Specials

Chapter 20- Alone

Dawn's head felt like it was packed with cotton. She found herself lying on a cool but dry surface, her eyes still shut. She cautiously opened one, only to find more darkness. She opened her other eye. Still, nothing lighted the empty gloom, leaving Dawn staring blindly into the dark.

"Hello?" She called carefully. She thought she heard a hint of an answer, but it was swallowed up by the stifling blackness. "Is anyone there?" Dawn cried, slightly louder. It was amazing, she thought, how utterly black this room was. It was the kind of dark that eats up everything, leaving you unable to tell if that sound you heard was really there or if it was the ringing of your own ears, leaving you completely clueless about if that fuzzy blur you saw was a reflection of some light you should crawl to or if it was the inside of your own eyelids. It made Dawn feel vulnerable, a sitting duck waiting in this pool of darkness for something to grab her from behind. Or from the front. It didn't really matter, since Dawn couldn't see anything any direction.

Dawn began crawling forwards, running her hands over the ground as she went. The ground was slightly dusty, making Dawn think it was dirt.

Wait.

Dawn could feel the ground.

Lightning-hot panic shot through her as she jolted bolt upright, taking her glove-less hands off the ground and holding them out in front of her, suspended in the air so she couldn't touch anything else. Questions began flowing through her mind. If her powers didn't work on black things, did that also mean they didn't work when things were cast in shadow, or rather swallowed up by it, like this room? Was Dawn's effect so that the instant a light shone in this room, it would utterly blind the bearer of said light, scalding their eyes? Dawn couldn't find answers, only more questions as she stared into the cold, oppressive black of the room.

*

Sarah was unbelievably hungry. And it wasn't just the gnawing human hunger that growled in her stomach occasionally. This was much more powerful. It was a bone-deep, unbearably aching and consuming hunger that caused Sarah to see everything in streaks of red, to see anything living as warm pulses of blood. Animals and humans alike turned into walking networks of arteries and veins, no longer individual souls but instead look-a-like capsules of the rich, flowing liquid she craved.

And yet, she could not have any of it. Sarah was imprisoned in a dirt room, completely empty save for a candle that dimly lit the room, and the lattices of roots on the similarly dirt walls. Not that she would have noticed any of that. Currently, her face was pressed up against the cold steel door. Just a couple hundred feet away, Sarah could smell the thing she wanted. Blood.

She had tried opening the door with all her vampiric strength, fingernails scrabbling where the metal fused to the dirt walls, trying to get either to give. Eventually, the lack of sustenance had driven Sarah mad with need, causing her to throw her body, shoulder first, into the hard door several times. Still, the unforgiving metal would not budge. All that throwing and ramming had worn Sarah out, so now she slumped at the base of the door, driven on by a primal urge unable to be kept in check by her conscious mind.

And so Sarah waited.

*

Chameleon, not for the first time in her life, was terrified. Her heart was pounding like a frightened animal trying to escape her chest, her breath came in quick, rapid gasps, and her skin was a bleached, almost white gray. Chameleon could not think, could not try to organize her mind into thoughts and actions, because every time she tried, the flashbacks came.

A man with curly brown hair, wrapped in a white lab coat that was dotted with what looked like blood loomed over her. A cruel, malicious grin cut across his face, horrible intent reflected in his cold black eyes. A long, wicked looking needle filled with a sickly green looking liquid was clutched in his hand, bringing it closer to her arm.

"I will make you perfect, little Char. You will be my glorious creation, and hand in hand, we shall rule the world," He cackled as he said this. "That is, if you live, of course." His raucous laughter rose even higher, the needle puncturing her skin. She could not move, for she was chained to the wall.

Just as in her flashbacks, Chameleon was spread-eagle on a wall, metal cuffs circling her arms, legs, and torso to keep her where she was. Just the position alone was enough to send Chameleon spinning into panic attacks, but the wheeled trolley like you would see in a hospital in front of her sealed the deal. The metal trolley had a sheet of white fabric, faintly blood splattered, covering it. On top of the protective covering was a wide spread of tools. Needles and scalpels and drills and vials of viciously green liquids. It didn't just bear a slight similarity to the table that was always lingering behind the tormentor from her past, it was perfectly similar in every detail, making Chameleon feel strongly that this was the exact same one. The stain slightly above its left front wheel that Chameleon had focused on to distract herself from horrors. The fraying hem of the "sanitary" sheet, the one that Chameleon was pretty sure had never, ever been changed. The rusty red on the handles and tips of each of the tools, some of which she was certain was her own blood. Each detail was crystal clear, perfectly preserved in banks of memory Chameleon had locked away in the deepest corner of her brain, previously promised to never be accessed again.

So now Chameleon writhed in terror, her mind fighting against her body, the mechanism that forced mind over matter broken.

Chameleon sat in the semi-darkness, fully certain that her tormentor she knew only as R would come through the door, pick up a knife and carve her open to see what she was made of. And there was nothing she could do about it.

*

Kia was alone, drifting in a deep pit of sinking darkness.

Where was she? Where was Sarah? What was this place? Was she still a ghost, or had she inadvertently drifted into the void that swallowed up spirits, never to return? She could see her whole body, outlined in glowing silver, casting shining light into the pitch darkness. The light didn't reflect off anything, causing Kia to reaffirm the guess that this was the void. Just as Kia had resigned herself to this fact, a figure drifted towards her.

"Kiaria, my love," it was a woman, long flowing hair cascading silver behind her, a warm smile on her face and her arms spread in a wide, inviting hug. "You've finally returned to me!"

"Who are you?" Kia asked the woman. At this question, the woman's face folded into a frown.

"My dearest, you don't remember me? It's me, you're mama," the woman smiled, drifting nearer in that whisping way that ghosts travel. At this word, memories filled Kia's mind, thick and syrupy and warm as honey, scented with the comfortable smell of home, the reassuring presence of family.

"Mom!" Kia cried, running to embrace her mother. "Where are we?" Kia asked as her mom stroked the top of her head with a cool hand.

"The in-between. A place spirits are sent for a time being, until they decide whether they want to stay on earth or go into the After," Kia's mother replied, holding her close to her chest.

"I can leave, then? I can go back to my friends?" Kia asked her mom. A spark of happiness filled Kia. She could see Sarah again! She could live as she normally did, this was not the void where you were sucked down forever and stuck and unable to go to earth or go to whatever was next.

"Oh, Kia, please stay with me! It is so lonely down here without you, I am too old to go to earth and I need you in order to go to the After!" Kia's mom protested, silver-white eyes wide in worry. Kia felt that familiar feeling of guilt, the child trying to live their life but pulled down by the weight of family obligation, torn between making her own decisions and doing what her mother needed. Kia knew she'd have a decision to make, one that would haunt her with what could have been no matter what she ultimately chose.

*

Angel had a strong feeling of something being not quite right. It wasn't just the fact that Angel was trapped in a room with just a dim candle, but there was a powerful sense of something wrong nagging at the back of Angel's brain.

Angel's friends were in danger, and imprisoned in this tiny room, there was nothing Angel could do about it. It was driving Angel crazy.