Sing Me To Sleep

Chapter 14

There's a bitter taste on my tongue, harsh and overpowering, but vaguely familiar. My throat is dry, my lips cracking, the skin rubbing roughly together when I close my mouth. I try to swallow the scant amount of saliva I can muster, willing the sour flavor to go away. It tastes like green. 

I hear a faint beeping noise, it's erratic rhythm filling my ears and making me squirm. But it hurts so much to move. Everything hurts. I try to remember what happened, but my thoughts seem fuzzy and jumbled, like a massive heap of... jumbled thoughts. 

I groan, both an internal gesture as well as outward. Fuck, my brain hurts.

"Move slowly," A strange and somewhat distant voice commands. "Your mind is still repairing itself. Straining will only damage you more."

I remain still, my head heavy with sleep. Not tiredness, more like I've been asleep for too long. My mentality seem incomplete, like I can't form one fully coherent thought. It's all just mixed up objects, vague, blurry images pressed against the black background. It hurts when I try to open my eyes, pain shooting through my skull. I take the moment of temporary paralysis to evaluate my body instead.

Dull pain courses through me at a steady pace, a stinging sensation trailing behind the ache and making it hurt all over again. It feels like blue.

Wait... Something is not right in that sentence. Feels like blue?

The pain seems to fade a little and I find myself blinking rapidly. My eyes feel dry and unused, but the movement doesn't send jolts of agony through my head, so I decide to test the rest of my body. I wiggle my fingers, small jerky spasms at first, but within a moment I'm stretching the digits to their full slim length and then coiling them back. I move my neck, the bones in my back cracking and my joints aching, but I can move without screaming in pain. I pull myself to a sitting position, letting my cramped legs stretch out in front of me, my back arching to hear more bones pop.

And then I look around and my motions cease.

It's destroyed. The black that I've grown so used to is gone, faded into a pale grey. It extends out endlessly in all directions like an overhanging cloud, but there's no horizon. There's no thin line where the earth meets the sky. It's an all encompassing grey color and jagged cracks break the even scene both above and under me. Fissures surround me like open wounds, pure white piercing through the trenches like sunlight, illuminating the never ending area. So many cracks, like ruptures of the earth. Debris litters the ground like the remaining crumbles of a building, rigid grey blocks trashing the now uneven surface.

"You could have killed yourself." The voice breaks through my thoughts and my eyes immediately find the skeleton boy. He's unharmed; A perfect image against the treacherous setting. The only thing that wasn't destroyed. He crouches next to me, clasping his hands in front of him and setting me with a worried, yet sturdy, look. "You almost did."

"What happened?" My voice cracks, rough and scratchy against my throat.

The skeleton boy shakes his head, looking disappointed. "You were looking for me," He says, shifting his hazel eyes to watch the surrounding destruction. I follow his lead and look back to the ruined scenery. "You were trying to remember how you know me, trying to find the corner of your brain that you have me hidden in."

I close my eyes, rubbing the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and thumb, his words making my head hurt even worse. I didn't understand what he was telling me.

He sighs. "I told you I am the formation of your own imagination and a memory, Frank." He looks back at me and narrows his eyes, concentrating. "You were trying to find the memory of how you know me."

I suddenly remember now, the agonizing pain now just a memory, but still so clear. I was trying to remember Gerard. I look around us once again. "What happened to this place?" I ask, my voice still raw, but sounding somewhat stronger.

"You were breaking down the walls of your own mind." The skeleton boy tells me, looking down at his folded hands, his thumbs padding against each other. "You didn't know exactly what you were looking for so you were looking for everything. It's like searching for a treasure without a map, so you just grab a shovel and start digging." His eyes move around the ruins once more, his voice sounding sad. "You just end up with a bunch of holes." He sighs again before turning his gaze back to me. "When you break down the walls of your mind, you become overwhelmed. There are things you've subconsconciously buried for a reason, things you shouldn't remember, and things that are ever present at the forefront of your brain. When those things come crashing down, it's like you're drowning. It's too much to remember all at once. It nearly killed you."

I bite my lip and this time avert my own gaze. "That's what I want," I say. "That's why I'm here. Because I want to die."

The angel shakes his head quickly. "Not like this," He says, his voice taking on a hard edge. "It would have taken years to fully perish. You would lose your mind at first, become lost in an uncontrollable mass of thoughts and memories and you really are drowning. Your body would then become uninhabitable and you would be lost under the water, and it would fucking hurt. More than trying to remember. It's a constant pain and when it finally becomes unbearable, you would find the darkness."

I swallow hard. Okay, so maybe trying to force memories wasn't the best idea. Note taken. But the point was still there like a flashing sign; I want to die.

"Is that why you don't want me to remember the night my father died?" I ask.

The skeleton boy nods. "I'm afraid that it will be too much for you. That's a memory that's better left buried."

"Are you a buried memory?" I wonder, my words almost silent. If Gerard is a memory that I subconsciously buried, then he must be a bad memory, right? And that scares me. I can't imagine this angel being a horrible memory, something so terrible that I wouldn't even want to remember. 

But he shakes his head. "No. I'm not a buried memory." I actually let out a relieved sigh. "You can't remember me fully because you're looking in the wrong places." He cocks his head suddenly and narrows his eyes. "What did you mean when you said it felt like blue?"

I roll my eyes, knowing that my thoughts had just been jumbled. It didn't mean anything, it was just a mistake. And then I realize something. "Blue," I say. "It's the medicine. It always hurts when they give me the blue medicine."

The skeleton boy smiles, nodding his approval. He's going somewhere with this, but I honestly cannot see where. "So you associated the color with the pain."

"Yeah, I guess so." I say.

"And your mouth," He raises an eyebrow. "What does your mouth taste like?"

I think for a moment before answering. "Green."

His smile grows wider. "Exactly."

I can only shake my head. "No," I say. "I don't get it. What does that even mean?"

The skeleton boys simply continues watching me, appraising me with a content smile. "You'll understand soon enough. But for now, I think we should focus on something else."

I sigh, kind of irritated. I want to demand that he tell me the importance of tastes like green, but instead I settle on saying, "And what's that?"

"They will be waking you up soon." My heart sinks. No. No, I don't want to wake up. Apparently the skeleton boy can sense my sudden panic and places a soothing hand on my outstretched leg. "They could tell when your mind started crumbling," He explains. "They think you've been comatose for too long. They'll be trying to wake you up soon to ensure no further damage. And I think we have one more thing to do before then."

"What do we have to do?" I wonder.

The skeleton boy stands up and smiles sadly, showing his disapproval, yet stretching out an open hand to me. "You want to remember your father's death. Then I will help you."