• I stood fingering the prosthetic leg I was staring at but I still wonder I what lead me to even go there. I wasn’t a very bright girl but I do recall what got me this prosthetic leg in the first place. My adopted brothers stare at me, knowing that I nearly killed them. Spin stares at me fiercely but he knows I was really no brighter than he was. Jinx stares at me on the anniversary it happened. I remember it. He knows I didn’t mean to cause them injury but I did. They risked their lives to save mine but ultimately nearly sacrificing theirs. It all happened when we went out to play to one day. Typically, we all played a game together but I got bored. So, I decided to go to my special place. That place was a death trap to those who entered, that place was… a minefield. Instead of seeing as what it was, a death trap, I saw it as a playground. I played there before and never got an injury, not one that I could remember. It was a noisy place. I always liked noisy places. It had explosives, I loved blow-uppy things. It made me jump, I like to jump around. It made smoke, I tried to catch smoke. It had ashes and made my only dress dirty, I liked ashes and getting dirty.

    I was so delighted at the thought of going there that I didn’t really seem to care. I came across the place with shark dentures (which are really bear traps that were fairly large) I continued to walk through the field until…. I stepped in one. “Yeeee-ooooow!” I screamed in pain. That didn’t seem to detour me from going through with my plans. My brothers were catching up to me and trying to get to stay away from that place. With my right leg stuck in the bear trap, I continued until I saw the street. I do remember those two months earlier, I got run over but suffered no real ill effect from it. With my brothers hot on my trail, I decided that I was going to play whether they liked it or not.

    Little did I really know, they were trying to save my life. Why they were trying to save my life, is something I truly don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if it was because they really cared rather than they were trying to avoid getting in trouble but, like I mentioned earlier, I don’t know. I limped through another field until I soon spotted my beloved playground. Jinx and Spin called out to me but I didn’t heed their warnings. This was my undoing. I would’ve had two legs, had I listened to them but I didn’t.

    I neared the fence. I ignored the ‘Danger’ sign. It only took a few steps until I stepped on a delayed-detonation land mine. These land mines take five minutes to explode because they don’t explode immediately, hence, the name. My brothers each stepped on one as well. Five minutes later, the mines exploded. Blood spattered everywhere. My right leg, as I felt it, blew almost entirely off. We weren’t thrown to far away from each other.

    My brothers arose to consciousness before I did. Jinx arose to consciousness first. Not too long after Jinx had arisen to consciousness, Spin arose to consciousness. When he spotted me, he screamed, “JINX! We can’t lie about this! Oh dear, she’s probably dead now!” Jinx, in his tiny little, pea brain, thought up the stupidest idea, lying.

    “Well we can’t bring her back looking like this! I say we leave her to die, if she’s still alive. At least she was happy here before she got injured.” said Jinx.

    Spin sputtered and said “LEAVE her to die?! No, dude, I don’t think so! If we leave her to die then our mother is going to wonder where she might’ve gone and she’s going to blame us!”

    “So?”

    “So nothing, Stupid! Toki may not have been our biological sister but she, at least, deserved better than this!”

    “She tried to kill us!”

    “When we played in the street, she got hit by a car, she could’ve have been killed then!”

    “It’s easier to lie than tell the truth. I say we leave her here to die and tell our mother that Toki ran away.”

    “We’re bloody, stupid! She’s going to ask us about how we got this way in the first place!”

    I awoke to them quarreling about whether or not to leave me to die. I stared up at the sky for a moment. I knew it was well past nightfall. I turned and, harshly, said “Toki thinks we should either tell the truth or should we pay the price of our undoings with our own blood and let death to do our part (In other words: Either we tell the truth or die).”

    My brothers were shaken up by the words I spoke. It didn’t take them too long to make a rational decision. Since, we were missing some body parts and losing blood, we figured we had to make haste. Jinx was missing his right arm. Spin was missing his left arm and his right ear. I was missing my right leg. We were losing a large amount of blood. With help from each other, we managed to get home. When we got home, we explained to our mother what really happened. We manage to do so before passing and nearly dying of blood loss.

    I awoke to find us in the hospital. Each of us were hooked up to 3 blood bags each. We were separated and put into three separate rooms. The feelings of worry filled my heart. I started to wonder if my brothers survived the trip to the hospital. Since, we were losing a considerable amount of blood, it would make causable sense, if they didn’t survive. If they died, why would I get to live? I stared at my twitching right hand and wondered what had happened to them. Tears fell and I cried “WHY?!” I screamed this numerous times but I seemed to have gotten no answer. If they died, why did I get to live?! Why must they die but I get to live?! I thought tearfully.

    I had the feelings of anxiety, regret, worry, longing, and, most of all, dread. ‘Survivor’s guilt’ had set in. Sometimes, to this very day, I question why I still got to live. However, little did I know, they didn’t die but were still unconscious. I sat in my room, quietly whimpering. I spent that silent but cold cruel night, whimpering my unheard cries alone. However, I decided to leave my room and check out the hospital. I don’t recall ever going to one. My loneliness prompted me to look around the hospital. I was curious but I was determined to see what was outside the room.

    With the little strength I had, I hopped, on my remaining foot, out of the room. To my surprise, the hospital halls were either dark or dim (my vision was fuzzy when I just woke up, so I couldn’t really tell) and the floors were shiny. On the doors, had the names of the patient staying in them. How strange! What a strange place! I thought. I hopped out further and spotted a very strange thing. It was a camera. I have seen one before but I didn’t get why there was one in this place but I decided to explore further.

    I was looking for Jinx and Spin’s rooms. I wanted to see if they had really lived. Seeing that they were still alive would help me overcome the guilt I felt for surviving something they probably didn’t even survive. My heart ached as I wandered around the hospital. I fell numerous times and after falling one more time, I grabbed a broom and used it as a crutch. I wandered around until I came across the maternity ward. To me this was a strange place. I was startled but the sight of the babies in the dim nursery helped me go on. I wasn’t really interested in going in every room I saw, so I quietly walked past it. Tears welt up in my eyes. My Survivor’s guilt grew worse. My heart broke and I found myself in the elevator. The lights were really bright, to my dismay. I pressed a button and it brought me to lower floor.

    My concepts of thought were not clear and I didn’t seem to get the idea that the floor I was on was the entrance floor. The lights were even brighter on this floor than the other floors. Nurses and doctors were surrounding me. They were astonished and were wondering how I got here in the condition and mental state I was in. No one could believe that I was in that bad of shape and managed to come down to that level. I heard a few of “She would’ve have died by now.” And some of “How could she have survived for this long?” and too much of “We must research this, nothing like this was ever found in medical history!” and thousands of “What is she?! Immortal?!” and millions of “What lead her to come down here? and trillions of “Surely, she must still be dazed from the accident.”
    They were right. I was so out of my head that I didn’t know I was bleeding. I had left a huge trail of blood all over the hospital. Parts of the I.V tubes were still in my arm. I didn’t know I had ripped them from the blood bags. In that kind of condition, one would be dying or would’ve died by now. The hospital staff stared at me in utter disbelief. I stared down at the ground, at the huge puddle of blood. To this very day, I still wondered how I even survived losing that much blood. A few minutes later, I collapsed.
    I awoke the next day, in a different room. It was more like a little girl’s room. It was pink and had a lot of girly things in it. At first one wouldn’t have really thought it was a hospital room but I knew it was a hospital room. A nurse came in. Behind her, to my joy, were Jinx and Spin. Spin’s eyes were empty and had red rings around them. Jinx was showing signs that his wound was infected. I was glad to see them but I wasn’t exactly sure how to show it.
    “Toki is the healthy one, clearly.” said Jinx. Spin said nothing. I knew, deep down, Spin was mad at me but Jinx knew I learned a lesson. We returned home the next week but our lives were no longer the same. Sometime later, we had gotten prosthetics. Jinx got a prosthetic arm. Spin got prosthetic ear. I got a prosthetic leg.
    Now I wish, if only, I could say the words, “I’m sorry…” To this very day, I live with the lesson. To this day, I see things as they are. To this day, deep down, I still live with guilt and regret of something I wish I could have ended before our troubles began.