Mirage

Chapter Nine

            Ryder's body hit the outcrop and the force of the impact stunned him. White spots danced in his vision as he heard something snap in his back. He had the distinct feeling that something wasn't right, things felt wrong. Or maybe that was the concussion. Despite tightening his neck in order to brace himself and prevent a head injury the force of the landing had given him some sort of whiplash and he'd hit the back of his head. 

          The sound of a wailing toddler broke through the encroaching darkness. He tried to move but nothing was responding. Each second ticked by and it felt like agonizing minutes as he mentally screamed at himself to move, something, anything. 

      Then he sucked in a painful breath and the stars exploded in his vision. It hurt to breath. The wailing hadn't stopped. It rang in his head like alarm bells, incessantly tugging him towards consciousness. He managed to move his neck slightly, trying to find the source of the noise. 

     The two year old was still in his arms, screaming, startled by the impact and the fall. The fog that clouded Ryder's mind made it hard to think. What was he doing here with a child in his arms? He felt something seeping into his jacket and he realized it was blood, his blood, from some sort of back injury. It was puddled all up his back. 

 The piece of stone from the building's foundation slammed into the outcrop a mere six inches away from them. Fragments exploded everywhere as the huge chunk of structure broke the ledge they were resting on. He felt pieces of rock tear at his skin like angry bees, peppering his face and left side. They cut into his hands, one of which was protectively clasped over the child's head.

Ryder let out a raw scream of anguish and frustration as he slowly rolled over, trying to gently set the screaming toddler down. Things aren't working like they're supposed too, he thought in the haze that nearly obscured his vision. He was brute-forcing himself onto his side using his arms, the toddler inches away from him on the cold stone. 

His head cleared to the point he could hear more than just the screaming child. He could hear the booms as more and more pieces of rubble hit the ground, a ceaseless cascade of showering rubble that sounded like some sort of horrifying rain. A scream of agony rang through the air, coming from somewhere below him. 

The world around him was a haze and he now realized that the gray he'd been seeing wasn't just his concussion. The dust from the destroyed building obscured the sky. He could only see a few feet. His face was wet with tears of pain and he felt blood dripping down his chin. Oddly enough, he didn't feel any pain after the initial wave that had hit him. 

Ryder reached for the screaming child, a trembling arm outstretched as he tried to tug himself closer and overtop the toddler. The rubble was the size of his fist. It came hurtling downwards from the dust cloud so fast that he didn't glimpse it and instead saw the red explosion that rose into the air before splattering him with warm red, pink and white goo. 

The screaming from the distraught toddler died in an instant. 

Ryder stared, uncomprehending. There was a rock, a very red rock laying where the child's head should be. He slowly dropped his hand to clutch the toddler's small warm hand in a futile gesture. He stared at the small hand in his, unwilling to gaze at what lay just above it. The rumbling, booming sounds had become distant. 

Small chunks of rocks and fine powder fell on him and he slowly gazed up only to find he was staring at a gray chunk of stone. He was encased in rubble, the distant rumbling growing more so as a few more small stones hit him in the face. 

Ryder turned his attention back to the small hand in his as it twitched. He felt something wet against the left side of his face that was plastered to the ground but he refused to look at it. He kept his gaze focused on the small hand. 

Things had gone quiet. The rumbling booms had stopped and the silence enveloped him. The silence seemed to crush him. It was profound after the chaos of the last fifteen minutes, since the initial explosion that had rocked him in his studio. 

Ryder couldn't move. He could barely breathe. He felt nausea building in his stomach, or maybe it was blood. Everything was beginning to blur around him and the darkness crept in. He blacked out.

 The small hand in his had begun to cool when his vision finally returned. 

He was staring at an eyeball. 

It was inches from his own, sitting in the same pool of blood that the left side of his face was currently pressed into. Then his gaze traveled to the jagged white peaks surrounding the small stone. It was like a mountain range, he thought to himself. 

The rock had caught the toddler in the temple and right side of his face. It had smashed through the skull, leaving the left side of his face mostly intact. He could make out the mouth and teeth, frozen in a half-open position and the small nose barely visible under all the blood. The left eye had landed right next to Ryder's face and now he was staring into the vacant eye-socket. 

He lost all concept of time. The world was this broken, bloodstained husk in front of him and he couldn't look away. He couldn't move away either, his body paralyzed from a broken spine. The small hand in his didn't feel real. It was so alien to what lay right in front of him. 

Ryder clutched it a little tighter, hoping his own warm hand might warm the child's cold, hardening flesh. The small hand had become locked around Ryder's last two fingers. 

He was trembling, black spots dancing in his vision again. Ryder felt wholly numb and disconnected from the world around him, the world becoming a gray veil. His own hand looked dreadfully pale. The last thing he saw were their intertwined hands.