Take a Shot

Withdrawal

When you open your eyes, his is the only face you can see. Everything is so dark. You're used to seeing in the dark, but this dark is a very new level. You can't see anything except what is right in front of you. You see the stain of blood around his mouth. You grab his shirt collar and pull him close to you. You lick your finger, wipe the blood off, then rub your finger off on your shirt. There's something rumbling, and you know you're moving, but you don't know what's happened. Without the stain, his mouth looks normal. The bleeding does not continue. You're just glad, so glad, that he's not bleeding anymore.

You run your hands over what you dare of his body. There are no major wounds. You swallow, and your heart sticks in your throat. You nearly choke trying to force it down. You do not know what's happening, and if you don't find out, you will both die. That much, you know.

You roll your back to him and feel around. There's...wood...or something that feels like wood, on all sides of you. You reach up and cannot touch the ceiling. You reach up further, sitting all the way up. You stretch a little far forward. You slam your temple onto whatever the ceiling is made out of, and you lose consciousness before you can identify what you've hit. You collapse bonelessly back to the ground level with a thump.

You wake up a little later, and it is still dark. As your eyes flutter open, you see him on his back now, staring at...something. His eyes shift to you. You both lay still. Wordlessly, he reaches out for you. He grabs your hand, kisses the back. He rolls onto his side and tugs your arm a little. You squirm a little closer. You are shaking and sweating all over, but you feel neither hot nor cold. In fact, you feel nearly nothing. Not even a headache.

He wraps his arm around your shoulder and puts his chin on your head. You feel his jaw move but do not hear what he says. You reach up and squeeze his arm twice. You do not know how to convey that you can't hear him. You try. You think he understands, but he keeps talking. You start hearing jumbled syllables, but you cannot piece them together. He might be speaking a foreign language for what you know. Your comprehension is low, if not none. But still he talks. The timbre of his voice is solid as it has ever been, and you wonder how he is possibly so calm when everything around you two is so very wrong.

You try to speak up, to tell him to be quiet because you don't know who's around you, and you don't want him to be killed.

But he seems to be aware. At least, more aware than you are. You cannot tell what anything is or where anything is, even the edges of your own body as they relate to this box and to him. Your very edges feel fuzzy. You are shaky in the way only extreme heat can make you. But you do not feel hot. You do not feel anything at all.

You try to sit up again. He holds you down on the floor. This does not sit well. You struggle. Eventually, you slip through his grasp. In sitting up once more, your head collides with something with a force that trickles blood down your forehead, down your nose, across your lips.

Your lips are numb. There feels an empty space between your nose and your chin. You try to feel for your lips, but you cannot feel your hands either.

Your stomach feels very sick. You shove away from him and retch.

Next you open your eyes, you hear a shatteringly loud crash, feel a sharp pain in your leg, then black out once more.

Next you open your eyes and everything around you is white. This is not heaven. You will never deserve a heaven. This must be an illusion, a pre-death cognition, a comfort meant to ease the brain into death instead of being shocked into it. But you do not yet want to die. You have too much to do. You close your eyes. You forcefully kick your leg up, the pain taking a full second for your brain to recognize. Shortly after recognition, you open your eyes, see his face as everything goes black again.