Looking up from the cold table, I gazed into a full length mirror screwed into the ceiling, and my reflection gazed back. I was even more bedraggled-looking than I felt, and the ugly chest-intruder looked like a gnarled fifth limb. The thing...person... picked a scalpel from the array of instruments and positioned it over my head, then paused. She opened the cabinet and pulled out a battery powered radio, gesturing to that. With difficulty I nodded against my pillow, and she turned it on. At first the sound was tinny and crackly, though it soon settled into the rhythm of a song I found I somehow knew by heart. She picked up the scalpel again, moving her shoulders in time to the music.
‘I got a pocket, got a pocket full of sunshine’
The blade cut through the skin of my temple
‘I got a love and I know that it’s all mine’
Through the muscle groups
‘Do what you want but you’re never gonna break me...’
A tool like a screwdriver cut through my skull with a terrible shrill shriek
‘...Take me away, a secret place’
She retrieved a syringe full of a thick, black liquid from the cabinet and put the end to the lower half of her face, like a microphone, sweeping her other hand towards the ceiling and wiggling her hips. My reflection stared at my bloody forehead, which revealed an inch of white brain. The person paused to squeeze out the air from the needle, jived one more time, and then plunged the metal sting straight into my head.
I felt myself blacking out, but for a while I could still hear the song.
‘There's a place that I go that nobody knows
...And I call it home
And there’s no more lies
In the darkness there’s light
And nobody cries....’
Black.
When I awoke at first the world was so clear that I couldn’t see it. I felt clean and I could feel and oh god I could feel, every metre I’d run from Him, every burst of fear, every laboured breath, every inch between me and the branch as I fell and every inch of it crunching though me. I cried and cried, and it blurred my new sight enough that I could see the person above me, only now she had a face, and the face was crumpled as it watched me mourn, because running and falling was all I knew, before that there was nothing; dying was all I was, all I could remember being. My chest still ached, and I looked up to the mirror to see if my demise was still there, and it was not. Neither was my body. At least, not the one I had seen just those few minutes ago... though it was me. Every inch of the flesh of my reflection reflected my soul and my soul my flesh. I saw my mind made corporal. I spread my fingers and I could feel my soul move. I touched my face and I touched the very core of my being.
I was liberated from the costume of a body, and it was so beautiful that it hurt.
YOU ARE READING
Her Red City (WattyAwards2013 entry- new version)
FantasyA murdered girl finds herself embroiled in the affairs of dead kings, meddling overlords, mindless thugs and psychotic rebels. Can she lead the 'All' to a new era? Or will she meet a more deadly fate? Read on to find out! Hey there, just a little in...
