Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 78: Someone To Watch Over Me

Kelly walked the camp oblivious to her surroundings. Her bare feet washed over a river of sand, fluid and soundless in it's ripples. She moved, it dissipated beneath her.

But she wasn't entranced by the fluid sand. She was entranced by the fluid numbness that submerged her senses. She was water, walking over it, floating in it, the desert an illusion.

She was fucking high.

And it was fucking exquisite.

The vastness of the camp whorled around in her delicate wake, feet carrying her out beyond the gates of hell into paradise's free land of the white abyssal. The sun, a bright staring orb, froze the hot sands into a pale glare. White waves.

Kelly walked those white waves, arms outstretched as wings to catch the pale breeze, feel the fresh kiss of air.

I'm flying. Away from it all. Just for a while. Just flying.

Red shapes marred the white, pure red. Untainted by the blackened oil slicks of the Dark Bloods. Red Claws gave color to the ashen waves, bodies standing in vibrant vigil.

"You need to go back, honey."

"Nate. Just a little longer. I just want to be free for a little longer."

She locked her eyes shut, knowing that the moment she peered through her lashes, she would see Nate's face, and the anger on it.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?"

Stopping, Kelly let her arms float back to her body and stood feeling the gentle wind, but remained hidden behind her eyelids. Doom-Guy's long lost words touched her dry mouth like a rotten kiss. "The madness in my head. There's comfort in it. A place to hide. A thing that knows me. A thing that speaks to me. My own world, inside myself."

"I'm the thing that knows you."

Kelly cracked her eyes open. Pastel light blinded her before she saw Nate standing softly before her, so close she could touch him.

"I'm the world inside you." His voice ricocheted in her, ricocheting her back through a stream of lost memories with him. When they first met, shy smiles and stolen touches. Their first kiss, a bold glint in the eye. Their first time, tender, bursting pleasure. The wedding day, a white sweeping dress and crisp suit. That night in the park. A swelling of life, the joy, the dreams, the love. A son.

The stream ended in a dark space, throwing her to it's hard wall to break her bones. Kelly screamed in the dark as it broke over her, a neurotic glitching of her mind, ripping her skin apart with bones that jutted as weapons, thrashing her broken fingers at her head, pulling out dark strands that sank deep where the madness festered.

But on the white sands, she was like water, floating on sands, only numbly aware of the screams she cast in the dark.

Nate was water with her. "I'm the madness in your head." He glitched to her lips, and kissed her.

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She didn't know how much time had passed beyond the gates, but when Kelly felt the numb river begin to slip away from beneath her feet, she found herself back in camp as the sun was hitting it's stride high in the sky. She had spent the whole morning out there, wandering the border thinking she was flying in water.