Incandescence

39: Lament

I have this one memory from when I was fifteen. It was summer, just after Mum told me the facts about Dad's death, and I was struggling – with Alice's unceasing taunting, with the truth, with the pain of knowing he chose suicide over us. One of Mason's friends was holding a party, so I tagged along with the sole intention to get wrecked and piss Mum off.

            The rest of the night is a blur. Mason got me home safe. Handled my mother and apologised for the mess my vomit made on the front entrance mat. I don't remember any of that. But I do remember one thing – waking up in a state of disorientation with my duvet a tangled mess around me, my memories nothing but a merge of colours and scents and faces, head thrashing like someone was inside battering a hammer against it. Nothing made sense. The gears in my brain were working at snail's pace, struggling to comprehend the last twelve hours. And I think I might have spewed again.

            That's sort of how this feels. A hangover, minus the booze and sick. I'm lying pinned to the ground, trapped under broken branches and debris, staring up at a multi-coloured night sky through the thick canopy of leaves. There's a crackling pop overhead. A lone cry of a stray dog in the distance. They're all just background sounds to the pounding of my head. Another firework is set off somewhere nearby, and I watch it light up the heavens in a kaleidoscopic hue of reds, indigos and violets. Rainbow colours.

            For a moment everything hurts, and my head is so messed up I'm unsure I'll ever think clearly again. I struggle to sift through it all, to comprehend, to work past this post-traumatic memory impairment and sort my thoughts. How did this happen? I shove at the rubble on my chest, and it's then the real discomfort hits me – a searing ache in my arm, almost as though I've been burned. . .

            Then I remember.

            Everything, from Mason's betrayal to Lilith's ritual, rushes at me like a speeding train on the tracks, filling my mind before I can block it all out. I have been burned. More than that: I've been branded. Just like in Daniel's vision.

            Only this time round, I'm not dead.

            I wince and grit my teeth, struggling to push aside all the weight pinning me down. Then my thoughts flit to Lena, and I stifle a choked sob. Oh God. Where is she? Is she alive? No, no, no, of course she's still alive. This was supposed to be her rescue mission – there's no way I could've come this far only to make it out without her. Life couldn't be that cruel.

            Oh yes, it could.

            "Lena?" My voice is inaudible, throat dry and pain-filled. Coughing as loud as possible, I roughly shove away some of the branches on top of me and try again. "Lenaaaaaaa!"

           I put all my effort into standing and then limp my way through the shallow undergrowth, reaching the hole in the earth, where the ground has cracked and fallen in on itself. The darkness of the night does nothing for my vision, and with only the dim light from the overhead fireworks present to guide me, reaching the opposite side proves a difficult task. Even then, no one appears to get me. No voices cry out for help, and my horror heightens as the possibility of my being the only living person here grows more likely.

            Still I continue moving, calling my sister's name, and even Daniel's, at each turn. There are several bodies strewn throughout the cemetery – broken limbs carelessly cast around, like jigsaw pieces left at the hands of a reckless toddler – but none that I know. Relentless November winds blow leaves across the broken yard and toss my dirty hair in all directions, and the sensation of being the sole survivor of a global apocalypse grows stronger. I cast a glance sideways, straining to make out something, anything, that shows I'm not alone. But even the hockey stadium is no longer visible. I'm not even sure if it's still standing, or if it's collapsed on its foundations and is now nothing but rubble.