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The basement was a tomb, and Griffin was the corpse waiting to be buried. His body was a mangled wreck, every nerve screaming in agony as he lay broken on the cold, damp floor. His legs — God, his legs — were twisted into grotesque shapes, shattered beyond recognition. Bone jutted through torn, bloodied flesh, the jagged ends white and slick with muscle and tissue wrapped around them. The skin had been peeled away in some places from where he had tried to drag himself, leaving raw, bloody streaks along the floor.
He had stopped trying to move. Every inch forward had sent waves of sickening pain up through his spine, the kind that made him want to vomit, but he had no strength left even for that. His legs weren’t just broken; they were ruined. Useless. There was no way he could feel them any more. They were dead, just like the rest of him would be soon. He had heard something snap in his back when he’d fallen — no, when he was thrown. The sound had been so sharp, like a branch breaking, and he’d known right then he wasn’t getting up again.
But it wasn’t his legs that were killing him. It was his throat. His neck was ripped open, the skin sliced so deeply it was barely holding together. He could feel his pulse in the wound, each beat slower, weaker, pushing out more blood. It was a gaping hole, a jagged tear from one side of his neck to the other, the kind of wound that couldn’t be stitched, couldn’t be bandaged. It was over for him the moment the blade had cut through.
The blood poured out of him in thick, hot waves, soaking the front of his shirt, drenching his chest and pooling beneath his head. The floor was sticky with it, the coppery smell filling his nose, thick in the air. He could feel the warmth of it as it oozed between his fingers, but even the warmth was fading now, replaced by a bone-deep cold that seeped into every part of him. His hands had tried, at first, to hold the cut closed, to stop the flow, but there was no stopping it. Blood squirted between his fingers, spurting with every sluggish beat of his heart, each pump slower than the last.
“I’m dying,” he thought, and this time, the fear didn’t come. It was too late for fear. All that was left was the cold, and the darkness closing in around him.
His head lolled to the side, his neck too weak to hold it up. He was staring at the floor now, where his blood had formed a dark pool beneath him. It stretched out across the dirty cement like some grotesque shadow, glistening in the flickering light from the single bulb above. His own reflection wavered in the crimson puddle, distorted and monstrous. His face was pale, lips already tinged blue. His eyes, glassy and wide with shock, stared back at him, unblinking.
“Will anyone even know I was here?” The thought came bitterly, cutting deeper than the blade had. Who would remember him? Who knew him, really? No one. Outside his family — his mum, his dad, his little sister — nobody even knew he existed. He was just another kid, lost in the background, unnoticed. He wasn’t popular, wasn’t special. No one would talk about him after this. No one would tell stories about him, because there were no stories to tell.
“I never even kissed a girl.” The thought drifted by, a useless fact in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t matter now. Nothing did.
His vision blurred again, the edges going dark as the blood drained from his body faster than he could hold on to it. His throat gurgled as he tried to breathe, the sound wet and sickening. Blood filled his mouth, thick and choking, bubbling up from the open gash in his neck. It spilled over his lips, running down his chin in crimson rivers, staining his teeth red. His body convulsed in a feeble attempt to cough, but all it did was send more blood spraying from the wound.
“I’m drowning.” The realization hit him like a punch to the gut. He was drowning in his own blood, suffocating on it as it filled his lungs, choked his breath. He could feel it now, thick and heavy, clogging his throat, pooling in his chest. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, each one weaker, more desperate.
He tried to swallow, but there was nothing left to swallow with. His throat was torn open, the air whistling through the gap where his flesh had once been whole. Every gasp brought more blood into his lungs, suffocating him from the inside out. He coughed again, a weak, pathetic sound, and another stream of blood poured from his mouth, splattering onto the floor in front of him.
The phone — the black phone on the wall — sat there, mocking him in the corner of his vision. He had tried to crawl to it, tried to reach it before his legs gave out. His fingertips had brushed against the base of it, but he hadn’t been strong enough. His broken body had failed him. His strength had bled out, just like the rest of him was now. He stared at the phone, willing it to ring, willing it to be of some use, but it was just a broken relic of a past that didn’t care.
“Nobody cared about me.” That was the truth. It hit him harder than the pain in his neck, more brutal than the snapping of his bones. He had lived his life unnoticed, slipping through the cracks like dust. Now, he was dying in the same way—alone, unknown. Forgotten.
His breath hitched, and he gagged on the blood filling his throat. The gurgling sound was louder now, drowning out everything else. His chest convulsed weakly, but there was no strength left in him to fight it. His heartbeat was fading, a slow, irregular thud in his ears, the only sound left in the world.
“No one’s coming for me.”
His vision tunnelled, the darkness closing in from all sides. The room grew colder, the last traces of warmth draining from his body as the blood spread farther across the floor. His fingers twitched one last time, useless, coated in his own blood.
The phone didn’t ring. The world didn’t stop. And as the darkness swallowed him whole, Griffin realized no one would ever know his story.
And no one would care.