A rose to grind

-40-

At first, it was all a haze as if I were using a pair of murky and unclean binoculars to view the world through. I could feel myself weighing lighter and lighter, like a balloon that had gotten detached from its string, defying against gravity as it began to elevate higher and higher into the air. Suddenly, a burst of vivacious red bloomed in my vision, taking over my peripheral senses like a raging storm. I didn't then, what kind of person I would've met.

A voice that was lilting with a tantalizing timbre, rang lowly beside my ear. "Yugo." Calling out my name with such an irresistible tone that I was compelled to raise my head, to see the owner of this attractive voice. Somehow, it felt extremely familiar, like I had heard this voice regularly before, but the origin of it was unknown.

It eluded me. The innumerable quantity of the muscle relaxants - the drugs - that Jacklin had force-fed me into presented itself as a hindrance, especially in clouding my rationality. I couldn't think straight. I was sure I had cut out to be an extremely pathetic and lowly sight with my whole body laid out on the floor, my eyes barely able to open, but I attempted to pry them apart in hopes of meeting this person who called to me so attractively, and in such a somber and desperate voice. There was no way I could've ignored them.

But I did not want to brush them off. I tilted my head to the side, eyes scourging and narrowed, occasionally from the inability of the neurons to support the muscles behind the eyes. As I did, the image that was previously indistinguishable began to clear bit by bit slowly, like a filter of mosaic was being scrubbed clean. The vivid crimson hue enlivened as if intending to rival the flames of the Sun. I thought to myself that I had known this kind of red before. This red flame that overpowered your senses and left you helpless against it.

"Yugo.." The same masculine voice faded in and out like a dying radio. "Can you.. hear me?"

My hand weakly raised itself from the ground, feebly trying to capture and extinguish the outline of the fire that irritated my eyesight. Yet I caught nothing but the chilly air, and as my fingers began to curl inwards, a strong hand abruptly gripped it. My frail hand was completely sheathed by the man's palm, which leaked a bit of sweat, and was warm and unwelcoming, just like the ferocity of an unruly forked fire. I was unwittingly burned by the warmth that emanated from his hand.

"Yugo."

Ah, I knew that voice.

"Why.. how could you appear before me so suddenly..? I think I must be dreaming. I had thought of this countless times, I'm not ashamed to admit, but this time, your hand feels so real. Yugo.. look at me."

Another warmth took a hold of my cheek, gently encouraging it to tilt upwards, and as soon as I saw those brown orbs that hid the ire of embers, it was like I had been physically charred. The opacity obscuring my eyes clarified, and I immediately sobered up, yanking my hand away from this strange yet familiar grasp. But before I could remove my hand, the person lurched forward and held onto me even tighter.

Refusing to let me ago adamantly, like a child who had caught the corner of a stuffed toy they earnestly wanted, that was exactly how Etienne looked like. He was not a child, yet not a man, his face was still youthful but considerably more mature from the last time I saw him. Back then, the one expression he casted towards me was of repressed pain and unfulfilled longing, yet looking at this foreign but familiar man, his face still held the same expression, funny enough. But staring into his face, I couldn't help but grow breathless.

How long had it been? I wondered. My sense of time and present was disrupted and rearranged as Jacklin pleased. Day and night was no different from me, but my world was just a spacious room filled with useless junk, and a man who wanted to monopolize me and cut me from the world. Spending day by day with Jacklin, I began to wonder if I contracted his psychopathy, but it shouldn't be. I had gone insane from the very day I woke up inside of this damn novel.