INMARCESIBLE

INMARCESIBLE - 22

I wanted to scream. I think I was screaming. But why couldn't I hear my own voice? Was I going deaf? Or was I just unconscious of my voice? I have no idea. All I could feel was this unbearable breathlessness gnawing at me. I think I was breathing okay, but why won't the air just go in, like my lungs were surrounded by metal bands. This was worsening the panic inside of me. The dizzy feeling and the need to get low to the ground was arising in me. I squatted down and gasped, praying for someone...anyone to reach for me and drag me out of this endless horrific nightmare.

I felt me blurred vision as I covered my face wet with tears. I didn't want to see anything. I didn't want to be here. I think I was still screaming, but my voice was getting hoarse. My mind was completely blank and only fear occupied my entire system. Suddenly I felt a touch on my shoulders. I flinched in fright and the next moment a warm embrace braced me into their arms. I was so frightened I couldn't dare to look up to see who it was, but I feel I was still screaming endlessly into these warm arms. I heard a soothing voice cradling me and telling me that everything was going to be alright.

I mindlessly reared my head up to see my liberator and the deep emerald eyes of Eric Warnard greeted my vision. An intense wave of relief swept over me and I finally let go of my remaining sanity and fell into a deep upsurge of unconsciousness.

I don't remember much but I felt I was drifting in and out of my consciousness. Fleetingly remembering cold palms on my forehead from time to time and a profound husky voice whispering unintelligible things into my ears. When I finally opened my eyes, the gruesome scene that was cemented into my memory came to my mind and I couldn't help remembering what I saw and what had transpired in front my eyes before I lost consciousness.

My mind was into an overload mode again and I could feel myself screaming under the spell of that dreadful night. It was as if everything was hitting me all at once. All the fear, the pain and the nausea, everything was raw again, as fresh as if it happened all over again in front of my eyes. I felt as if death was a constant companion of me, rearing its head up at every corner of my life. No wonder Dilylah's death date changed. It was so unnatural. It was a murder. But a brutal murder such as this, who could commit such a ghastly crime inside a high school.

I felt my freely falling tears as my mind couldn't help repeating the horrors of that night over and over again inside my head like a broken record.

I was brought back by a sudden cold squeeze to my face. My dilated pupils relaxed when they saw a pale handsome face calling my name.

"Phina! It's alright. It's alright. I'm here. I'm right here."

Eric muttered to me in a gentle voice suffused with a hint of worry. My eyes slowly refocused into his beautiful face and I found myself lying on the infirmary bed of the school. Eric somehow looked haggard, tired even. Like he didn't have a good rest for a week.

I slowly took into my surroundings and found out that I was not inside that nightmare anymore. In an alleviated disposition I laced my frail arms around Eric's neck and hugged him in desperation. To feel that this was all real, that I was not trapped inside that tormenting nightmare anymore, I hugged him tight and cried in despair and fear. His body instantly went stiff under my embrace, but he didn't reject me. Gradually, he patted my head in an awkward manner and held me back muttering comforting words into my ears.

A long while passed since I finally calmed down. Everything that I saw that night was something I couldn't explain nor say it to another soul. Because I had no doubt that people will pack me up and send me off to a mental asylum if they heard what I had to say. So, I preferred to keep quite when Lena asked me what exactly happened to me. It was only to Eric that I could cough up my bizarre experience to because I had a gut feeling that he was....or rather he had a pretty good idea about what it was that I saw that night. I didn't want to believe it, but I felt Eric knew who Dilylah's killer was. Eric listened to what I had to say from the beginning to end and then when I was finally done narrating the events that took place that day he asked me just one question, "Where did you put that envelop?"