Pain

I’ve always thought the worse pain in the world was something I experienced mentally — migraines. Just the feeling that my head was being ripped apart, major nausea, and puking up my guts constantly; was enough for me to decided that if I started to get them daily, I would kill myself. No question there.

Luckily, I’ve only gotten them at least twice a year — that is, if I’m lucky. Sometimes it’s more.

But, now, I’ve come to the conclusion there’s a much more horrible pain. A pain that I can even put into words. Literally.

And that was, being stabbed in the stomach.

Here I was, laying in the middle of a grocery store, my arms gripping my gut. Pain shot throughout my body. I felt like I was being burned alive. My blood was starting to drip in blotches all over the floor. I could only moan for help. Somebody, anybody. Help.

But it was basically empty. And I, was basically going to die here. Great. When I had always pictured how I would die before, it was either peacefully — in my sleep, or heroically — defending someone in danger. I know now that I will die doing neither.

Some random guy just came out of nowhere and stabbed me in the stomach. I was shopping for tampons, for Christ’s sake. Like I needed any more blood at the moment. He sprinted out of the store and left me for dead.

All this time, laying, half-dead, got me thinking. What was his story? Why me? I started to wonder if he had planned to kill me, or did he mistake me for someone else?

And most of all, will anybody even miss me when I die?

It felt like eternity, thinking those kind of thoughts. But really, it probably was around ten minutes. Each minute longer, I could feel the life slowly dripping out of me. Soon, I thought, I would be dead. And no one would care, would they? They might be sad for a little while, but people will get over it. They’ll move on. They’ll forget about me. That’s how life is.

You live, you die.

I wish my English teacher, Mr.Randell, had heard these particular thoughts. He would have been proud. I was never much of a deep thinker, at least not in his class. I was always more of a history kind of person. But now dying, has brought me to question certain things; life itself. I felt like I could write an essay on it.

That is, if I weren’t dying. Which I was.

“Jake! Jake!” I suddenly heard a woman yelling. “Jake, come over here. There’s a girl — she’s — she’s–” Dying? She was lost for words while in panic. I wondered what I looked like in her point of view. Probably like a murder scene. Recently Visited By Hannibal Lecter, Girl Murdered in Grocery Store, the headline would read. Yeah, I like the sound of that.

I might become famous. The famous-for-being-sorta-dead girl. Nice.

I heard the loud sound of footsteps approach me. A pair of converse shoes appeared at my vision. I tried to moan, but my throat was dry as a desert at this point. The person bent down to my level, and it was apparent he was this Jake guy the woman was calling. He looked like a surfer, to say the least. Sandy blonde hair past his ears, and bright blue eyes. He wore a worried expression.

“We’re gonna get you help,” he whispered. I felt his arms try to lift me. “Don’t worry. We just need you to…corporate.” Corporate? “This might hurt,” he warned. Then he picked me up fully. I bit down on my cheek. The pain only got worse. I wanted to scream. “Good girl.” He said through his teeth. I guess I wasn’t exactly a light person.

I could hear the woman from earlier, calling 911, probably. She was mumbling directions to the store. Thank God.

My vision started to got to black at the edges. I tried to blink; tried to make it go away. It didn’t. It continued to take away more and more of my vision. Oddly enough, it reminded me of a migraine. Migraine auras seem to do the same thing sometimes.

It was like I was going blind.

My head bumped up and down as he carried me out. I could feel my eyes get heavy. My breath was slowing. My heartbeat…I could barely feel it anymore. I’m going to die, I thought. I wasn’t scared. I was ready. Just take the pain away, I begged.

And by the time, the sliding doors close behind us, I was out.