The Hybrid Cycle: Volume 1

7: Alive

Something crawled across her face.

Beatrice smacked at whatever bug had lighted on her cheek and immediately regretted it. Pain ripped at the back of her skull.

When the hurt stopped, she opened her eyes. The sensation felt like wet concrete expanding in space. Heavy. Uncomfortable.

It was dark.  The prickling cold felt like a spectral presence in a haunted house.

For a second, she considered the possibility that she was dead and had been flung into a strange, lonesome aftergloom. The pain she felt cancelled out the thought. Her intuition told her that spirits didn't have to contend with this sort of physical discomfort

Her wooziness waned until she realized she was in the back of her own car. The windows were open and she was alone.

How am I here?

Slowly, carefully, she sat up. The back of her head throbbed. She reached back and felt a lump the size of a goiter through her thick hair. It was raw to the touch.

I fell through the floor in an abandoned house, and now I'm here. How?

She rifled through her pockets. The car keys were there. 

What if I have a concussion? Did I tramp all the way back here myself in a semi-conscious state, or.....

Slowly and with a great deal of pain, Beatrice got out of the car. She felt as if her legs were raw meat held together by calipers and piano wire. It was dark out. Not a tame city dark, but the sort of darkness that might linger at the coldest depths of the ocean.

Where is my camera? My things?

Any other time the thought would have put her on high alert. However, one held precedence over material worries.

Could she make it back?

If she had a serious head injury, it was possible that she could faint or have a spell of the woozies while careening around the mountain roads.

However, it was a chance she had to take.