Alice's Asylum

Chapter Twenty-Six

The pain was everything that Robert had explained and yet he had missed out the most important detail. Just how much I would want to die.

If death would have ended this pain, I would welcome it with open arms. Any escape out of this would have been welcome.

The pain just wasn't bearable. It was like a thousand electrical volts running through my veins and all over my skin. My automatic human reaction was to try and shake off whatever was hurting me. But the pain wasn't ON my skin, it was UNDER it. I thrashed about but the pain triped. The pain mainly seemed to come from my heart. It swept out from my heart, along the fingers of my arteries and veins and all over my body. My heart beat painfully and with every beat, that fire burnt me more. I cried out at the pain but it didn't help. I just wanted to die...

****

I wasn't sure if it was minutes, hours, days or months that went past. I wanted to know how I was still alive. I wanted to rip my heart out of my chest but although my nails scraped against my shirt, my nails made very little help. I knew I wasn't ash because I could feel my limbs moving as I thrashed and my whimpers as the pain worsened. It was all over my body from every hair on my head to the very tip of my nails on my toes.

However as time passed, I noticed more things. Firstly was that the pain had started to fade. Not everywhere and it was doubling in my heart. Maybe because the pain was fading in the tips of my toes and fingers, that was the reason that I could feel the heart pain more.

Secondly was that I could focus more on things other than the pain. I could hear fairy light footsteps and the soft whispers of one person talking to herself. Sometimes she squeezed my hand or touched my face. She never talked to me but she was there, comforting and that was enough.

The pain was fading from my limbs. I could flex my fingers and clench my toes. I felt a finger touch my palm and I could grasp it but I did not wake. The pain was worsening in my heart and I was trying so hard not to scream now. Instead I gasped along with the waves of pain.

"Jasper?" It was the first time she had spoken in ages. Her voice was like the twinkling sounds of a wind chime. It was beautiful. "Jasper. Pull through it. I know it hurts. Pull through it. You can do it, I promise." Her words were meant to be comforting and soothing but I couldn't listen to them through the pain. My whimpers turned to screams and I was begging for her to kill me. She held my hand and promised it would be over soon but how could it? The pain was becoming even more unbearable. Suddenly it was like all the fire had been sucked back into my heart. My heart beat once more then stopped at long last.