The Pain Inside

Cover by @Hooha84

There was a sense of spinning, of disorientation, of falling. Kaitlyn, or Kat to her friends, knew that she wasn't really falling, yet there was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and a distorted sense of gravity. It was like the feeling you might get in a quickly moving elevator. Her feet were steady on the ground, yet it still felt like the world around her was falling away, and she was plummeting with it. She couldn't think, she couldn't breathe, all she could do was ride out the feeling and hope she landed somewhere safe.

It all came to a halt quite suddenly, with a jolt that rocked her on her heels. She was momentarily confused. She didn't know where she was or how she got there. It took her several seconds even to realize her eyes were closed and, quickly opening them, she found herself in a rocky cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites jutted from the floor and ceiling around her, almost as if she were in some kind of cave, but the walls were spaced far enough away from each other to form a chamber of sorts. At the middle of it, just in front of her, was a pool. A very strange pool. The water emitted a strange light, a sort of radiance in a shifting rainbow of hues. It was what lit the cavern enough for her to see.

There was a faint hum in the distance, but she couldn't make out what it was. Her nose was assailed by the scent of antiseptic, the sort of chemical cleanliness one might smell in a hospital, the lingering hints of a constantly fought battle to ward off infection. How had she gotten to this place, and where was it?

"It's going to be confusing at first," a soft voice whispered into her ear. From where, Kaitlyn had no idea, there was no one else in the cavern she stood in. "Some of your memories will be fuzzy, others will be absent altogether. But you will remember my voice. Let it guide you."

"Who are you? Where are you?" Kat demanded, her head turning this way and that as she sought the source of the whisper. It was so soft it had to be close by, and yet the cavern around her remained empty.

"The world around you isn't real," the voice whispered, blithely ignoring her questions. "You're within Matthew's mind. What you're seeing and perceiving is all inside his head. Remember why you're there."

Matthew... It struck Kat then, hard and fast. He was in a coma, the boy she loved, laying in a hospital bed in a sleep so deep that he wouldn't open his eyes, not even for her. The doctors had said that even though there was no lasting brain damage, the prognosis wasn't good. He'd been in the coma more than a month, and the odds of him ever fully recovering were getting lower by the day. But there'd been someone, someone who said they could help. Kaitlyn tried her hardest but she couldn't remember who it was, the name and the face evaded her, seeming just out of reach at the edge of her memory, and the harder she tried to remember the more it faded. But they'd told her they could give her a way in, a way into Matthew's mind. A chance to find him, talk to him, bring him back.

"Where are you? Why aren't you here with me, helping me?" Kat demanded of the voice. It belonged to the person who'd sent her here, she was sure of that now, but she couldn't even make out if it was male or female.

"Only one of us can go," the voice whispered, but even though it was answering her question, the tone didn't sound as if it was even aware that she'd asked it. "Forming and holding the bridge between your mind and his requires focus, concentration. If I go in myself, I can't hold the bridge for you from the inside. Either I go in, or you do, but we can't both go. Which is it gonna be?"

Before Kat could open her mouth, she heard her own voice respond faintly in the distance. "I'll go. I love him, he knows me. I'm the only one who can reach him," she heard herself say. And only then did she remember saying it. This had been her choice. If only one person could go in, she'd known it had to be her.