2019-09-30 - Pain Is Just Weakness Leaving The Body

Everything hurts.

It was difficult to recall when she returned to the privacy of her bedroom in the houseboat, green-and-gold eyes blurry with pain. Her cheek pressed against her mattress, she couldn't see the digits on her alarm clock from this angle.

Her back was on fire, split open by the monster that had wanted August Roen - someone who had talked to him through the metal cage that bound its head. He had tried to stitch her back together, but he was weak and the pain had helped. With the fight draining out of her, she felt all of it now.

Blood continued welling up from the deep cut in her palm, where she held the glass shard in her hand. His heart was beating so fast. She tasted his fear, nevermind the fact that she couldn't see it on his face. His heart. She wanted to see his heart. What it would look like once torn from his chest, beating between her fingers.

How did she go from wanting that to shielding him, instead?

Her back was on fire, and her feet were now, too, as adrenaline faded away from the scathing path it made through her senses. Shards of broken glass pushed up from under her skin, cutting it into ribbons, aggravated further by the kick. The brake. Hard and metallic and rusted from un-use. But it had to stop. They couldn't stay in there.

Fingers slick with blood tried to reach for her phone. August. She had to make sure he was...

The device clattered away from her reach, slipping through nerveless appendages. Her back was on fire, and the rest of her body followed.

Isabella lifted her eyes towards the mirror on her dresser and the growing crack she managed to glimpse from the corners of the frame. It reminded her of the mirrors in the topmost chamber, of the place from which she and her fellow academic had escaped.

It reminded her of the Dream. The Dream that wasn't the usual, and for the life of her, she didn't know what about it was strange. It nagged at her from the back of her beleaguered, heavy and fuzzy mind. She didn't know why, or what made it so different, all she was certain of was the fact that it was.

She needed to get up. She needed to think. But her lashes grew heavy and she couldn't see the mirror anymore. Blood ran warm down her feverish skin, spiced the air with its coppery tang.

She needed to think. She needed to, had to...

Black crept in from the corners of her vision and despite every urge to fight it, she sank. It closed over her head and embraced her, and didn't let go.