(18+) Someone in the dark

Ch. 24: Abandon the colors

A hand grabbed mine. It wasn't slimy and cold. It was warm and strong, and it tried to pull me out of my misery. Another hand strengthened the grip, and my heart felt warmer, but when I opened my eyes, all I could see was blending light and intense colors. Toxic black eyes stabbed my soul and sharp teeth like from a thousand piranhas tore my human body into fragments of what it once was. The only thing that still felt normal was my hand, like someone connected it to an energy source that didn't belong in this universe. But I was too numb to react. Too dead to see anything else but the inside of their skulls when they looked at me with eyes that weren't there anymore.

The hands squeezed tighter around mine before they got a better grip around my wrist. It shouldn't be possible for whispers to be so loud, but it was. And everywhere I looked, I met black eyes. Black eyes. And another set of black eyes. Then brown eyes, and another pair of black eyes.

Wait! Brown?

I blinked and tried to turn my head back to them, but drifted off into blackness and pain. But then I saw them again, and the arms pulled me even further away from the deadly grasp that was about to consume me. Those brown eyes and the hands...

Michael. He was here to save me.

"Fight! Fight it, Arielle! You're stronger than them!" he shouted to outsource what was turning into a roar. And when he pulled both my arms and my head out into the fresh air, I gasped like it was my very first breath.

"I've got you! Keep looking at me! Abandon the colors, remember?" he yelled and smiled even though I knew it took him everything to fight for me. "I love you! Do you love me?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed as loud as I could, but he barely heard since my voice was so weak. So I mouthed the rest. "I love you, too."

"Good! Now let's fight them together!"

At first, I thought he only meant the shed that still tried to drag me down into the abyss. But then I looked at the mansion behind him and saw the flickering red light pounding on the inside of the windows like it was trying to break them. It looked like the whole mansion was going to explode.

"Hold my arms like I'm holding yours!" he shouted and made me grip around his wrists. Together, we formed an unbreakable link that was my lifeline and the symbol of our bond. "On three!"

Our eyes connected with an intensity that made my heart beat again. The proper kind of heartbeats that would bring me back to life. I could feel it now. It wasn't more than a tingle inside my chest, but after counting to three, my body had a million tiny explosions that short-circuited my nervous system. It was a hard reset that enabled me to move and kick my legs free from the evil cobweb that tried to hold me back. And with a final pull, I slipped out of the all-consuming vacuum followed by a hiss similar to when you pour cold water into a hot frying pan, only five hundred times louder.

"Come here!" Michael yelled with terror in his eyes and yanked me further away from the shed. And when I saw what he was looking at, I almost threw up. What previously had been hands and tentacles had transformed into random body parts, all rotten and necrotic, where the flesh fell off the skeleton and splattered onto the ground. And all of them were trying to reach me.

It was like living in my worst nightmare. The kind where the panic paralyzes you or makes you move in slow motion, slipping on the ground and falling with nothing to hold on to, and I didn't get very far until my knees buckled. Then I sunk to my knees and cried. My body was simply too weak to function, and I looked way more like a ghost than Michael did.

"Don't give up, Arielle!"

His voice sounded stern and clear, yet so distant that even if he seemed to scream the words right into my ear, I barely heard them. But I saw his eyes. And I kept looking at him while he lifted me up and carried me to safety a couple of hundred yards from the shed. He'd probably carried me even further if he didn't trip and fell, so we both landed in a bush before tumbling to the ground.