Maria please!

With less than half an hour till seven, Theo was walking through the door of the run down building he called home. He set his bag down, sat at the table and stared off into a nearb window.

Unlike what he found to be, normal, the entire building was dead silent. Usually, by the time he hot home the whole place would be a noisy mess. But today, today was... peaceful. 

'No kids playing around, no arguing between hormonal teens, nothing at all.'

But, as the place seemed eerily quiet, he looked round and saw nobody.

'Strange,'

For the next few minutes, he searched every room on the ground floor. The kitchen, the pantry, the bathroom, the living room, even going to the backyard. But still, he found nobody.

'Where is she?'

"Maria! Maria I'm home!."

But his call got no answer.

"Maria, where are you!?"

He shouter her name over and over again desperately as he searched, but still, he got no answer, not even a sliver of a clue as to where she could be. Looking to the stove in the kitchen, he raised a curious brow.

'Did she go somewhere in a hurry?"

He placed his palm against a pot. Opening it, he saw a half cooked pot of food.

'No, she wouldn't have left food in this state. Not when we're already struggling to put the money on the table. Besides that, she has never left without telling me where she was going. Maybe she...'

Interrupting his train of thought, a warm droplet struck the crown of his head.

'What the?'

He frowned, swiping at it absently—until his fingers came away streaked crimson. It was a strange, viscous, rough and metallic scented substance that he recognised.

'Is that.... blood?'

His gaze snapped upward, and in that moment, a wave of panic swept over him.

"Maria....." 

The silence that followed further planted a seed of worry within him, and before he knew it, he was racing up the steps. As it was night, the halls were all dark and devoid of the suns light. He reached for the switch on the wall as he ran past, but the lights refused to come up. 

Reaching the next floor, he took out an old phone from his pocket, turned on the flashlight, and was immediately taken aback by the sight that followed. Littering the ground were severed corpses and surrounding them were pools of blood. Mathew stared at the scene for what felt like an eternity as his stomach churned and his mind struggled to process the gruesome scene.

'What the hell happened here!?'

The next thing to hit him was the scent, a metallic and disturbing smell that stung his nostrils, but along with it, there was another, strange scent. It was acrid, charred, curling into his nostrils like burnt paper left too long in the fire.

He shifted his gaze to the concrete walls, and his eyes widened in shock. Covered with deep scorched gashes, its entire surface and the doors to the rooms along it were all charred, and not only that, the doors had all been smashed open.

'What the actual hell happened here?'

Stood there utterly dumbfounded by what it was now in front of him, Theo's mind raced with an unending number of possibilities. Possibilities no matter how absurd they were that could explain exactly could have transpired in his home.

Exactly what could have done, this!

But before he could formulate a rational map of the possible events, he heard a faint sound coming from just up ahead. The very fait sound of someone's ragged breathing. Looking to where it was coming from he bolted forward, swinging the door to his room open so hard he nearly ripped it off its hinges.

"Maria!" he yelled desperately. 

Running into the room, his eyes once again widened an shock.

"My god!" he gasped.

Lying on his bed, in the place he had spent most of his life with a bloody and battered body, was Maria as she struggled with every breath. Theo rushed to her side, and fell to his knees with his eyes welling up with tears. The dread he had been feeling only deepened as he looked over her injuries. Her entire body like the walls of the top floor of the building was covered in cuts, gashes and scorch marks. Her two arms were broken and bent out of place, and her legs weren't in better shape.

Reaching forward, he cradled her head in his arms.

"Maria!" he called out in a panic. "Maria, what the hell happened here? Maria, please answer me!"

Maria's breathing was already shallow, and with every gasp for air her struggle only got harder. As she lay there in his arms, Theo's heart raced.

"Maria, please answer me! What happened!"

'Who could have done this? No, first, what reason would anyone have to even think of doing this? Who are those people outside?'

The young man's mind raced with too many questions preventing him from forming a single coherent plan of action. He needed to report this to the authorities, he needed to get Maria to the hospital. But unsure of how to deal with or even understand the raging mix of fear, anger and utter confusion surging through him, he could only stare at her and sob.

"Maria, please! You have to be alright! You just have to be! Please! I'm begging you! You can't leave me after everything! Not now!" 

She groaned in pain as slowly, her eyelids began fluttering open.

"Maria!... Maria, can you hear me?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but the effort expended to perform that simple task was too much for her battered body and she began coughing violently.

"No! Stop! Don't talk! Save your strength!"

Theo was desperate. Frantically looking around for something, anything at all he could use to help her. But alas, in his run down orphanage he called home, there was nothing at all he could find to help her, least not in his room of all places.

'How do I get her to the hospital though? Wait, how do I afford the hospital in the first place?'

The mere thought of the thousands of ver he would find himself in dept of was enough to make him instantly scrap that idea.

'So where do I go now?'

With her in his arms and his skin up against hers, he could feel the warmth of her body slowly fading as a chilling cold replaced it.

"Come on, Maria, stay with me!" he demanded as he fumbled in his pocket before pulling out a phone.

'I can't think about that now! What I need to worry about is keeping her alive!'