Round Robin October 2020

2 October 2020

"We need to wash the wound" Gregory spoke louder.

"Oh, no!" Emilia nearly shouted, then winced as she did so. "No, you are not!"

Gregory and Samantha shared a look and then Samantha pinned Emilia down as Gregory nearly dumped the entire bucket of water on the wound.

Emilia screamed, pain flashed through her eye - and then... the pain was gone. Replaced by a calming quiet.

"Uh, Emilia." Greg began.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What?" She hissed, do you want to throw salt at me next?"

"No, uh -"

"Your eyes are glowin'" Samantha cut in. "An eerie goldy-yellowy color, and that blood-red tattoo o' yours is glowing too."

"I told you, I don't have a tattoo." Emilia shot back as the calming quiet washed over her again, and a pulsing began in her temple.

At first, the pulsing was pleasant... almost like a mother's heartbeat calming an infant, but as it became stronger, pain pushed its way in as well. A scream - no. Three screams - pierced the air, and it took Emilia a moment to realize the screams belonged to her, Greg, and Samantha.

The room had become unbearably hot, and inky black tendrils with eerie red veins writhing around them spread out from Emilia - so far as she could tell from her forehead where the heat seemed focused to an almost scalding degree.

Wind began to whip the black and red tendrils about the room with incredible force, and Emilia could swear she saw a flash of silver and pink flash past her head. Nothing made sense. Nothing...

Emilia woke up when the sun was high in the sky. How did she know the sun was high in the sky? It blinded her upon waking. She sat up, surprisingly easily, and looked around.

The trees seemed far away, but river or creek....Emilia's head began to ache. The moving body of water was closer to Emilia's position.

'Wait, I was-I was with someone. No someones! Who was I with? Why am I here? Where is here? Why does my head-' Emilia rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

A noise caught Emilia's attention away from the moving body of water. It sounded like a tree branch falling. She saw a person holding a hot pink buck knife stumble into the clearing.

"Professor Dlaun! Thank goodness I found you! Have you seen Professor Xoi? He wasn't near where I woke up," the woman with the hot pink knife said as she moved closer to Emilia.

Emilia startled and asked, "Who are you, and why does my head hurt?"

The woman balked and the blood drained from her face. "Professor, my name is Samantha LaLri and I am one of your graduate students in your Applied Physics class. I'm here to help you." The woman-Samantha- slowly moved closer to Emilia and quietly said, "There was an accident in the lab last night, and the three of us, you, Professor Xoi, and I were moved somewhere else. We never figured out where. And then we got separated in another move. What do you remember about last night in the cabin?"

Emilia groaned. "I don't know, my head is pounding and trying to remember hurts," she whined, calmed by Samantha's tender tone.

For a moment, Emilia could have sworn there was a look of - pity? Derision? - something on Samantha's face. But it disappeared just as quickly, and the woman - her student apparently - began telling her about some button that shouldn't have been pushed, a lab, and Professor Gregory Xoi.

Emilia couldn't remember anything. If she tried, a dull aching began in her temple and something in the back of her mind told her not to let it grow, so she stopped trying to remember and settled with whatever this Samantha, student, person told her. The name "Gregory" evoked something - feelings of some kind but she wasn't sure of what.