Worlds Together

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I can almost feel the house falling apart around me, and with it, my life. Windows smashing, inhabitants screaming, fleeing the site. It’s only been going on for mere minutes, but it seems like hours. It’s kind of ironic that here I am, on my own in the main room of the house; seemingly the only room that hasn’t turned upside down. I'm pretty sure they’re looking for something – other than to scare us all to death and leave us homeless, why would anyone break in on such a scale as this?

As the final, lone scream fades into nothing, I know I am alone in the house with only the ones who came, it would seem, to destroy it. As I am in the only untouched room, I know I am certain to have company soon. Panicking, I shuffle backwards, around the corner that will keep me out of direct sight from the door. With no better plan I splay myself out on the floor in as authentic a position as I can, and wait with baited breath and cautiously closed eyes.

BANG! That’ll be the door, then. Here they come, ready or not. They stomp into the room, sounding like a herd of elephants and to be honest, my first worry is that they won’t notice I'm here and will stomp over me without realising. That worry, at least, vanishes from my minds as I hear someone speaking into a walkie-talkie. “Call Griffiths, we have a resident casualty.” My heart drops. Oh no, no, no, no, no! They were meant to leave me, ignore me, because I was a casualty!

“On his way.” Dammit! My imagination suddenly kicks into gear, creating all sorts of ghoulish images that it matches to the name ‘Griffiths’. The theme seems to be some kind of interrogator, a torturer perhaps, who will make me give ‘answers’ then  kill me slowly. Or send me over the edge of the world. That’s what we were always taught at school – don’t go too far from the cities, you can never see the edge of the world until you’ve fallen off of it. Now that I'm panicking, I know that my heart will be racing, and it will be pretty obvious I'm pretending.

“Thompson?” A different voice to the one that called Griffiths. That means that he must be-

“Griffiths.” Oh no, oh no, oh no. Trying to calm down, I resort to putting names to voices. Voice 1, the once that called Griffiths, that’s Thompson. Voice 2, that is Griffiths, and I'm terrified, literally scared stiff. I don’t think I could move now if I wanted to. Not that I want to. When Thompson speaks again, his voice is much closer, and I can hear an accent that I’ve never heard before. “She was like this when we walked in – no one touched her.”

“Thank you, Thompson.” Oh god, Griffiths is even closer than Thompson. I feel fingertips on my wrist and I have to fight to keep it limp. My natural instinct is to move as far away as possible from the man my imagination has told me so much about. “Well, she’s definitely alive. In fact, I think she can probably hear us.” What?! How does he know I'm awake?!

“You mean she’s not unconscious?” Damn you, Griffiths! I had Thompson fooled!

“I think she’s a very good actor, but it’s very difficult to control your heart rate. Obviously, your heart has to work much harder when you’re conscious, so your heart rate is much faster.” At this point, he begins to talk to me, which makes my heart go into psycho mode, and with what I presume are his fingers still on my wrist, he knows full well I can hear him. “Clever girl, just didn’t do your homework. Now, miss, since we both now know that you can in fact hear and understand what I'm saying, would you please give up the charade.” Not freaking likely! His voice is so calm, so polite, and that makes him all the more menacing. All the more likely to throw me over the edge. “I'm going to ask again, and then I'm going to threaten with pain, okay?” How about no?! “Please open your eyes.” Nuh-uh. “I have a taser.” I’ve never experienced a taser before, but I’ve heard enough about them to know that I don’t want to. For this reason, I grudgingly open my eyes, which widen to their full capacity when I notice how close Griffiths is with an actual taser.

His face is kindlier than I had imagined, but again, this adds to the terror. In any other circumstance I would have trusted him instantly. “Orbell, left foot. Porter, right foot. Thompson, right wrist. Reighner, canolythalin.” His grip tightens on my left wrist as three men restrain my other limbs and a young woman passes him a syringe. Despite the fact that there is a steel grip on each of my limbs, I still writhe manically, trying to escape whatever this sick doctor is about to inject me with. I feel a sharp pain in my wrist and I know it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t ever good enough. Not even to protect myself, let alone anyone else. I can feel myself getting choked up, like my throat’s getting narrower. Then I realise it is.

My breathlessness goes beyond feeling sorry for myself, beyond tearless sobs, and into choking. I physically can’t breathe. Wrenching my arm from the clutches of Thompson, I claw at my neck, writhing again, but this time in pain. I can’t breathe. My throat is closed and my neck is burning.

The quiet clamour of the room dies down, and soon all I can hear is my own suffocating.  I feel like an attraction, like no one’s going to help; they only came for the show. I expect the silence to be broken by the none other than the man who caused it, Griffiths, but it’s the man who once held my other wrist that takes control of the situation.

“Reighner! Antilin, now!” It’s funny, he sounds like he cares. “She can’t die.” That’s not a ‘I don’t want her to die’ – that’s a ‘she’s part of some master plan in which she is necessary and I’ll get in big trouble if she’s dead’. This should be fun. A stab in my other wrist, and almost instantly, I can breathe again. I open my eyes cautiously and glance up at him with a small smile. “Thank you,” is all I can say with the little breath I have, before my world turns black and I lose consciousness.

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here goes :)