Requiem Run

Chapter 8

"Wake up..."

The darkness was suffocating.

"You have to wake up... you're not dead yet..."

That couldn't be, I had fallen so far. There was no doubt, I was dead and gone.

"Open your damned eyes already!"

Everything ached. My arms, my legs, my chest, even my eyelids when I opened them to the sun beating down hard on me with harsh, unrelenting heat, only blocked out by the trees above me. It took me a moment to realize that I was looking at something other than those tree tops. Rather, I was looking at someone.

There was a woman leaning over me with a worried expression on her face. Her skin was super pale, almost as white as milk, and her hair was white as well, but not stringy as if she were old. Her eyes were exactly like mine, mint green, and she was wearing a white, flowing dress.

"Are you an angel?" I asked.

"No." said the woman, "I'm a snow elf. Get up already, you're going to die of exposure if you don't start moving."

I took a moment to register her words, and it all came back to me what I had just gone through. Somehow, against all odds, I had survived the fall from the cliff above.

With that revelation, all the aches and pains started coming into focus with a vengeance. My throat burned with dryness and I felt as though I had been punched a dozen or so times all over my body. My left arm was throbbing with a different type of pain; dull and numb.

When I turned to look at my arm, grimacing at the stiffness in my neck, I realized why I was so numb in that area. To my horror, my arm had been impaled on a branch attached to a fallen log.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god..." I mumbled as I tried to move my impaled arm, which resulted in a shot of pain through my body so bad that I choked out a half-scream and froze entirely.

"Don't move too much!" the woman in white said, "You're going to have to... save your strength for what you're going to have to do."

"And what is that supposed to be?" I asked, choking the words out of my dry as hell throat.

"Look, you can't get your arm out of that situation without some serious damage," said the woman, "Rip if free as quickly as possible, and you'll save yourself some pain in the process."

"Like a bandage... like a bandage... like a bandage..." I started whispering to myself. It was the only way to psyche myself up for what I was about to do to myself. Just as I whispered to myself again, I pulled my arm with all of my might so I could just get it over with quickly.

The pain was white-hot in an instant, like I had just set myself on fire. I think I screamed, I wasn't sure for a while until the pain finally subsided and I was able to function once more.

"That hurt." I croaked as I rolled over and struggled onto my knees, "Can you help me up?"

"Sure." the woman in white said as she stepped over to me and went to take my hand.

Her hand phased straight through mine. My mind couldn't comprehend what had happened, and I guess she was in the same position, so the two of us just stared for a moment before she tried again. The same thing happened.

"What the hell?!" I said as I looked up at the woman, and that was when I noticed something I hadn't registered before; the woman was a bit translucent, and the sun was shining right on through her to prove it.

"Are you a... ghost or something?" I asked, shocked that I could even say it with a straight face. the woman seemed to realize something, and looked down at herself.