Records Dyed Red

Chapter Five

Someone was singing.

The melody sank through the thick fog surrounding Roksu, gently poking and prodding him awake.

Roksu's consciousness returned sluggishly. He felt as if he'd been sunk in a thick pit of mud that dragged at him as he struggled to pull himself free.

He briefly considered giving up, writing it off as unnecessarily difficult, only to change his mind as that distant melody finally registered.

Who was that?

Ah, his head hurt. What had he been doing again? Reading, and then he'd drifted off and then...something.

Did he have a new neighbor that liked to sing at strange hours of the night?

His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and throbbed in time with his pulse. It reminded him of that time a Grade 2 monster had gotten a lucky hit and sent him flying into a wall.

He'd struggled to remember his own name for a week.

Had he somehow gotten injured while he slept? It wouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibility. There were few buildings left that didn't have some sort of structural damage, and it wasn't unheard of for things to collapse without warning.

As if it were an old, outdated computer, his mind finally managed to spark to life. As it did, vague fractured memories started to rise up out of the murk still lingering at the edges of his consciousness.

That's right. He had fallen asleep reading, but then he'd awakened to...what? Being swallowed by something? And there had been someone singing, and he'd slept again and then...and then...

The vague feeling of cold, a glint of light off metal....and pain.

Pain, and the color red saturating everything.

An ominous feeling settled over him and Roksu shoved the memories away before they could fully form. Forget it. Whatever it was, it was over and done with, right? There was no need to remember something useless.

Instead, he began to shift and squirm, struggling to push outward and expand the small, weirdly wet space he was in. Wherever he was, it was tight, slimy and downright uncomfortable.

Not only that, but his skin felt tight and itchy, like it was coated in dried paint that cracked and pulled as he moved. He wanted to scratch at it, but couldn't get a good angle in the tight space.

"Oh? Are you finally awake?"

Roksu froze. The voice was female, though not the one that had stopped singing in the distance. This voice was clear, as if the speaker were right next to him.

Deciding it was better to not engage with invisible voices, he returned to fighting against the whatever-it-was surrounding him. After a few minutes, it split, revealing the hard curve of a second barrier just past it. That crumbled with ease as soon as he touched it and something shimmered into view just beyond it.

Silver light. A thick sheet of it just in front of him, casting the area he was in in a soft glow.

Huh, that was —

His thought process trailed off as, for the first time, he was able to take stock of his body in the dim light.

Was he a...lizard?

A lizard?

Wait.

WaitWaitWaitWait.

The ignored memories pushed back up again, jumbled and hazy. Roksu picked at the relevant pieces, and consciously shoved away the rest.