Hunt

Chapter 87: (Julie) Dust to Dust - Epilogue

Cold. Freezing cold. Like my body is trapped under ice. I can't get myself to move, my body numb and unresponsive. Lost in a sea of black. I can't even muster the strength to shiver. The void around me seems to sap what little strength I was desperately trying to hold on to, greedily pulling it away. I try to fight against it, to open my heavy eyes, to free myself from whatever hell I have found myself in.

Over what feels like years I slowly move my head. Cracking my eyes open as if they had been encased in a thick layer of ice, breaking free of the bonds that had been holding me. The darkness around me blooms to color, the black fading away to reveal a scene that's pulled right out of my nightmares. The Anderson house engulfed in flame, burning silently from a fire I had set. The execution of David Anderson unfolding once more in front of my eyes. Silently and in slow motion. The executor pulls the trigger, sending the fireball erupting from the gun as I can watch the very life fade from David Anderson's eyes. I couldn't move to flee. I couldn't open my mouth to speak. I couldn't hear anything but the racing heart thudding hard in my chest.

"You're still here?" A question rumbles through the silence. A low voice that vibrates the air around me with a low growl that resonates somewhere deep inside of me. Stirring a hibernating part of myself that I haven't felt in a long time. Pure fear. Like how a kid is instinctively scared of the dark, or of the monsters lurking in their closet. I try to shut my eyes. To block out the monster in front of me. But I'm paralyzed, stuck wide eyed as the executioner turns their gaze towards me. Shrouded in an unnatural darkness all I can see are its piercing yellow eyes. It speaks again in a voice that could scare the dead. "This isn't your place to die. You still have purpose. Don't keep me waiting..."

In a flash and a gasp I jolt upright. My heart racing in my chest as a ringing in my ears fades to a faint beeping noise that matches the rate of my racing heart. The room I wake up in is dark, but despite the near pitch black I could tell that this wasn't my room at home. It felt too clean, to sterile. There's a faint smell of disinfectant.

Where am I? How did I get here?

I try to remember what happened to me. What took place prior to me waking up here. But my memory is clouded, like a blanket of fog was covering up that portion of my mind. As my heartbeat steadies so does the beeping machine behind me. I hadn't noticed up until now that I had wires and tubes nearly covering me, multiple IV lines stick out of my arms making me look like a test subject of some sci-fi horror story.

The longer I lay awake the more I begin to shiver. I'm painfully cold. Like my veins are filled with ice...

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After I first woke up in the hospital the days seem to pass by quickly. Life moving at a breakneck speed without any warning or breaks in between for me to get my bearings or catch my breath. People come and go so quickly that I have a hard time keeping track of who all has stopped by to check in on me. My parents, the doctors, police, Paul and Nick... All of their visits blend together into one congealed mass of concerned questions. What's even worse is that they all seem ask me different variations of the same questions. Like they've all been reading from the same script. It quickly gets to the point where I stop getting excited when someone walks through the door, almost dreading every time I heard the click of the doorknob.

The police stop by on multiple occasions to question me about the incident at the Anderson Home, trying to get me to open up about anything more about what I could remember. I don't know how they managed to figure out that I was at the scene but I do my best to feign ignorance. I wasn't handcuffed to the bed, so I must've not been in too much trouble. Maybe it was one of the other hunters who slipped up and had placed me there, but I had no way of knowing right now. Everyone was being very tight lipped around me. All I know is what happened up until the point where I passed out. But something I'm not expecting is when one of them changes the subject. Asking about Kyle.