Day 6.

Anna was holding Julien’s body in her sleep at 3 A.M. the next morning when the police found the three bodies: two dead, one live. Unsure of Anna’s state, the officers did not remove her from Julien when they awoke her. They merely nudged her awake. Anna looked around the dark field in a daze, and then looked down at the cold dead corpse she was still clenching. Tears slithered silently down her cheeks and nose. As she cried, the officers tried helping her to her feet. Her body was limp, but her arms remained firmly and tightly grasped around Julien. The officers, pitying her, did not wish to use force to remove Anna, but eventually too much time had passed, and the body needed to be taken to autopsy. They gripped her arms and pried her off of her beloved companion semi-violently. She kicked and screamed all the way to the ambulance, where she was tied down to a stretcher for her own safety and the safety of those working with her. As the doors of the ambulance closed, Anna saw Ashley’s destroyed head being zipped into a body bag.

The trip to the hospital felt longer than the time she spent with the dead Julien. She begged to see him, but all of her requests were refused. The paramedics tried to explain to her that she would be allowed to view Julien with the rest of his loved ones at his funeral. The word funeral made Anna cry like a demon from Hell. Despite the paramedics’ best efforts, Anna was inconsolable.

Anna spent the remainder of the sixth day in a hospital bed trying to kill herself. More than once nurses held her down to sedate her. As she fell asleep from the drugs injected into her body, she cried and screamed to see Julien. She repeated this cycle all through the day and night.