Dream Catcher

Chapter 3 - Darkness, Fire Him (Part 1)

The nothing squeezed me so tight I couldn't
breathe. I panicked and wriggled, but there was
no point. I knew my fate in five words. I am
going to die.
I saw my memories, happy and sad, flip across
my vision like a person flipping the pages of a
book, a book that was far too short. But I could
feel the nothing leaking into my brain like
liquid, and the images had black holes burned
and corroded in them. The nothing spread until
my memory lay blank. I could not even
remember the happiest moment of my life, or
the saddest, or what had just happened to me.
All I felt was fear. Black and heavy. Throat
squeezing fear. I couldn't see anything but the
darkness I had clung to for so many years
surrounding me and binding me tight. My
screaming was causing pain to bubble out of my
ears as the torturous sound of high pitched bells
rang in my ears.
Either the floor gave way beneath me, or the
nothing released its grip on my fragile body
because I was suddenly falling. Falling into
empty nothingness. I stopped screaming, I
couldn't anymore. I was out of breath.
Slowly the sound came to me, creeping up the
nothing to my ears, which I was almost sure
were bleeding from the terrible sound that
echoed. But it was not the peeling noise of bells.
It was a deep crackling and a hearty roar. I
looked down in greater fear. I knew what lay
beneath me.
It was fire.
It's tongues licked up the nothing, reaching for
me as I fell. Thick, long, singing arms of
blinding light that reached for my torso, and
surely my heart, like the rays of the sun's
burning light at day break when it ate the dear
moon. And I was falling into it. Like the moon.
I hungrily breathed in the smoky air and
screamed yet again. The sound echoed and
pinged and, again, I could only think one thing.
I am dead. This is hell.
I tumbled over and my arm stretched out before
me. The tallest tongue of fire whipped out at it
and wrapped itself around it tightly, pulling me
down faster. I choked on the screams in my
throat and tears began to pour down my face as
the singeing fire burned its mark into my skin.
The pain was overwhelming. As the intense ball
of heat drew closer, my tears evaporated faster
than they fell and soon it was so dry that I had
to close my eyes to stop them from drying out. I
had accepted my fate. I was going to burn.
Forever. With one final sob, I closed my eyes to
the piercing light of my fiery hell.
Suddenly with a splat, I hit hard ground. But it
wasn't burning hot. It was cold. Ice cold. It
stung as I stood up, my muscles spazzing from
the impact they took and the rapid change from
hot to cold. I could feel the tears still in my eyes
freeze over and I quickly opened them to stop
them from freezing shut. I watched as the
crystalline ice droplets that had flown from my
thick eyelashes tumbled through the air. They
soared and gleamed like diamond, though I
could not see how, there was as much light as
the nothing had provided before. As they fell to
the ground just below me and shattered into
hundreds of beautiful fragments, I could feel
warmth. Warmth that grabbed my shoulders
and soon engulfed me in a warm embrace. I
feared the fire once more, and looked down at
my body in alarm to make sure I was not alight.
But there was nothing. Just the warm feeling.
But it was still cold, my legs could feel that, but
in an almost hug like way, everything else felt
warm.
Slowly I felt warmth edge closer to the side of
my face, soon not inches away from my ear.
Then I felt the soft warm touch on my ear that I
could not mistake for gentle lips. There was a
person beside me. I stretched out my arms in
frenzy, but there was nothing there. I froze, and
the lips I could still feel, so gentle and soft,
spoke.
"Shhh... Shhh. Relax, it's going to be ok."
I couldn't speak. I remembered the voice. The
nothing almost pushed the broken, recent
memory into my train of thought. The deep
musical flowing voice I had heard before the
darkness took over. He was here. But how?
"I can't see you." I said shakily. "Who are you?"
I shivered, the mixture of cold and hot too much
for my body. The warmth on my shoulder
disappeared and my hands instinctively reached
out for it, searching for it. They found it and the
warmth and it pushed itself to my lips. It felt
like fingers.
"Shhhh... It's going to be ok. Be still. I'm not
leaving. I won't let him hurt you." His voice
cracked with desperation.
My eyebrows furrowed as I concentrated, trying
to form words in my blank mind. My lips
moved slowly beneath the fingers.
"I...I can't... see you..." I shivered involuntarily.
"Who... who are you?" I asked again.
"Shhh... that's not important. Listen, I need you
to tell me what happened to you. I want to help
you." The warmth left my lips, but as I searched
for it, it returned on my forehead and trailed
back around my ear, pushing my hair out of my
face.
"Now please tell me. I need to know so I can
help you." he said again slowly.
"That's not going to happen..." I said, almost a
hint of a smile in my voice.
"Why not?" He asked playfully now, his mood
light.
"Because I'm dead, silly," I said playfully back.
Once more, my body shook with tremors.
"Are you cold?"
"Mmmmm," I mumbled, as I burrowed closer to
the warmth, embracing it. The warmth on the
shoulder and behind my head moved, and I
fumbled in the darkness, desperately searching
for the thing I longed for. But, as before, it
quickly returned, wrapping itself from behind
me now, around my waist and up my back. I
snuggled into it. I was sitting on the floor.
"I hate to break it to you," the voice said
carefully. "But you're not dead. Not yet at least."