The Sacrifice: Forgotten | Loki | Book 1

Chapter 1: Bring me to Life

146 , 147, 148, 149 , 150. 

Finally.

I thought this day would never end. Having gone home under the pouring rain is bad, but still nothing compared to doing it at night, well, early in the morning. Nope, worse without doubt. I groaned as pain shot up my legs. They were as sore as my throat. Must've been a cold. Hey, idiot! Nice, so you're already ill, and now your soaked like a wet dog! Congrats on living healthy!  

This could almost be Xenia's voice. But it was the sarcastic, piece-of-shit part of myself.

Since the block of flats I lived in had no lift, I had to go up to the eleventh - and last - floor with nothing but my legs. You have two healthy legs, use them!  And I had actually thought being a student was going to be a piece of cake. How sweet, how naive. As a college student, you get royally exiled into the apartment blocks - years of working at school, striving to belong to the elite, working and saving, and at the end of the day: you are poor. As in, almost impoverished. A tiny apartment at the arse end of the city is all you get, that is, if  you get a place to sleep at all.

Well, anyway. My beloved mini-job.

I swore as my frozen fingers fumbled with the keys, if they ever asked me again to deliver the newspapers at 5 a.m., I'd roast Xenia's marshmallows over the cosy bonfire born out of nothing but these lousy carpet cleaning ads. It wasn't worth doing this damn job for fifty bucks a month and sleeping my time through the lecture.

Alas, I was too tired to continue whining and swearing. It seemed like the exhaustion was awakening the Shakespearean side of mine.

I unlocked the door and entered the apartment I shared with said best friend and biggest nuisance Xenia Ivanova. The rain drops dripped from my jacket. Whatever, it'll dry overnight.

Now, I went straightaway to the couch, not inclined at all to make my way to the bed, let alone change into pajamas. My body flopped down, my eyes fell shut and I buried my face in the pillow. Praise the Lord, this heavenly feeling! Or as Shakespeare-Caroline would say: Oh, sweet embrace of death! 

A thunderstorm made my eyes shoot open again. God dammit, was it so hard to get some sleep before yet another day of sitting on those torture instruments called uni chairs? 

How can you see into my eyes like open doors?

Leading you down into my core where I've become so numb
Without a soul, my spirit sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home

We had a narrow window, in fact, it was also our door to the two square metre terrace. Xenia's boy-toy promised to install some shutters, now guess what he did not do, and he will surely never be doing. The lighting bolts, way too many for a normal storm, illuminated the room. They didn't even match the thunder claps time-wise. The noise was terrible, not resembling any normal thunder. As if there was a train arriving just above our flat.

Before I could philosophize any further about what might induce such a strange sound, it happened. Another deafening crack of thunder, drowning out all of the former. The wall paint crumbled down, the living room turned into a sand storm. So much dust, only made visible by a sheer never-ending episode of lightning from outside. I jumped to my feet, perplexed and coughing. Where did I think was I going? Bigger pieces of the used-to-be-a-wall fell, on our glass table, on the floor. I couldn't seeing anything, I couldn't scream, but as by a miracle, I was hit by none.

A shadow, something big and dark was there, prone on the laminate. Everything had happened in fractions of a second. I darted forward, fell to my knees. I had stumbled over a chunk of concrete. There were shards on the floor, they cut into my palms. Darkness, suddenly so quiet. As if the storm had fallen silent at once. I couldn't breathe. My hands guided me forward - shaking. This had to be a dream. I was dreaming, and what I found just confirmed it. I attempted to palpate what this thing was. It radiated all of the sudden, a leafy green. I saw it then. The nightmare.