, but she became bitter because of it, and her mouth was covered her tongue as she held her breath, as her hand clutched his jacket hard between bloodied fingers, clutching and squeezing him for any sort of support that Adam could give her.