Tainted

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Half-edited, half-unedited.

****************

The ground sinks below my feet and gravity pushes down with more force than usual. I feel my body being crushed under me by a force other than my own. I try to fight back, to dig my way up and back to common ground, but eventually, all I can see is dirt.

The earth fills every ounce of my body completely, but there's no pain. I feel my voice being shoved back into my throat with dirt when I try to use it. I'm helpless, free-falling into a void of darkness that the earth has created. The black hole sucks the breath from my lungs and fills it with dirt. I feel that I am a part of planet now, the roots, as I am filled with the earth like an empty balloon is filled with air. As my blood is thickened by the earthy substance, my body begins to stiffen, and pressure behind my eyes begins to make them feel like they're being pushed out. And as I open my mouth for another useless scream, I feel the explosion of my own head.

My hands look foreign to me when I awake on a sandy ground. The surface is hot and my body is already dripping with sweat. I cough, remembering my fall through the earth, telling myself that it was all a dream, when a pile of dirt comes from my throat and onto the overly heated surface. I stare at it like it's alien before I attempt to stand up. My muscles are stiff but useful, and I look around to see nothing more than a foot ahead of me. I'm in a triangle of red, heated earth, and beyond that, darkness. I reach out, but that is all I can do. My legs can stand but I cannot walk. I open my mouth and find that I cannot talk.

I wail silently in my triangular prison. I sway with my torso, begging my legs to take a step. But they don't, and I can only hear my own loud thoughts. There's no wind, no light, no sound. There's only me and my thoughts, the worst prison one could put me in. And I struggle against my own insanity that begins to take over. Panic and anxiety rip away my hope and eats away at the few sane, logical thoughts I have. In minutes, I'm fully consumed by the monster of the mind, and I feel as though this prison is punishment for everything I've ever done. The agony would be enough to kill me if I wasn't already dead.

I wake up from my nightmare in the same state that I landed in the ghost land. My body is dripping with sweat and I'm hot, extremely hot. Anxiety creeps its way into my mind and I quickly rush from my hotel room to the shower. The burst of cold water is hardly enough to cool my body temperature, but after staying in there for nearly twenty minutes, I begin to feel my heat fizzle out. As I dry off, the extremely clear mirror reveals a face of my own with deep red eyes. I blink a few times, wishing the color away, but the crimson is here to stay. So I look away instead, ignoring my appearance, and I return to bed within the next ten minutes.

**

My sleep is disrupted again, but this time the outside world is to blame. A constant, annoying patting of my arm pulls me from my void of sleep.

"We have to check out in thirty minutes, so wake up." Naoma says, thumping my cheeks, leaving them stinging from impact.

"Hmm, okay. I'm up." I rasp, bringing my hands to my face to protect them against her attack.

"It's 11:30. Why are you so sleepy?" She asks, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

"Because I had a nightmare." I admit, sitting up. I glance at her and freeze, thinking back to the color of my eyes.

"What color are my eyes?" I ask her.

"Blue." She says. "But you look pale. Are you feeling okay?"

"I feel fine." I tell her. " Better than last night." I mumble the last part.

I rush through my morning routine and ask Naoma if she had any spare clothes. She leaves the room and reappears with a brand new outfit for me. I don't even ask when and where she got it from before I shower again and replace my old clothes with the new ones.