Haze

Her heart roughly pounded against her chest.
Her breath turned into frantic gasps.
Her body quivered in fear.
Her mind buried itself in a state of paranoia.

Emma isn’t healthy and she knows it, but that didn’t stop her from running. She didn’t want to deal with the plastic world the mental institute had built for its patients, or cliental, as they like to sugar-coat it. So she left. Of course, no mental hospital was going to let a tragic case like Emma leave like that, but hidden within the isolated, insomniac twenty-five year-old diagnosed with a severe case of schizophrenia was an intellectual mind. To her, her illness never caused any problems when she was there so she decided to take matters in her own hands since her family had shunned her for being…different. She had seen an empty field that appeared as a place of sanctuary when the patients were taken out for some “happy time”. She decided to go there and hide out until she came up with a plan.

Emma sat still on the cold, wet grassy ground. The field looked morbidly beautiful at night; the moonlight highlighted the eeriness of the field. What came to her attention was how she got there. She had gotten a ride by hitch-hiking to only leave the owner of the car at a gas station as he went to pay for some snacks Emma had requested. It had been awhile since Emma last drove a car which served as a problem. She couldn’t allow one mistake to happen. They would find her and take her back to the hospital.

What stroke her odd was the traffic she encountered. How could this much traffic occur at the late hour? If none of the cars moved any time soon, they would come and drag her back to her personal hell.

Her emotions grew anxious.
Her nerves started to act up.
Her eyes glanced around.
Her vision blurred and faded into black.

The moisture of the ground beneath her skin stirred her slumber. Emma blinked hard for a few moments before she realized she had made it. The empty field was here. Her body lifted itself from her previous sitting position; her bones ached from being on the ground for so long and for once in her life, she felt calm.

Emma ran her fragile hand through her greasy hair. A slight stinging sensation was felt in her eyes. Her hard work was finally paid for. She no longer had to worry about taking her pills or getting into bed on-time or eating the horrid excuse for food they served. She was free to do anything she wanted.


But something seemed out of place.


Her hand twitched and a searing pain spread all over her body. She screamed with pain evident in her expression, but there was no high pitched scream. No sound was passing through her lips, but her throat felt raw from the screaming she was doing. Deep scratches suddenly appeared on her arms, but the thick red liquid wasn’t bleeding out. Another wave of the burning pain passed through.

Her knees gave out.
Her cuts dug deeper in her skin.
Her tears never came down.
Her face contorted, but she never made a noise.
Emma’s mind and body went numb.

The sound of sirens startled Emma. “It was just a dream,” her mind reassured her, but that strange feeling was still with her. The traffic hadn’t moved since she dozed off. As she went to turn off the ignition, she noticed the steering wheel was missing. Emma looked around and to her horror, found what was causing the traffic. Her thin body was hanging limp due to the seatbelt she was wearing inside the flipped over car she died in.