Red_Roses_and_Black_Dahlias_-_Macy_T

Without thinking my hand shot to grab hers and I squeezed.
“Breath, Sofia. Fucking breath.” Her eyes opened, wide and glistening
with tears, and she squeezed my hand back just as hard. Her nails were
digging into my skin but I didn’t give a fuck right then. She was holding onto
me like I was her anchor.
Then she was a stuttering mess, crying and blabbering about how she
tried to help her mom by applying pressure to her throat but it did nothing to
keep the blood from spraying onto her face, hair and clothes. Her hands were
bloody as she begged her mom to wake up, she wasn’t thinking straight.
“I still remember how she looked at me when she took her last breath.
Her eyes were so wide, she was so scared. Then all of a sudden she went
limp, and wasn’t struggling to breathe anymore.” Sofia was quietly sobbing
by the time she finished telling us about how she held her mother as she died
painfully in her arms.
“I don’t know how long I stayed there, holding her, clutching her to my
chest and praying I would wake up from that nightmare. I wasn’t even
thinking about the second man, at that point I didn’t even care. I don’t think he
was in the living room when everything went down, he probably was looking
for whatever it was they came to take.” She shook her head, and indeed there
was a mess in her father’s office, like they’d rummaged through his
belongings.
“But then he came back. He saw his friend on the floor, in a pool of my
mother’s blood, and probably mistook it for his own. I thought the nightmare
was over but it had just started. He charged at me, I tried to run but the floor
was so slippery,” her voice cracked knowing the reason why it was slippery.
“He punched me in the face, I was already feeling queasy at the time but that
only worsened it. I tried to get away from him as fast as I could but I tripped
and gripped a kitchen drawer to keep myself from falling. I still did and the
drawer came with me.” She was staring into the distance, it was impossible
to know what she was thinking.
“The drawer had knives in it. I swear I acted on impulse, I didn’t think it
through, I couldn’t think it through, he had a knife, he had just killed my