Kiss Me Before the Sky Falls

-Chapter 5- Alone in What Must be Hell -

I must've been floating in darkness but conscious for days. Weeks. It felt like someone hit me in the head with a sledgehammer, and my temples throbbed. The only noise I detected was a very ragged breath every minute or so, shallow and made me shudder at its volume. And the beep, familiar, but where from I couldn't say right then. 

I felt detached from myself, like the pain was only of my imagination. Not real. The strange pressure on my hands and their unexplainable warmth. I felt a presence not my own. Not hostile, but just...watching.  

I couldn't move more than my toes, and even then it was more of a twitch. But I kept trying, bright-eyed and curious, like this was normal and I was just playing. Like it was a game. 

Sometimes I swear I heard someone whispering. So softly did they speak, I could barely hear anything, however I strained. I caught a word, but barely, on occasion. I heard, on many accounts, 'love', 'here', and 'stay'. The most I've heard was a single phrase, and I think I felt breath on my ear. It said 'don't go'. I couldn't place who's.  

I went on trying to move, just tireless, working on just living. But I kept feeling like something was missing, I was at a loss for something. I longed for whatever it was, feeling like I needed it. Like it was important to me.  

My breath caught in my throat. The voice had never been clearer. This loud. It felt like this place I'd come to know was crumbling. I panicked, yanking at my limbs mentally, praying I could just get away. It spoke my name. 

Shelby. 

My fingers curled. I clenched my jaw and picked through memories, trying to kick-start movement. I felt this sub consciousness was enveloping in on me. Again, my name. Loud and clear. 

Shelby. 

I gasped for breath, now frantic to pull out of this trance. I cried out at an intense, crushing pain, felt like my whole body was pressured. I wanted to cower back behind the fog of apparitional pain. Cracks of light seeped through the black, and I shuddered and shied, and with a powerful wave of determination, from out of nowhere, it all went white.

I don't know how long I laid there. Listening to the haggard breaths even louder, and now I realized they were mine. A machine beeped with every heartbeat, slow and dull in my chest. Yet each time it hurt to do so. 

I felt crushed. Exhausted. First, I tried to move, but it hurt so bad I just looked into the dark. 

It wasn't the same blackness as before. It was a room, and I could see a little pastel colored wallpaper halfway below a pale blue. There was a curtain to my right blocking anything beyond from view. To my left, chairs. Two of them. One was blotted out by a dark shape, curled up. On both sides, next to the bed, sat two tables, gray and surgical in their demeanor. A plastic jug and two matching cups, seemingly untouched, lay on their platter.  

I watched a little yellow light slip into the room, hitting the shape, revealing slowly a blanket and a head, and then better defined them. The blanket was some sort of design with aligned diamonds and stripes with bright red, black, and an unstained white. The face was a man's, with high-set cheekbones with thin, attractive features. He looked familiar, like I'd seen him on TV or something. What was his name...? Liam, or something? Lewis, Larry, something with an L... He was asleep, and I wasn't about to wake him up. My jaw felt locked. But who was he, and what'd he want with me?  

I looked about in the light without moving my head. But even my eyes felt sore. I felt thin sheets over me, and I lay with my hands above the blanket at my sides, feet at the edge of the bed. There was a needle in the pit of my elbow, a little tube running to a pouch of clear liquid suspended on some sort of metal hook thing. It reminded me of a hat rack.  

My left shoulder was wrapped in some sort of white tape, and it hurt worse to move. I left it be and strained to read half of a whiteboard, attempting to put together phrases. I got bored and looked myself again and realized something peculiar.  

My stomach bulged, not like the little bit before, but like I was purposely sticking it out. I wasn't, and that's the oddity of it. Perhaps it was nothing. I'd gained weight lying here. It seemed unlikely, but reassured me from the alternative. I couldn't be...pregnant. How could I be? I couldn't recall losing my virginity. I don't remember being old enough to drink, hell no. I'm not stupid.  

The sound of blankets moving made me jump, and I flinched from the pain. Biting my tongue in the process, I cursed silently.  

And I was smothered.  

Hands practically the size of my whole head held my face to theirs, thumbs at my temples, brushing the hair off. I suddenly felt feverish, but not ill, just warmed by their touch. I don't know if I closed my eyes because I didn't want to know how bad I must look to them, or out of relief.  

Whatever had been missing, they'd been it. My stomach wriggled with the excitement, and the hurt seemed to vanish. I felt like I couldn't breathe, but it was okay to die right now. I was content to drop off the face of the Earth if they'd be with me when I jumped. Comfort was an overwhelming sensation, I could do anything and it'd be disregarded as cute. But it so slowly faded when they pulled away, I relished in the painkiller. 

Our faces were still so close, noses brushing and breaths heavy on each other's face. I refused to open my eyes. I was afraid I did I'd lose this surreal feeling. I just sank all thought into feeling their hands on my cheeks, their essence wreathing each painful, quiet gasp, and lacing it with morphine.  

"Thank God you're okay." His voice. It was a man's. It was manipulated by something, but what its name was I didn't know. I just know I liked it. He kept stroking my hair, and I just lay there, soaking him in.  

"Please, open your eyes. Let me see them." He kissed my forehead, and another dose of anesthesia echoed from his lips. 

"No..." I croaked. My throat hurt and my mouth peeled open, feeling dry and cracked.  

"Why?" He spoke. Oh so lovely did he talk to me. I felt embarrassed but cozy by him. I just cringed softly.  

"Are you alright?" He sounded worried. I swallowed painfully. 

"Hurts." I said quietly. He sighed forlornly, and I wish I could move my hand to take his. It felt like a familiar gesture. But I didn't have the energy to repeat. 

"Why won't you look at me?" I wanted to, see what I was in love with. Try and find something that wasn't on the tip of my tongue, but in my life, with me, now. But I didn't in fear this place would break and fall away, and all the sensations of it again drained from me.  

"I...I..." My mouth had trouble forming words. He urged me with comforting kisses, varying regions from my cheek to my ear, and liked poking my nose. It wasn't a jab, just a gentle tap, a playful gesture. He didn't say much, just a lot of asking, pleading for me to open my eyes. I just quietly refused and asked to hold his hand. And now we lay, and he held my hand as asked and just kept his head by mine, whispering little things to me about the place we were in to make me laugh. It hurt, but I suffered through the agony of the day with a bloody lip and rattled bones.  

I was afraid to sleep, and I know even as he coaxed me to rest, it'd help me recover, he didn't want me to. The light faded, and so did the red behind my eyelids. I looked through barely peeled apart lids to search the room for water. My mouth felt dry, and he told me I was wheezing and to drink something.  

Of course he realized I couldn't get it myself, not just because I was blinding myself, but I couldn't bear to move. My neck popped in three different places just from tipping my head up to sip a bit of lukewarm water from a cup. I grimaced and relaxed again, willing him to come back and lay with me. Instead he said he'd be back and left after a peck barely worth calling a kiss on my temple.  

I opened my eyes and waited, watching the curtains for his arrival's announcement. But it never came. I questioned if he'd ever been there. I glanced over to where the man had been this morning.  

There was no trace of either of them.

Dedicated to AngryRainbow for our numerous chats and all the stomach aches from laughing. Its nice to know there are other random people out there. ;D