Call Me Blackbird

To bottle my emotions, I remember my Mom's face smiling down at me as she handed me an ice cream cone. It helps me trick my brain into thinking pleasant thoughts while simultaneously pushing my emotions into bottles. Boxes are for small things like heartbreak or the loss of family or friends.

Bottles are for heavy-duty trauma. They hold a maximum of one hundred and fifty liters of trauma and anything but happy emotions. It isn't always reliable. It doesn't always work. Using the Large Bottles coping mechanism is dangerous. You have to put the cap on your bottles before the overflow. I learned that the hard way.

Then my pleasant memory of ice cream with my Mom is wiped away and my brain flashes back to me drowning. My arms flailing wildly trying to keep myself afloat. Trying to gasp for air but can't because there's only water, no air. Crying and choking, trying to bring the water in my lungs out of my body.

Shaking with fear, only have five words in my mind, I don't want to die. Screaming for someone, anyone to save me. A rope drops down and I grab it, and whoever was on the other side pulled me up. A warm blanket was draped over my shoulders and a woman's face, slightly blurred out by the sunlight, looks down at me with a concerned look she has long obsidian black hair, kaleidoscope eyes, that for some reason have flecks of multiple colors, her small nose is slightly upturned but not enough to annoy me.

She had a black leather jacket, the biker kind, with the collar buttoned and a black tank-top, black camouflage cargo pants, and steel-tipped black leather combat boots. She smelled like lavender. She handed me a small black bag, the drawstring kind. "Never open this alone," The woman said. She turned around and I could see a white design on the back of her jacket. White leaves in the shape of a laurel wreath with a tiny bird in the middle. A crow, a Blackbird.

You won't believe me, but she vanished after that. I mean a full-fledged Baldomort black ink teleportation scene. This vision ruined my whole day. I'm constantly haunted by the urge to open the bag, and several times I almost did but couldn't bring myself to do so. She said don't open it and even if I don't know her I believe her.

I'm jolted back to the present as Alex is talking to a Detective. We're in an interrogation room, complete with a one-way mirror and a small recording box on the ceiling. "Where's Laura Johnson?" the detective asks. I glance at a business card in front of me. I quickly read the name. Detective James Ross. Alex glances at me, the fear written all over her face.

I squirm in the hard plastic chair. I look at the folder Detective Ross is holding. "Sir, I don't know," I say. "Of course she doesn't know he mumbled to his partner, her badge states that her name is Detective Emma North. I study the large Detective Ross. He's bald, muscular, and has brown eyes.

His nose is irritatingly upturned so he bears a striking resemblance to a weasel. I look at Detective North. She's petite. She looks kind of rugged, shoulder-length pitch-black hair, she has an undercut The dark red hair dye in her hair goes to about an inch above her ears. She's wearing an all-black fedora. She has on a burgundy my chemical romance T-shirt that matches her hair. 10 points for good music taste. Another 10 points for good hair dye.

She has tattoos all along her arms. I recognize all of the images as anime characters. An anime watcher. I like the Detective already 20 points for watching Anime. She has a lip piercing and a septum piercing. I can count about 14 piercings in total with six on each ear along the tip of her ears to the weird flappy part that is most commonly pierced.

She has gray eyes. They look silver in the light of the bright white light in the room. She leans forward a little bit. Her black leather jacket catches the light of the room. "You don't know where Laura is because-" Alex tries to cut her off but we say it at the same time. "Because Laura went to work for B.l.a.c.k.b.i.r.d," we say.