Fairytales

Chapter 12- Chase

Chase felt like he was floating. He lay on his back, his arms positioned stiffly at his sides.

For the first time in a long time, he was cold.

Darkness surrounded him, engulfed him, so much so that he wasn't sure where the darkness ended and he began. A thick rusty tasting something coated the inside of his mouth, it burned on his tongue, and stung a burning path down his throat.

His whole body burned.

He tried to fight against the pain, tried to force his eyes open, to move his arms from their rigid position at his sides, but pain, crippling pain that only tripled when he tried to move, made him rethink that decision.

He focused on breathing instead, something that was getting harder and harder to do with every excruciatingly long second that passed.

Breathe in. Breathe out...Breath in.

An unfamiliar thumping echoed in his ears, fast at first, then a little slower. Thump...thump...

"I'd say I'm sorry." The unfamiliar voice forced its way through the sludge caking his brain. The same woman's voice that had spoken to him before. Despite the pain, Chase couldn't help but notice that the voice didn't actually sound particularly remorseful. "But this really is your fault. Mostly."

The voice didn't continue. Chase wasn't sure whether to be relieved...or disappointed. The thumping, like soft background music to his unfolding nightmare, filled the eerie silence, growing fainter, and slower, with every passing moment.

"This was definitely not my idea." The voice sounded faintly annoyed. "But your mother was a very...persuasive woman." A pause. "If you're lucky, you inherited that trait."

His mother. The mention of her made his heart skip a little in his chest. A bad idea it seemed, since he felt even weaker the moment it went back to normal again. Though normal was, admittedly, relative.

How did this woman know his mother?

Chase's body was burning and freezing at the same time. His ears rang, his eyes stung even with them closed, his jaw ached like it had been broken ten times over. He would have screamed if he could but, as it was, he couldn't even move enough to writhe in the pain melting his body from the inside out.

"Or maybe not." The voice said, sounding much closer now. There was a put upon sigh, the kind of sigh that was usually paired with spilled milk or five o'clock traffic. Chase felt something, the toe of a shoe, touch his arm, pushing it as if to test if he were alive. The touch sent stabbing pain through his entire body. Chase couldn't help the gasp that escaped his throat.

"Hmmm." The woman hummed. "Not dead yet, at least."

Yet. Not exactly comforting. And yet, somehow, he couldn't really bring himself to care when his entire body felt like it was going to break into a million pieces.

"If this works, you'll be much stronger, just like that harpy you called a mother wanted." The woman sounded like she was right above him, looking down on him. "Though why she thought you need to be so strong, a measly boy band wanna-be like you..." She didn't finish. Chase got the impression of a shrug. "Anyways, a deals a deal, and I'm nothing but reliable."

Chase had stopped listening. The thump was almost nonexistent now. Thump...

Silence, just as the darkness had done, began to consume him. Even the voice, if it even still spoke, could not penetrate this...emptiness.

Chase felt himself pulling away, going...somewhere. For a moment, he wasn't Chase Allen, he wasn't a high school Junior at Reinton Heights high school, he wasn't a person. He wasn't anything. He felt himself sinking into nothingness. He felt—

CHASE!

A voice penetrated the emptiness and, like a ghostly hand, tore him back from the darkness and back into himself. He slammed into the real world hard enough that he had to gasp for air, filling his lungs like he'd been drowning. Everything still hurt, horribly, but now, now he could breathe.

A familiar sound pounded in his ears.

Thump. Thump. Thump.