Submission Draft

If anyone could give me detailed-ish advice about this short story I want to submit to a contest, please do. I'd appreciate anything. Thank you! Now the story (It's quite morbid/toxic if anyone does not like those topics):

Finding a girl in the back of the restaurant Carlos was closing up made him step back for only a second. The space was only illuminated by cheap bulbs always flickering without cue.  His 20/20 vision--the one he boasts about--shows him the 8 pills weighted on the tip of her tongue. This girl's last breath would be the hamburger meat's aroma from the grills. Her eyes are sparkling like a glittering mist with eyelashes slowly cloaking them.

Without thinking, he's lunging across the metal table in record time. How did she get into the locked restaurant was a question he should've answered, but the bruises his heroism would have to endure keeps him locked away from the idea.

With her now in his greasy, burger-stained arms, the collapses like a letter without ink. Her long, pecan-hued hair is still covering the calculating eyes he will never realize are boiling with acidic fury. Calm words and gentle movements ease her into spitting them out. While licking her lips for the tic-tac's last sugary moments, another greying face with tubes flashes between her breaths. Lara continues the trembling act, needing Carlos to give her his number quickly. A simple task he puppeteer blindly, just like she planned.

A quiet smile reaches Carlos's lips before he can stop himself as he types the digits into her phone with the cracked screen. Carlos is a savior (her existence always to be unknown to his boss).

Weeks become a month as Carlos's mind frays from anger of still being her friend. She flickers moments of trust over to him with words of her her cramped apartment, her uncle's permanent scowl, and cheap whiskey scent always clinging to him. She doesn't mention her room cramped with words, some it sharpie, everywhere. It was like a film that the animator scribbled over where Lara sat there in the corner obediently next to her sister's tiny shirt.

“K” is pleased with the process so far, so Lara goes farther before everything in her life can. She casually mentions a date she has with her chemistry partner and Carlos's voice goes low, threatening as he forces her to cancel it. He offers to take her instead, because he understands her. Propping her new iPhone on shoulder, she prepares the little vial to spray her clothes with the next day while effortlessly combing her soft voice with honey droplets.

For Carlos, she uses English- always. Applying mascara each morning to line her olive eyes is Lara's habit before a morning pic with a steaming cup of coffee. That's what Carlos likes-to think she is healing solely because of him. Lara starts to wear simple long sleeved tops instead of hoodies. To show her progress that Carlos smiled at. His eyes cold as ever like frozen chocolate. Just a few more days for the expression to be wiped away.

The coffee shop was dimly lit, with burnt beans a bit too pungent for them both. It was a misty Saturday and she comes in a sundress and cardigan while he comes in a button up and slacks. Both of them are slightly too prepared, both of their physical facades they placed irrelevant to events that are to occur next. Sitting down at a table under a short-circuited fluorescent light was anticipatory for both of them. 

Lara’s mind flickered over to the hidden girl with the fraying hair and decaying body. Without a name, she exists still. Beep. Beep. Beeeeep. Some part of the little girl must’ve been protesting–right? 

This has to work. She found out Carlos's age, blood type, address, college, and all of his friends as well as their addresses. In every-single-language. Always Swedish first, then German, Modern Arabic, English, while listening to his Russian (but is forbidden to speak the language) hovering over her shoulder. Swedish represents calculation, German means aggression, and Arabic is for success. English represents her cyanide-coated smile. English is the key to her treasure hunt for AB- blood. But this will all come to the right ending. It has to.

Smoothly she sat up from the table before their coffee came, saying she needed something in her car. He immediately stands up so fast that a customer walking by with their coffee fell to the ground, glaring up at him.  Paying the commotion no attention, follows her through the little jingle of the bell as they step out in the crisp air. Her heels lightly click on the pavement. Carlos does not notice the alley enclosing around them as he is about to open his deceptive mouth to lilt words that are without a doubt what Lara expects.

Tall, impenetrable walls surround them and he reaches out for her arm that's dangling by her side gracefully. As soon as his hands find the soft, crocheted yarn that he had been softly touching for hours that day, he crumbles. A delicate smile reaches Lara's pinked lips as she gracefully sits down next to his body speaking in German. She calls out for “K”, and he comes with more reinforcements that she lightly widens her eyes at. Arabic leaves her mouth as they speak. Lara mentions something about Carlos's medical history, slipping up with Swedish.

In Russian, K’s voice melts steel," You dare mock me?" 

Carlos's drooping face turns.

Slap.

"Dad-"

Slap.

"Don't you dare call me that." Following, he mutters weak under his breath.

Lara sees it in his eyes and it dawns on her weighted shoulders that he's not going to let Carlos's blood to save Lena. He's gonna sell it for cash and run.

She looks down and dismantles the mist around her eyelashes. Lena's frail body deserves life, not a casket with an unnamed plate.

The AB negative will never reach her veins.

Carlos died for cash, Lena will die because of da- K's greed.

Lara sits until the rats start nibbling the air around her. She stands up as the stilettos kill her feet and walks out knowing that she's guilty without salvation to offer to her sister.