riverrun Vol. 47

On the stretcher lays a motionless blackened figure, covered in festering blisters
from head to toe. Once her mind connects the scene to the smell from earlier, her
gut rebels and the girl falls to her knees, clutching her stomach with pizza boxes
forgotten in the dirt. It takes all her strength to keep from depositing the contents
of her stomach onto the grass.
Risking a glance up, she’s scared she’ll see charred eyes and strands of smoking
hair clinging to a barren scalp but instead realizes the figure has some sort of
plastic bag around their head. She’s not sure if that sight is worse—is the person
so disfigured that it would be too awful for people to see? The girl tries to bring
herself to stand but finds herself paralyzed below the waist with feet that refuse
to listen.
It’s the sound of two young children speaking that draws her back to reality.
“Woah, look at his arm!”
“He’s probably dead!”
She stares at the kids, not bothering to hold back the incredulous expression on
her face. Where are their parents? What sort of mother or father would allow
their kids to watch this?
Cabin 3 is curious about what all the noise is about, and she greets them with a
smile like nothing’s wrong. “Some sort of accident,” she informs them with forced
cheerfulness. But it’s eating away at her thoughts. As she leaves, the script feels
even more rehearsed than usual. “Have a great night, thanks for choosing pizza
today.”
When she gets back to her car, the ambulance is gone and the last of the police
cars are pulling out. She stares at the spot they were, not a minute ago, numbness
creeping into her thoughts.
It’s nothing like how they portray on TV.
This was real. When she drives away, she looks back at site #75 through the reflection
of the mirror.
And she cries.
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