The Eden Projects (EDITING)

Chapter 34. Pyres.

- A few days later -

Kasper awoke with a sudden jolt. His body was rung over with a cold sweat. "HAH-" he grasped at his drenched shirt "Hah-" and the world around him came into focus, the weight of a hand on his shoulder drew his attention there. Kasper wiped the tears from his eyes with a trembling hand, letting the knife fall from his grip. He brushed something, a hand, an arm. Something living. He scooted backwards. Creating an ounce of space between himself and the other person, digging his legs free of the sleeping bag. "I'm here." He huffed. "It was just a dream." 

"A nightmare." Zak let go of Kasper's shoulder when he had moved outside his reach. "-you were talking again." He rubbed his arm.

With a huff, Kasper let himself fall backwards. His head meeting the pillow with a muffled thump. "I was?" My heart is pounding. He let his eyes close, one hand still gripping his chest. 

Zak sighed, the sound of cloth scratching came from his direction. He was rubbing at a bandage on his arm. "You scared me that time." 

It had been a few days since that night. 

The night he woke up with no bearing on who or where he was. 

Only a couple days since they had taken that bullet out and his body still remembered the burn. 

Some things, the big things, had come back. 

Foundational memories of home, his family, and an uneasy dread made up the rest of the big things. He remembered feelings, more than instances. Zak connected the dots where he could but the others... The small and most significant nuances of himself all remained a blur. Odd as it may be, the "why" hadn't come back. Only the action. Odder still, Zak and Kasper had begun communicating in ways outside of words. Glances, sighs, nervous shuffles. Reading eachother with careful determination. One thing was abundantly clear. He knew that Zak was there, in all things, and he had more to do with his "being alive" than he was given credit. What they had was important. Necessary. Intrical as oxygen.

So his head told his heart when his body begged otherwise. 

Zak sighed. "God this itches." Blood had already seeped through the first layers and had begun eating away at the exterior wrapping. He had slipped during a repair on one of the trucks the day before and had, by some clumsy miracle, cut himself on some unknown sharp part of an impossibly smooth surface. "Ok. Ok. I've got it." Zak swooned forward. "Maybe your brain remembers stuff when you sleep, but when you wake up, it's gone again. Maybe it's not an injury- you're just locked up somehow."

"Locked up huh..." His focus waned and he tugged at his blanket. Piling it on his lap. "I'm sorry for waking you up again." 

"Beats the alternative." 

Kasper used the edge of his sleeping bag to wipe away the sweat from his face. "Your eyes look like shit." 

"Well I feel like shit." 

His vision swam, tiny black tendrils slithered across the darkness of his peripherals. Then, as quickly as they had appeared, were gone again. He knew what it was, there was no need to name it. Hunger. "What time is it?" He spoke, his morning voice catching dry in his throat.