Timeless

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

            It hurts. I mean, it fucking hurts. Not long, not long at all, but for, like, thirty seconds—maybe less, maybe more—it feels like you’re being halfway decapitated; your head hanging off your body but not fully gone. And then the pain subsides, and this numbing, vague ache takes over. My vision blurred from the rim until there was only a circle of light in my sight, slowly becoming dimmer and dimmer...

***

            I don’t awake for hours, but when I do, I’m still in pain. And it’s dark; shadows are everywhere, but I can’t identify the source of the light. I walked around aimlessly forever. My throat still burned and burned, the inability to breathe still lingering in my lungs. Do my lungs even work anymore? I don’t exactly feel the desire to inhale...

            Sudden, abrupt tears gather at my eyes. Maybe I did think all wrong. Maybe it needed to be a gun, maybe the rope wasn’t tight enough, maybe I wasn’t dead at all, but just unconscious, and I was at the hospital in a bed next to Starburst as my family leaned over me, trying to detect the cause of my attempted suicide. But they’ll never know; even I will question my purpose for hanging myself when I realize that I may not get to see London at all. It was all for nothing. The shadows are dancing now, crossing over me and causing evanescent hallucinations. I don’t know where to go at all, and I suddenly felt panic and fear rise in my chest at the thought of being trapped in this dark place forever; not really dead but not alive either. A ghost of a memory.

            Was the pain really too great for me to handle that I had to kill myself? Could I really not deal with London’s death or my sister’s pain that I had to die for it all to end? Reconsideration and regretful thoughts fill my head as I wander longer and longer with only the shadows as reminders of what I’ve done now. I was halfway between dead and going to be dead. And I was alone.

            I sink to my knees slowly before I can stop, grabbing fistfuls of my hair and questioning myself. I don’t cry, or scream out. In fact, I don’t make any noise at all, just sorta sit there, wondering what I do now and what I was supposed to think. I’m about ready to get back up and just keep walking—maybe that was my purpose, to walk until I drop dead dead—and I have one knee up and the other down when I hear it. I hear her voice.

            “HUNTER!” London cries out.

            I look in the direction of her voice, but I see nothing.

            “Hunty!” I hear it again, it’s happy, but retrained, distant, like I’m not supposed to find her. No, I can’t let that happen. I run in the direction of her voice. Slowly, the shadows disappear, the whole darkening world disappears until I’m standing in an amber field. Fall trees rise up and encase the field, and the sky is a rose-pink color. Little...sparkle things float around in the air, and I reach out to touch one only to have it hover the other way. I drop my hand to my side. My gaze silently trails the whole field before they rest on someone.

            She’s here.

            In a dress—one that ended in shorts and not a skirt—looking resplendent with her blonde hair in pigtails, her perfect smile revealing no more braces, caressing a...hamster? Or a strawberry? Or both?

            “London!” I scream happily and run towards her. She doesn’t turn around until I’ve knocked her over, and she gasps when I land on top of her.

            “Hunter...you’re dead!” She says gleefully. Yes, because London Cole can make death sound like a beautiful thing.

            “I guess I am...” I mutter. She eyes me for a minute, a dreamy look on her face, pert and perfect, before looking at me seriously.