Don't Let Go (Third Book to the Other Side)

Chapter Three (𝙪𝙣𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬𝙣)

Darkness.

There is solace in the darkness. Perhaps not peace, but not chaos either. There is nothing, and nothing is the way I liked it.

And then, without any warning, shards of pain erupt through me. At first, it is like being stabbed with a hundred pieces of fragmented glass repeatedly, without rhyme or reason in the locations chosen. But the pain grows, and grows, and grows, until it encompasses the entire length of my body. I can't distinguish between it and I. My name might as well be synonymous with pain.

My name.

What is my name?

Did I forget, or did I ever know it in the first place?

I think I hear a random melody of syllables in the back of my mind, but when I try to reach and bring it forward, it disperses like a stone thrown into a still pond.

Whatever those four syllables had been, they are gone now, and I don't even know if they are my name or not. Did they even mean anything at all, or was it a trick?

Is this all some game brought about by a higher power just wanting to have a little joke before starting everything over?

What is my name? Who am I? Does it even matter? Am I real?

And then, just as suddenly as the pain had come, it disappears, leaving me without anything to hold onto.

A second passes, and there is nothing but the hopeless feeling that accompanies not knowing the question you need to ask, much less the answer. I am lost. Lost, lost, lost.

Is that who I am?

Everything is so fast and sudden. What could have been hours trickles away down to seconds, like water down a stream. Like sand being blown away by the ruthless ruler that is the wind across a vast expanse of land with no idea of a destination in mind.

Am I a grain of sand, blown through a desert? Minuscule? Unworthy?

Regardless, a blinding light shortly follows the disappearance of the pain. I move my hand in front of my face to shield my eyes, but the light is everywhere, and it does no good.

Wait. Hand? Face? Eyes?

I squint against the impossibly bright illuminance and look down at my body. I trace my fingers up my arm. The sensation is unnatural, wrong. I shouldn't be able to do such a thing, and yet I am. I shouldn't be able to feel, and yet I do.

A voice, closer than what I would find comfortable startled me out of my thoughts.

"Divinity's children, George," it says, as if it is watching a monster scratch at the iron bars of its cage in a useless attempt to escape. Am I a monster? "This is unholy."

"Like it?" asks a voice in return, one that strikes a bell somewhere deep below the churning thoughts of survival. "It was surprisingly easy."

"I don't like it," says a third, very similar in tone to the first. "I say we take its life now before this spirals out of control."

I can't explain the sudden urge that sparks within me: the urge to run or fight. I don't know what the third voice meant, but I do know that whatever they suggested was something to be feared. I let out a low sound that reminds me of a desperate growl, hoping that would convince the voice to step down.

"Oh, look at what you've done!" reprimands the second voice, followed immediately by the scrape of metal against concrete. I whimper at the sensitive noise.