Among and Beyond

1 - Departure

Blood. All he saw was blood. His vision was dipped in blood, a sweet passionate shade ornamented with touches of ancient Egyptian hierographics.

He tried to sit up, but his muscles stayed idle. He tried to move his fingers, only to receive a blank response. Nothing seemed to work. Surrounding both outside and inside of him was a oily fluid that made his nausea went ravaging, but he could not get out...

No...it was not that his muscles did not react...it was as if they were not there...anymore. He felt...hollowed, a terrifying fact that was trying to manifest as screams waiting to escape from his long-gone lungs. "Had I been on a anesthesia? No, I could still feel my skin, it was just my muscles and organs that seemed to vanish..." The thought brought headaches to him, headaches to a head that he did not know if anything was still in there...

He tried again, and again...without success. Without muscles, how could the bones move? They were never designed to move on their own...Still, he tried to send the pathetic neurotransmitters through the nerves that were absent under his skin, suddenly, his finger moved. "What did I just do...?" - He riddled himself, just to make everything weirder. He did not feel his muscles, but the thought of being able to move his extremities alone made the miracle.

"Me...d...di...cal... Ro...om..." - His tongue, which survived the hollowness, began to project the first thing that came to his mind.

He stretched his right arm and grabbed the edge of the tank, pulling his weakened body out of the fluid. Covering his skin was a molten gold-like fluid, dripping heavily onto the ground as he toddled his seemmingly first steps. The fluid even built up and flowed out as he pathetically threw up. He swallowed a mouthful of air, trying to force the uneasy stuff in his throat out like a poisoned victim.

Five minutes already. Still, the body was still too alien for him, he cannot get used to it. He stumbled and tripped no less than a dozen, yet, there was something far more inportant waiting for him in the room in the distant front. He eventually made it in one piece, standing before the curtains surrounding a bed. He struggled to pull out the curtains, which revealed the person inside, no, a thing, a statue of a teenage girl, a statue way too flawless to be call a sculpture.

It was a short statue, only about 5 feet in height, sculped out of some golden stone. The face of the statue was a girl, an adorable, yet sad one. It was also a worried, but relaxed one at the same time. Every details of the face was so realistic to be true, as if only to paint it in the right colors, you would mistake the statue for a real person. She had an Egyptian headband circling her Cleopatra-style hair that rested on her shoulders. She was wearing an Egyptian dress that had garments of gold, with only a touch of silver on the middle of her necklace. What was special about the silver touch was that it was shining, though too faint to be seen in direct sunlight, one could really tell it once in the dark.
Looking at the statue, he suddenly was in pain as if his feelings was twisted in the twriling sands of the desert, swallowing his whole body into it. Losing balance, he stumbled onto the ground as his body shook violently before coming to a total debacle.
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.
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The iron door opens.

Creaky, noisy and slowly, the cold piece of metal slid on the tracks, breaking the chilling blackness. There comes a candle, a light too dim for the dusty dark hall filled with an unfriendly, rusty air.

Footsteps begin to appear, sluggish and crawling. The echoes reach the deep shadow surrounding the only moving things that is longing for an improbable response.

Every step of his gives the crumbling walls a feeling of being organic, as the only thing that seems to indicate organisms is motion then. Nothing has moved an inch since the earliest days he can recall, nothing, as there was no reason to tread outside the rooms.

..."Shit..." Grinding his teeth, he struggled to lift the statue and move forward in the pitch darkness, where only his echoing breath and footsteps were the only traces of existence. Holding the human-sized statue on his back which was even heavier than himself, yet, his hands never once felt strained. Was it a contravene of physics? Even this one was a conundrum for himself, as explaining his abrupt shift in physical strength was a clueless topic. Though strong as he might be now, moving his body parts was a challenge, let alone controlling them to do everyday tasks.

Letting out a loud thud, he put the statue down and began to collect the stuff necessary for the trip. "Can I live on now...?" - He thought while his trembling fingers choppily clamp on the vitamin tubes. "This might be a better choice for me..." He then proceeded to inject one of them onto his right arm, to his surprise, despise the hollowed feeling, his insides were impervious as the contents flowed out completely.

"Shit..." The desparate patient threw away the now-empty tube and cleaned his arm. It was impossible to nourish his body. He didn't even bother to try to eat, as his digestive system was no more sitting in his body cavity. It was like a death sentence to him, death by famine, a painful yet funny one.

...

"Let's say goodbye to our home, little sis." - He spoke while wiping the dust on the statue's head. As a finale to their peaceful life, the iron gate opened as a gust of wind blew his hair. "How refreshing, this disgusting air." He spoke with a disgusted, yet interested grin.