Burned – Kellie ONeill

Oh my gosh, please be alive, Jack! Please be alive! I’m stunned by the frigid ocean temperature seizing my limbs. The icy water burns against my skin. I fight through cramping joints and breaststroke underwater towards him. He’s slowly sinking, his limbs floating limp at his sides. Somehow, the water is even colder below the surface.

I reach Jack, wrap my arms around his chest, and furiously paddle upward. Our heads finally breakthrough the surface. I gasp for air, then take a face full of water from a small wave. It’s everything I can do just to keep his head out of the water; there’s no way I can get back to the boat in time. Without checking for onlookers, I squeeze my eyes shut and picture both of us springing from the water and landing gently on the deck of the boat.

My magic awakens, slithering out of a cavern within. La Caeli. Instead of shooting out of the waves like I had imagined, we gracefully lift like a balloon. We drift through the air and land on the deck. Jack splays out, his head lulled to the side. I kneel at his side, tapping his face. “Jack! Jack!?” Chest compressions. You can do this. “You did this…” a slithering whisper slinks out from the corners of my mind. My jaw quivers and I whimper. Instead of CPR, I imagine the water in his lungs flowing up his throat and his breathing returning to normal.

La Caeli. A stream of saltwater trickles from his mouth into the air until it sprinkles back into the ocean. I watch his chest compress up and down until… Jack’s eyes burst open. He gasps, his head bobbing as he coughs. “Jack!” I cradle him against my chest. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” I’m an idiot.

Using your thumb and forefinger, grace the candle with lavender oil. Place the candle in votive in three inches of moon water, then place the amethyst at the midnight position of your candle. Whisper the incantation to the flame, then blow out the candle. Incantation: Blessed be the sacred fell, The candles glow, the heart will tell, Quit the flame and soul be free, Gone be grief, blessed be.

*a candle that has never been lit ** water that has bathed under a full moon 1kitap1.com/en Chapter One The Funeral “As we walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” The priest, robed in black polyester, towers over my father’s closed casket in reverence, reading scripture to the church over-flowing with strangers. My grandmother Lydia, clad in black Chanel, is draped over my father’s casket like a veil. She brays, vying for the same attention sought by my father’s siblings strategically in the center pew as if grief is somehow a contest.

This tactical game for the congregation’s sympathy is more transparent than they realize. The only genuine emotion in the room comes from the actual mourners: my two sisters, my mother, and myself. They’ve never been ones for such performances. Neither have I. My mother, standing at my side, gives my hand a small squeeze. My younger sister, Margaret, burrows her face into our mother’s slender shoulder. Beside her is our older sister, Shannyn, home from Harvard for the funeral, standing resolute and determined not to show weakness in front of the extended family.

She gently brushes away a few stubborn tears and bites down hard to silence her trembling lower lip. For her benefit, I pretend not to notice when her shoulders shudder and crumble, giving way to her grief. “Seriously, Eleanor? Not a single tear for your dead dad?” my cousin Allegra hisses at me from behind.

My chest tightens and I peer down, letting my long dark hair hide my face. She doesn’t need to see my eyes to know there are no tears to be found. I can’t cry. It’s not because of any lack of love for my dad, that isn’t it at all.

I just can’t cry. It’s as if my tear ducts choose not to cooperate. They’ll perform the other duties of a tear duct, glossing and clearing out my eyes, but full-on tears, beautiful emotion-filled tears have, for some reason, always eluded me. I don’t know why. But my parents never seemed to worry, so they never sought treatment for my tearless “condition”. Although I don’t show it, my pain is very real, too real.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: cc0019a3d08f47fc
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,095,466 bytes (3.906 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9798989244300, 9798989244317, 9798989244324
• Pages: 790
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 1088.26 minutes
• Total Words: 217,652
• Total Characters: 1,201,388
• Average Words per Page: 275.51
• Average Characters per Page: 1520.74

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