Gunshots exploded into the air.
My teeth clenched and I felt a tight squeeze in my chest. A wave of pain so brutal washed over me. Forcing me to my knees. What was happening? I was hurting. I was injured. I was running.
Images swarmed through my mind. Trees. Dogs. Men. Shrubs. Mushrooms. I was darting over them. The wind whipped at me and shouts trailed from behind me. They were getting closer. I was losing blood. I was getting weary.
"Get him!" One of them shouted from behind me, my breathing was laboured, my legs were getting heavy and they were closer than ever. Yet, I willed myself to keep moving. If I could just make it to the brooks, I would lose them.
A clearing appeared before me, I could hear the sound of rushing water, I just had to make it past the clearing to Mist Brooks, and I would be safe.
Another bullet connected with my left leg and I knew this was it, I was going to die. The Natali were going to know of us. I was crawling, the barks of the dogs barely a foot away and then in a swift blur of movements. I was flying, I was soaring on someone's shoulder, someone just like me as he pounced from tree to tree.
What the hell was that? I asked
myself as I tried to rise from where I knelt only to fall face down.
Two arms were pulling me up, dragging me along. My head hurt like it had been used as a forge. My ears rang. And my vision was in blurs.
"What is happening to her?" Someone was saying, I should recognize that voice, but my mind was mush.
"How am I supposed to know, it's you who has been with her for years that I should be asking?" The shadow from my left answered. The voice was like a memory, yet I couldn't pin it.
The blur of mass on my right continued, "This has never happened before. Oh God, she's burning up. She's practically scorching, what are we to do? If anything happens to her, I don't think I can forgive myself, she warned me of this place and I took her for granted. Oh please Mel, I know you can hear me, I'm sorry I didn't believe you, I'm sorry I didn't take you seriously. We are leaving, no offense, but we are getting far away from this weird town."
The hands on my left gripped me tighter as it's owner said in a voice hiding no hint of her strain,
"You are taking her nowhere, especially not in this condition. She needs rest and we have to know for certain what is wrong with her, and could you hold her a bit straighter, it feels like I'm doing all the work."
"Really. I think you are the one not holding her right, clearly her weight rests on my own side. So, hold her right and how much farther to your couch? She needs to stay there until I can decide what to…"
The voices drowned out as sleep took hold of me.
My eyes drowsily opened as my head connected to something hard, sending shivers of acute pain down my entire body. The voices were back and one of them was saying,
" Be careful with her, do you want to kill her?"
" Maybe if you held her as you should, then she wouldn't have hit her head on the doorjamb" the other snapped.
I felt my body sink into softness as I was tossed into what must be a sofa, I was allowed only a blurred view of two faces staring down at me before I sank into nothingness.
Like walking through a curtain, I was ushered to a memory, or a nightmare, I had thought was done with me.
It's been forever since I last got plagued by it, why now?
It always came in orts, like shards of a time once were. Fragments that I can barely make anything of, before another takes its place.
A glowing orb of swirling fumes of
light and churns of darkness. Three hands reaching out to it. One furred. The other, pale as sheet and the last one gloved in lightning. A swell of light so bright it could blind even from a distance. Three glests. War. Bloodbath. Screams.
The screams always wake me, but not this time. The images and sounds seemed to be on loop, flickering faster and faster. Flashing, echoing and thrumming. The orb. The light. The hands. Streets like paths of crimson currents. Waves of voices thundering with pain and agony.
I struggled to be free, to escape from it all… all to no avail. Suddenly it felt real. My hands, furred, pale and gloved with lightning reached for the orb. The intensity of the blaze burned my eyes, my naked foot–drenched in the blood of a war raging ahead. I was there and I felt it all.
I was going insane. I was losing it. In the abyss of my subconsciousness, the tethers of my mind were unbinding, stretching and it was only a matter of time before it snapped.
I could tell that my physical form was tossing and thrashing. I could tell that my eyelids were struggling to pry open. And just when I could feel my mind about to snap… all became silent and dark. A hush, so still that I found my mind reaching for the chaos again, as if it preferred it. Darkness darker than the blackest night.
I couldn't even make out myself, but I knew I was part of the darkness. I could sense my being hovering amongst the stillness. Thinking it over, I tried to pry my eyelids open and hit a wall. I was about to try again and that's when I heard it, a voice like a ray of light in the darkness. A voice like shards of starlight echoing from a dark sky. A voice male, female and inhuman. A voice like thundering whispers.
"I see you are finally home, Child. Took you long enough, and just in time too. I will be here when you need me, now return."
And just like that, I was tossed back to reality.
My eyes fluttered open. I was laying on my back, face tipped up. With my line of vision, I first laid eyes on the square white ceilings above me, fluorescent lights hummed through them.
Slowly my head turned to my right and the steady humming of the heart rate monitor dulled in my ears like it was far away. In my flicking vision, I barely made out the green rhythmic peaks representing my systole in the monitor.
To my left, an IV infusion pump stood administering intravenous drip, if my mind wasn't as murky I would have been able to feel the drops in my veins.
My breath clung to my face like hot fumes through the respirator. I tried moving my fingers and found my index pegged with a pulse oximeter sensor. My head throbbed and my entire body ached.
Sluggishly, my body and mind registered other elements of my surroundings, the pale green coat I wore, the pale blue walls. Helen sprawled on a chair by my left, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Charles Brown- my favorite bedtime story then, opened in her lap as she drooled. What was she even doing with a book that was my favorite twelve years ago?
The heady scent of flowers staked on the right drawer, but what had roused me fully awake was the sterile scent of antiseptic and disinfectant that filled the air. The stench hit me like a blow to my nostrils and I sat up ignoring the groans of disapproval my body made.
Through the glass panel on the door, I could make out Sarah's silhouette speaking with a doctor. Around them, the corridor buzzed with activity, rattling of carts as they were pushed to and fro. Nurses hurrying along with their clipboards, doctors rushing to where they were needed, friends and families of patients hot on their trail.
Sarah's voice muffled by the closed door was saying, the irritation plain in her tone,
"How can you say there's nothing wrong with her? For heaven's sake, she's been feverish and unconscious for two days and you can't find anything medically wrong with her? How capable of you?"
Just then, she glanced at me and came running.