Gunpowder

Every part of Poppy’s body ached. She could barely force her eyes open, and, when she did, she quite regretted it.

Her eyes stung, no matter how fast she forced herself to blink. She wasn’t sure if she was still breathing or not, as her throat felt like it had been ripped out. Not only that, but she was pretty sure her whole body was on fire, from the shock waves of pain it sent through every nerve she had.

When her vision finally became more than a blanket of stars and black, the first thing Poppy saw was blood. Hers? She wasn’t entirely sure.

The next thing she could make out was the feeling of soft flesh beneath her. Her weary eyes traveled to see what it was. A gray, tattered, sweatshirt caught her eye, then she saw the head that was attached to said sweatshirt-wearing body. It was Abbet, dead or unconscious, Poppy couldn’t tell, but she sure wasn’t awake. A sizable shard of glass had taken purchase directly in the center of her glazed over,open eye, and another was deeply embedded in her forehead. Blood pooled and trailed down her face, most of which was flowing into her slightly parted lips.

Poppy reared back at the sight, not holding back the bile in her throat. The green puke dribbled from her chin to her tattered green shirt. She didn’t know where her two teammates were, but she truly didn’t want to see their conditions.

She tore her eyes away from Abbet’s possibly deceased body, looking around the wreck of a car she was trapped in. The windshield was shattered to pieces, the entire front end was squished into a flat piece of metal, and the front seats were being pushed into the back ones. Poppy was crushed between two seats.

She managed to catch a glimpse of herself in the few unbroken shards clinging to one of the side windows. A long scar tore across her chin and up to her lip, slicing cleanly through the soft tissue. There was a sizable shard of glass stabbed into her neck, embedded so deeply that it poked into her throat.

Poppy felt a wave of panic race through her at the gruesome sight. Her first thought was to get out of the car, and this time she didn’t have the willpower to fight her instincts. To her surprise, the broken sunroof above her was accessible. She tried to get her legs in the right position to jump, but the action caused excruciating pain to flow through her very bones. She looked back at her legs, seeing that one of them was bent forwards, making the knee cap slice in two to bend along with it. She gritted her teeth, trying to block out the pain, and braced herself to jump.

KNOCK

KNOCK

It felt like something out of a horror movie. No one from the car could have been out there, could they? Poppy tried to make herself small, but it didn’t seem to fool whatever was outside the car.

KNOCK