02-29-2016, 11:32 PM
Just let me fall. And so he does. He pulls her out of that pocket in time, out of that wretched hole carved in space just for her. There is enough time for her to notice three things. The first is the gold and red of the Desert, of her home, the place of her family and, as though it had been struck with a hammer, she can feel her heart explode. So close, she is so close to a place that had always felt same and safe and maybe even a little boring. But so close means nothing to someone who does not exist anymore. The second thing she notices is that he holds her body over a precipice, over an impossible edge with jagged, glittering rocks below her like broken teeth in a yawning mouth. The third thing she notices is the fear, and somehow it feels new and raw and not nearly as dull as it should be when his wickedness was something she had known for so long. But this fear is new and it rears within her like a trapped beast, thrashing wildly against her chest and her ribs and the pulp of her heart even as he drops her. Time does not slow down for her as she falls, she has never been so lucky. Instead the yawning ground reaches out to collect her with a crunch and the slick, wet sound of blood spilling over split skin. The pain is not immediate, not until shock has a chance to gather and swell and recede just a little. But once it does she aches for death. Only death could make this better. She can feel each bone that pokes through the reddening tawny of her broken skin. Can feel each organ puncture and the way her lungs deflate within her chest. She gasps and coughs and wheezes, struggles to retch but there is only blood and froth on her lips. Like a fool she tries to stand, even now she tries to run from him, but her legs are dead weight beneath her and she realizes with sudden horror that her spine must have been severed in the fall. When he appears beside her and his teeth tear into the smooth cold-sand color of once beautiful skin, she is barely cognizant. The only thing she can understand is the pain. Until he leaves her. Then she remembers fear. She lays there broken and hissing air, tether to a body split wide open and useless. The only thing she knows if the pain, the only fear is that he will not come back for her. That he might leave her in this limbo for eternity. But he does return, I should let you suffer here for days, beauty. And in her pain induced stupor she recognizes even more confusion. Had he not already done so? It had felt like a lifetime tethered to this broken body, tethered to the pain as he had tethered her to himself. She can hear him sigh but she cannot see him, cannot move for the way he split her spine. Then, suddenly, the pain fades (all but the memory that now exists like a brand beneath her skin) and he bades her to rise. She does not challenge him this time, she remembers herself now. On unsteady legs she trembles beside him, her dark eyes fixed submissively on the bloodstains, her blood, that still seeped into the ground around the broken stones. When he plucks her out of this world an into that strange shadow dimension, she is at last complacent. She does not speak or lift her eyes, does not even think of the life she wished she had. But even this obedience is not enough for him. He plucks her out of the dark place, that lonely place, and suddenly those newly healed bones are shrinking and twisting until she is nothing more than a common white mouse. Her small heart is racing immediately, even before he becomes a gleaming black snake, even before the sound of his rattle is all she can hear. Instinctively she darts away from him into the forest, ducking through grass and leaves and roots like great valley walls towering over her. The rattling fades and she pauses, whiskers twitching as if to test the air. Something startles her, maybe a leaf rustling through the forest, maybe something more ominous, but she is off again. She ducks beneath the thicker brush, through rotten hollow logs, and the longer she runs the more she can feel that dangerous pressure she had come to know as hope swelling in her chest. How could she be so foolish. |