Monster

My heart was beating in a fast but steady rhythm. It was loud enough to drown out the sound of gunfire in the distance and the shouts of my friends and team from a nearby alley. All noise faded into the thumping, except for a sharp, persistent ringing in my left ear. I sat with my back pressed against the remains of a brick wall, doing everything I could to try and steady my breathing and ease the panic. The sky was still sending down a rain of debris and ash, which fluttered like snow in the hot courtyard. The rifle sitting across my lap felt heavy with the weight of guilt and the fear of what I'd have to do if I wanted to survive.

I'd been training for a moment like this for years. I knew how to use the rifle. I learned how to follow orders and come out alive on the other end. But nothing prepared me for the reality of battle. At least nothing had prepared me for the reality of death. After watching two of my closest friends die right before my eyes. I could still feel their blood splattered on my face. My heart was thudding wildly with adrenaline and fear. I wondered if I could have saved them. If I'd just used my gun when I still had the chance. If I hadn't frozen.

I knew then that this was the end for me. At least the end of who I knew myself to be. It was pointless and silly to hold onto hope now. The rifle trembled in my hands; my breathing was shaky and uneven. I knew in my heart that I'd never make it out of there alive. I'd probably die before ever firing a single round. But I also knew I couldn't just sit there and wait for death to find me. I'd already taken refuge behind a wall like a coward. I was going to die whether I stayed there or not. But if I knew one thing, it was that I wasn't going to die hiding in fear.

There was a sudden burst of confidence, as if something whispered in my head, "Get up. Get up. Get up." I stood to my feet, wincing as pain shot through my body like a zip of electricity. The blast had knocked me several yards away. I didn't think anything was broken, but I was definitely bruised and scraped. Everything ached and burned, and I could feel the blood seeping out of my ringing ear and sliding down my neck like a slug. When they found my body, I'd likely be in pieces, but at least they would know I'd gone down fighting.

I used the unsteady bricks to keep myself upright. I cautiously searched the courtyard for a sign of movement or a place to run. A man appeared from behind the haze of smoke and ash and instantly spotted me. He had his gun raised in my direction before I could even draw my own. Then it was too late to dive back behind the wall. He knew my location. I'd never make it. My fingers stroked the trigger of my rifle. All the while, my thoughts raced, and my heart pumped. I argued with the voice in my head, telling me what I had to do, telling me not to think about it too much. They'd killed people. I'd looked into the eyes of a terrified child right before they'd murdered her. The least I could do was take one of them with me.

But I hesitated. It was a flaw. A fatal one, it seemed. I always hesitated. Always overthought. And he wouldn't wait for me to make up my mind. He fired without giving me any more thought than I'd given him. My left shoulder exploded with pain, and I tumbled back into the crumbled cement blocks until I was flat on my back, staring up at a smoky blue sky.

My life had been too short. Everything I'd never done raced through my mind while I waited for death to claim me. I'd never fall in love. Not really. Never get married or have kids or have any semblance of a normal life. It's what my mom had wanted for me. I'd acted like I didn't want it. Acted like I wasn't ready. I was young. Wanted to save the world. Big ideas. Big dreams. Romance and families were the things that came after all that. When I was ready to stop trying so hard. If I ever even got to that point.

"Restless," my mom called me. "Restless and reckless." And there I was, proving her right. About to die on the battlefield. I hadn't wanted those things outright, but now that the option was being taken from me, it stung. Death wasn't as easy to accept as I thought it would be.

A sound broke through the ringing. A distant beeping that grew steadily louder the more I ignored it. I blinked, and instead of smoke in the sky, I saw the ceiling of my bedroom. The tree outside my window made shadows on the walls that twisted like the scars on my skin. When the wind blew, they almost seemed to be reaching for me. I took a deep breath and counted my now steady heartbeats. One, two. Three, four. Then I reached up to rub the damaged skin on my shoulder, where the bullet had torn through me and left behind a web of scars that looked like twisted pink branches.

The bones still ached from time to time, and I could recall that sharp blast of pain as if it had just happened. I remembered feeling like my entire arm had been torn off. I remembered the feeling, no knowledge, that I would die. When I lay there in all that debris, mourning all the things I'd never have.

The alarm grew impatiently louder. So I rolled onto my side and hit the palm of my hand against the button. The beeping halted, and the silence filled my ears with that low, familiar ringing. But then the wind blew again, making the old windows creak and howl like wailing ghosts. The twisted shadows stretched across the walls, reaching for me. The sound reminded me that my ears hadn't taken significant damage. The ringing was from silence, not because I'd been on the receiving end of a grenade toss.

I sat up and pulled the covers from my bare legs. The wood floor against my feet was sharp and cold, and the chill prickled my skin, waking me up and further cementing me in the present. Summer was approaching, but I was always cold. As if my body just never recovered from all the blood I'd lost out there in that courtyard.

The memories were getting bad again. When I first got home, they'd almost consumed me. I'd gone back to live with my parents and spent my nights with my arms wrapped around my head, screaming in my sleep. I hadn't just accepted death as an inevitability anymore. I'd eagerly welcomed it. Begged for it even. But time heals wounds, or so they say. And I got better. I'd made enough progress with therapy that the memories became less sharp and intrusive. I began to believe that someday I'd be able to live a normal life. Maybe I could get to work on building that future I'd almost lost.

But I never did. Recovery always remained just out of reach. The nightmares and intrusive thoughts weren't as bad. But the memory lapses and isolation continued to grow, spreading out like the clawed branches of the shadows on my walls. I never bothered to try and reach for something I didn't think I deserved. Time could heal wounds, but guilt was one hell of a drug to relapse on.

The girl who walked out onto the battlefield that morning was long gone. Something in me had definitely died that day. And she felt like a stranger. I could barely remember what it felt like to not have to deal with the repercussions of that day. Only vague memories of happiness, confidence—love. But they all seemed like things I'd watched in a movie. The bubbly girl who'd shipped out at eighteen from a small town in Ohio was not the same woman sitting in a bed in DC, running her fingers over painful scars, with no plans for her future beyond the day ahead.

My therapist used to tell me that perseverance was one step closer to recovery. I was good at persevering, even if I never did get the hang of recovery. But, of course, in the end, none of the things she said mattered at all. She'd been working for Hydra all that time. And likely fed them all sorts of intel on the broken pieces of my mind. But I was looking for any scrap of motivation I could get my hands on. I needed a reason to get out of bed.

I took a hot shower to wash the chill from my bones and relieve some of the aches in my shoulder muscles. I ran my fingers over the scars as I stood beneath the water, getting familiar with them—the way they webbed out from the initial impact wound.

They told me I was lucky to get hit in the shoulder. The bullet ripped through some muscle and lodged itself in me, but it managed to miss major arteries and had only skimmed the bone. If I'd been hit anywhere else, I probably would have met death that day. But I hated it when they said that. As if living when no one else did was a gift. A miracle, even. And I knew the truth. Maybe not the hows and whys of it. But I knew enough. My chest was armored, but my face was exposed. The shooter could have hit my chest if he'd wanted to knock me out. It would have spared me years of tormenting pain, both physically and mentally. And if he'd wanted to kill me? Well, a shot to the face would have done the job.

Everyone suspected that he'd just missed, but I could never bring myself to agree. I couldn't remember the finer details of his face. I couldn't tell you what he looked like, what he was wearing, or what kind of gun he'd used. But I knew the shot was intentional. A shot to my chest was a risk. It could have knocked me out, or it could have given me enough motivation to fire back. There was too much distance between us to ensure it would be a hard enough blow. And since he hadn't aimed for my face, I decided he never wanted to kill me at all.

But I couldn't figure out why. We were in the middle of a war, and he had the chance to take out an enemy. But he didn't. He aimed for my shoulder and merely removed me from the playing field. It was the one piece of the puzzle that never seemed to fit.

The sun was starting to rise when I finally made my way down to the kitchen on my small house's first floor. I decided to forego breakfast and packed my coffee in a shiny silver mug with the SHIELD logo. I stuck a packet of crackers between my lips to fill my stomach before the day started. I looked to the counter where I'd left a pink switchblade sparkling in the dim fluorescent light.

It was a gag gift from my sister, Clara. She'd bedazzled it herself. It was a joke to the people who didn't start to shake whenever they held a gun. Clara thought it was an accurate meld of who I used to be and who I was now. I'd laughed the first time I saw it. I never thought I'd use it, let alone that it would someday be used to fight off Hydra in a chaotic office.

Somehow it turned into my weapon of choice. It wasn't as fatal as a gun, but it was still a decent weapon. She hadn't skimped out on quality, and the rhinestones only made it easier to grip. So I snatched it off the counter and slid it into my pocket before working up the courage to leave my house for the first time in days.