Shapeshifters

4. Sunlit Past

I've been trapped in this vicious cycle of nightmares and pain for four days now.

There's no way of telling if it has actually been four days, my time notion was erased long ago, but sometimes, in between episodes of excruciating pain and mind-shattering nightmares, I "wake up".

There are these brief moments of sanity when the pain gives place to a numbing sensation and my mind gets relatively clear, I only feel alive in those moments. And every time there is one, he is by my side.

Green eyes getting increasingly tired, hopeless. He'd speak to me whenever I appeared conscious and I wish I could thank him for it, sometimes the sound feels like ointment on an open wound, like a caress, and sometimes all I hear is a low mumble, but even then, I close my eyes and try to synchronize my breathing with his incoherent words, my blood running to the music of his voice, the world falling into place when our fingers brush.

I thought the pain was going to be the death of me, but perhaps it'll be the nightmares. I've always been mentally unstable, dealing with hallucination episodes all my life, hearing and seeing what was not there, could not be there, medication was proven useless, and with no family history to assist with a diagnosis, therapy could only do so much. I've always thought I'd grow used to it at one point, I thought I actually did.

I've lived with it for so long, it never occurred to me that my mind could break before my body does.

Green-eyes is telling me a story, his voice is an anchor that I try to hold tight to as the current of insanity pulls me in the opposite direction, into open sea, into the dark.

"You are doing good" He says when my eyelids flutter when I try, unsuccessfully, to open my eyes. "No one made it this far before, so don't give up now, ok?"

Wherever the line to "giving up" is, I want to go there. I want to end this, I want to surrender to this invisible enemy, I want to admit defeat in this battle I never intended on fighting. But I don't know how, there's no red button I can press, no plug I can pull, no string I can cut, no jump, no light at the end of the tunnel.

I've wished for a light at the end of the tunnel so many times now it feels betraying to his trust in me.

I don't want to let him down, not when he put so much effort into saving me, so much passion into keeping me alive... But if letting him down was the price to set myself free, I would pay for it.

But it's not up to me anyway. And so the nightmares go on.

***

Everything is so bright all of a sudden, as if the world has decided to increase the saturation, become more alive, more colorful, more beautiful.

The sun feels so good on my skin, kissing every inch of my body, filling me with comfortable warmth.

Blinking repeatedly I raise my right hand over my head to block the light from my eyes. They adjust to reveal the most beautiful sky spreading on top of me, big silky clouds surfing the infinite blue canvas above, being carried away by the breeze without a care in the world, not a drop of rebellious gray anywhere.

Half a dozen birds fly south, their silhouettes small black dots in the distance, I wish I was one of them, I wish for wings that could raise me to true freedom.

I can feel the grass on the nape of my neck. I've always despised lying in it, the feeling of itchy needles on my skin, the dirt, never once had I considered it to be this soft, this soothing, I could lie here for years, I could grow roots of my own, allow the vegetation to engulf me.

Facing right, I'm met with wide trees, swaying their impossibly green leaves in rhythm with the gentle breeze, trunks marked by time, kids, couples proclaiming their undying love.