ADRONITIS (II) : tmr minho

48: I could be not doing this to myself

Ella 48

I can hear her calling me from further up, but I can't move. I can barely think. My arm is lit ablaze, electrocuting my body. It was a small leak, quick to ignite like gasoline sinking deeper into the soaking concrete. Something violent on harsh skin. I might pass out.

Then, she is gone. Another girl runs around and grabs me, shaking me up and down. I don't know if she knows I can see her. Her sight is a green blip in a grey storm.

I writhe on the ground in a circle, ripping at myself. People are shuffling around me, saying my name. Voices of various colours, bouncing in from every direction.

Then, there is no sound. My face shakes as I start screaming. The sound is silent as it grates against my neck. The soft flesh rips open, shredding down. I cough it up into the air. The grey is gone, replaced by an all-encompassing darkness. I hurt, everywhere. Not just where I let it sting me. The pain rips through me, up and down my body. I need someone to inject me.

I couldn't wait to find out though. I couldn't wait to see her again, even if it's just three days away. What if I didn't recognise her after all of this?

I need to drink. I'm sweating. I've never felt this physical before. My body is actually a part of me, and not just some vessel I'm walking through. Funny it takes this pain to see that.

My eyes burn. My lips have got so numb I briefly consider the idea that they could've fallen off. I experienced everything, and then nothing. My brain has turned off. I imagine this is what it feels like to be covered in bleach, and run over by a truck, and get dumped all at once.

Then I see him.

A man emerging from the fog.

My heart quickens. See, the incoming doom of watching him approach is worse than the pain I felt mere seconds ago. I know this greyness too well. A smoke man, coming to burn my body again. To have hands which snake up and down me, which tie me down, and rip the life out of my throat. To convince me I have a different name.

The figure breaks through the fog, and the clouds still. Smoke billows out and around a man, shrouded in obscurity, yet one I have come to know well. One whose hands have held mine as I've struggled to breathe.

He is not of smoke.

Instead, I find myself facing a boy.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I like where this is going.

I'll see you soon, in Leo and Leaving.