Waver

Prologue: Upheaval pt.1

Red.

Everything was red. A dull translucence tinted my vision and colored everything in varying shades of red. It was scary. Painful. My heart beat thrummed loudly in my ears and I blinked hard to try and clear my eyes though it did very little, if anything to wash away the blood.

In front of me two sets of blurry red feet led up to red bodies topped with red faces. One looked down at me, his features contorted. Regret? No. Something else. Disgust. Irritation maybe. The other man looked away, shoulders drooping, muscles tight. He might have felt worse about the situation than the other man but he was just as guilty. Just as responsible. Not only had he not stopped it, he'd been an active part of it.

I blinked again. A momentary relief from a monochrome world came and went in a mere second. I closed my eyes, it was still red. Swirls of it dancing in the darkness behind my eyelids, bursting with each spike and flow of pain that gripped me. It wasn't even a horrible pain. It was there and it noticeably hurt but the knives had been sharp, the cuts clean. It was the contact that hurt. Every time I moved, touched the ground or brushed against a surface stinging, sharp pains set in. Each bite of pain made me flinch, causing more movement and pain in turn.

I flinched, slipped and nearly fell in a clumsy, disoriented heap on the concrete flooring. A rasping breath escaped my lips, a cry caught in my throat.

Don't let this be the end.

I sent out the silent prayer hoping that it would be heard. Hoping that it would be answered. Please don't let me die like this.

And then there was another burst of pain. Different this time as I coughed and heaved. One of the men, likely the guy with contorted features, had kicked me. The heavy toe of his boot met my stomach a second time, hard enough to make me roll across the blood slick cement. I curled in on myself, gagged and choked trying to regain my lost breath but for long seconds I couldn't inhale. Couldn't focus.

Red. Everything was red.