Ashes, Ashes

22 - Waking

I opened my eyes to a world that twisted and rippled. The brightness of everything seemed to have been turned up, colors warped and saturated, and it hurt to look. I closed my eyes and braced myself, ragged spots drifting through my vision in the darkness. 

Muffled noises, like words spoken underwater. I couldn't make sense of any of it. 

But I could feel my arms pulled behind me, the bite of rope digging into my wrists, and even as I was aware of the pain, I couldn't quite feel it, like it was happening to some other body, not quite the one I occupied. 

I opened my eyes again. 

"Hey! Hey, you're not supposed to be awake yet." 

Richard bent over me, looking at me critically in the face. I felt myself tipping backward, like falling in a dream, and my body jerked in reflex. The chair I was tied to jumped, threatened to spill sideways. Richard laughed. 

"Have a nice trip?" 

I blinked, trying to clear my vision. Something was wrong with his face. It was distorted, the outlines blurred. His features seemed to sag, like they were made from melted wax, eyelids drooping down into his cheeks and mouth yawning open forever. His skin flickered between ashy gray and sallow yellow, like someone was fiddling with the color contrast of a computer monitor and couldn't find the right settings. 

"Guess you're still a little out of it." He nudged the leg of my chair with a toe, laughed when I jerked. "Dude. Dude. You should see your eyes. Your pupils are like..." he held up two hands, fingers curled into circles like binoculars. 

I tried to speak, but it came out an incomprehensible, muted whimper, my mouth not able to communicate with my brain. 

To my left, also tied to a chair, I could make out a vague shape, long blonde hair falling over her face. Her skin shimmered in color, pink then tan then white, my eyes not quite able to settle. It hurt my head, so I didn't look. I squeezed my eyes shut. 

The sound of a door opening, and something heavy being dragged. I struggled to open my eyes, tried to force them to focus. I craned my head toward the direction of the noise, blinking rapidly. Something shifted in my head, and the floor tilted and threatened to slip out from under me, but I didn't fall. 

A dark shadow stood silhouetted in the doorway, dragging a misshapen lump behind. Both seemed washed over in shadow, blurred at the edges, a monochromatic watercolor. 

"Ketamine," a voice said, echoing from the direction of the shadow. "Known for its qualities as an anesthetic and hallucinogen. But you already knew that, right Logan? You know all sorts of things about dangerous substances." 

I stared at the figure. It dropped what it had been dragging and stepped closer, and I struggled to adjust my focus. It was impossible. I couldn't be seeing what I was seeing. 

"You're dead," I said, or tried to say, though the words sounded mushy to my own ears. 

"You would think that, wouldn't you." 

Someone laughed, a titter that bordered on hysterical. Maybe it was Richard. 

My eyelids drooped, my body trying hard to fall back into slumber despite the terror I knew I should be feeling. But there was no fear, the same as there was no pain; I was not part of my body, and its sensations were not my own. 

Somewhere, in some dark place inside, the echoing space where my mind found itself now that it was not tethered to my body, I could hear someone else talking. 

Logan. Logan I'm scared. 

What if being dead isn't any better? 

What if I don't want to die anymore? 

I jolted awake, the sound of the slap registering before I felt it, the stinging in my cheek distant. 

A hand grabbed me roughly below the chin, squeezing hard on either side, fingers pressing deep into my yielding flesh. Eyes glittered intently, inches from mine, from within a dark face. 

Liza smiled, her face splitting open in a dazzling white crescent, countless teeth like a shark. 

"Now, now, that won't do. It's time to wake up now. We have so much to talk about."