Marishka.

They were sitting there, laughing and having a few drinks. Marishka’s hands went to her mouth, glass crashing loudly to the floor in sudden dead silence, ice green eyes widened in shock as she eyed the deep thick red liquid dripping from between her fingers. Dribbling like rain droplets to the floor the blood rose in her throat, coming from her chest as she coughed viciously, hacking over the turned down music. 1

Scared from this sudden uproar of coughing up blood, Marishka felt her head spin, nausea twist her stomach to the point she bent over and retched. Throwing up she stood again, staggering a few small steps before the wave of dizziness sent her to the ground hard, hitting the floorboards and smashed glass like a dead weight. 2

Not yet unconscious, bouncing on the unsteady threads of wakefulness and sleep; Marishka felt the pain in her lungs, it staked through her ribs and pierced her sharply so tears came to her eyes and she was pulling in deep, shallow pained breathes.3

The low thrum of the music died down to a small incessant echo that was ringing in the back of her mind, she tried to fight, struggled to hear it, keep a hold on the reality before she sank into the dark and strayed there, frightened of what was happening in the waking world, where she wasn’t, where she couldn’t lose. The thought that she could slip any moment and lose all that she had, no matter how small that it was, scared her into a fit. 4

On the hard floor boards, rolling in the broken glass, Marishka fitted, her body twitching randomly, like she was on an overdose of Heroin or something, the bad type, certainly not on the good, she knew what that felt like already. As the fitting ending her fingers and toes twitched, her friends voice pulsing through her ears, not quiet making much more sense then it would for a dog communicating with its owners. 5

There was nothing else for Marishka to do now, her body was tumbling recklessly out of control, and she could feel the warm tendrils of life flow snaking down her chin, from the cracks in her lips. Retching again more vomit and bile rose in her throat. 6

Marishka was drifting again, last moments of pain intensifying all over like a thousand bolts of electric daggers going through the row of her spine, and covering each pore of her skin. Spewing blood now, she wished her eyes would close, that she would lose all she was holding on for just so it would end. But it was the back of her mind, where the hushed talking quickly voices still lingered in an urgent lingo to be heard and made sense of. 7

It was the size of a five cent piece by now, growing where the pain was increasing to the stab of a knife through the heart, it had Marishka gasping, kicking the air from her lungs to form the word smaller then what was growing but she couldn’t do it, could not for her life as it would end up, form the words of desperation. 8

In those last hopes she clasped her abdomen. Praying it wouldn’t be too late when they served her up for examination on the cold metal table, naked and toe tagged that she was dead, which wouldn’t be stating the obvious. But when they did cut her up, carving at the rotted dead flesh they would soon know anyway even if it is too late, they would know. 9

Marishka let her eyes flutter for a moment bright lights creasing her eye lids as they dilated her pupils. Smiling a little she coughed more blood and bile. Right there on the floor of her one bedroom apartment Marishka died, drowning on blood she lay motionless with open eyes staring up into the imprint on her pupils of overlarge lights swinging from the ceiling, she had never really liked them anyway. 10

As the last breaths wheezed from Marishka’s body, the foetus stopped growing, its life expectancy shortened dramatically. 11

The end.