Stolen

Part 0: Light

Marilynn leapt to her feet with the lightness of a child. All around her was a pearly landscape of light, and walking through it was like wading through water - slow, but easy to pass through. She found herself in a mental state of in-betweenness; a delicate thread of joy lifted her up, but peace and calmness, like a heavy blanket or a smoothly flowing river pouring out over her, kept Marilynn at what she could only assume was ground level.

That was when she turned around and felt a figure standing there. She didn't see him, she couldn't, for the brilliance that she now realized emanated from him. As though it lay just beyond the scope of vision, she could still perceive his presence close by. It felt supreme, and constant, and overwhelmingly - she couldn't put a word nearly expressive enough to it, but - loving.

A flash of déjà vu, or recognition, perhaps, came over her, and Marilynn saw something, a memory viewed from the outside, but with every single passion and whim being relived. She watched her past self as she lay in an ambulance bed, emaciated, deathly pale and weak, and yet still not thin enough for her insatiable anxieties.

She barely remembered getting there after her father had called the hospital people when she had collapsed from malnutrition on the way to school. In the ambulance, on the way, she had thrown up anything they'd tried to give her, and at that point, it was purely out of impulse. She was helpless to the brutal assault she suffered from within herself, even when the light had filled her vision and she felt the figure in front of her.

Marilynn had seen him beckoning, and had instead run the other way in terror, crying herself back into consciousness to get away. Her excuse was that she'd been too young to die, so she started eating very little, still, it was an improvement from the famine of before. But now?

The figure called to her, pulling her attention back in the gentlest way possible, like a warm breeze. She turned to him, a smile growing on her face, and he went ahead, beckoning for her to follow in that indiscernible way. The direction in which he left for was a frightfully exciting one, though unfamiliar, that seemed full of promises and hope.

When she ran, it was like leaping on the moon; each bound strengthened the sense of euphoria that overtook her, and brought her closer to that place, accelerating faster and faster. She was catching up, she was almost to where he was. Everything got brighter, and when she got to the edge, Marilynn took a deep breath and plunged into the new world.

Now she was going home.