APOCALYPSE

𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑳𝑶𝑮𝑼𝑬

── # 𝑨𝑪𝑻 𝑶𝑵𝑬 , 𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑷𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝒁𝑬𝑹𝑶
↳ 'remember your name'

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"EVERYTHING IS ABOUT TO CHANGE..." A younger woman's voice wavered from above, "I just hope you understand why."

Her consciousness was flickering, fading in and out, like a dying light bulb. Groggily, she caught glimpses of the girl who had spoken, who was leaning over her. She was beautiful, her magnetizing blue eyes meeting with her for only a moment.

"Wha...?" She tried. The girl wore a guilty frown as she inserted a syringe into an IV she could only had assumed was connected to her.

Her memories began slipping through her fingers like grains of sand, washed away by the fluid coursing into her bloodstream. Her brother, his face blurring, his smile fading. Did he have freckles? Brown eyes? Blue? The soothing tone of her mother's voice, the way her hands felt on her skin. The boys she watched, studied, friends she'd vowed to defend, yet failed miserably. Their faces, now indistinct. A boy's hand, warm in hers, her head heavy on his shoulder. "I'll always love you," he'd said. Their lips meeting, hesitant but sweet. Was this their first? A birthday candle flickering on the cake. Someone was singing. Her age... seventeen? No... eighteen.

Even the contours of her own face she was now struggling to recall—the hobbies she treasured, the life she once lived, and even her favorite game as a kid—tag. The boy she was just beginning to love, but above all, the damning details of 'Wicked' were vanishing like smoke. Panic clawed, but even that felt distant, muted by the strange cold flowing through her veins.

She hated this. This helpless surrender. Every instinct screamed defiance, but her body was a lead weight. A single tear, hot and sharp, tracked a path down her temple. How could she fight when the enemy was inside, dissolving her mind? She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to conjure images, anything. The harder she tried, the faster they scattered. Her name.

What was her name?

She could hear someone enter the room, now a low murmur of voices. the girl who had been the reason for her memories, then another, deeper. A man's. He moved closer towards where she was sprawled out on a cold table. A thumb, rough and warm, brushed her cheek.

"You gotta survive in there,"

She was too weak to muster the strength to meet his gaze, she was motionless, a prisoner in her own body.

"Remember your name. It's Madylin. Keep repeating it until you can't anymore."

Madylin. The name was a fragile whisper, but she clung to it.  She held the idea close.

The girl's voice came again, a gentle warning. "It's time to go."

His hand moved from her face, finding hers. His grip tightened. Then, a ragged breath against her ear. "I'll come for you."

A coldness, far deeper than the fluid in her veins, seeped into her bones. She felt a shift, a jolt, then the sensation of being lifted. Her body, a lifeless doll, was jostled, pulled, and placed. The rough fabric of something—a stretcher? a gurney?—scraped against her skin.

The man's words, "I'll come for you," were a fading echo in her mind that was already dissolving. She tried to hold onto them, to the warmth of his hand, but even that sensation was being scraped away, leaving a smooth, terrifying blankness.

The murmurs of voices, once distinct, became muffled. She felt movement again, a gentle rocking, as if she were being transported. Her eyelids, impossibly heavy, refused to open. She was awake, her body refusing to give in to the sedatives, yet she was paralyzed in this comatose state.

Madylin. Don't forget. Madylin.

She began to feel and hear less and less. Time ceased to exist. She drifted in an amorphous state, a raw consciousness without context, without memory, like a newly formed thought in an empty mind. There was no pain, no fear, just an unending, silent drift.

Then, nothing.

word count: 678

↳ AUTHOR'S NOTE ༉‧₊˚✧

I've decided to change the beginning scene of chapter 1 up slightly, adding some more detail and make it a prologue instead. I may go back and edit the first two chapters too just because my writing has improved since then. I can't believe it's been almost a whole two years since I've started this book. I still have the first few chapters I did before my complete rewrite back in like March or April of last year. It's crazy to see how much I've improved since then and how much support I've gotten from you guys. Each and every one of  you are amazing and I'm so thankful for you.