The Reflection We Fear || Taekook

Chapter 4: Will You Rip My Mask Off?

It was cold. Almost unbearably cold, as the feeling cut beyond his skin right to his bone. It chilled him deep within his core, trapped inside of him unable to come out and make his body warm. He felt as though he was naked, as the air seemed to have breezed over his skin, nothing preventing him from shiverring, nothing covering him up in an effort to warm his cold body. He felt like he never experienced such a thing before, as if he was separated from the warmth within himself, as though his own temperature never existed. He thought how this felt so foreign to him, as it was so different from the cold that he had felt in his life before. It wasn't like when he needed to shrug his jacket on tighter in the cool autumn breeze to stop the wind from blowing in through the holes of his clothes, or when he has to bundle up in a tighter ball during the night because he kicked of the sheets around him from the tossing and turning. No, this cold seeped through his muscles and bones and settled deep within him, making him unable to escape the feeling.

The more he came to his senses the more he could feel the pain from parts of his body. He didn't know where his limbs were attached to him or where his torso and neck were located, as he felt almost numb with the exception of the places it throbbed. The flares of pain coming from parts of him, intensified the more he gained his consciousness and the more he started to slip away from the encompassing darkness. The mordant pain pooled in a tight knot at the back of his head right where his nape was located, as if it was screaming for his attention, for him to act on it and do something to prevent the pain from intensifying. But the more he tried to wake up, the more he wanted to gain back control and see some sort of light, the throbbing became more and more perceptible. The faint pulsing, he felt in the beginning now turning into a burning fire of pain, coursing down from his nape to his spine and back making the pang even worse.

He could also feel an almost gentle ache, just enough for him to notice at his shoulders and his ribs. Though compared to the feeling in his head and back he almost didn't care about it as he could barely feel it unless he concentrated on it enough. The pain itself in those parts of his body wasn't really a bad thing, almost exhilarating compared to the numb feeling he had felt when he had started to evade the darkness.

Right now, he was stuck in a state of mind where he wasn't fully awake, but he wasn't completely unconscious either. He was floating in his body, his own mind trying to grasp reality, gain some sort of footing, but every time he managed to escape that haziness that clouded his mind, he would fall back to a black pit until he could come out again and re-emerge. Almost as if he was working on purely instinct, the instinct to try and survive and to get that control back, whenever he was able to break out of that black pit, the back of his mind telling him to move, to do something as if he knew that he needed to do it while he could. While he was able to tell the difference between the unconscious mind and what felt like almost reality to him. But the pain grew unbearable when he broke free and his body and mind, trying to protect itself from the excruciating feeling succumbed to the floating and darkness again.

When he did manage to break out long enough, he tried as best as he could to wriggle his body, to order his muscles to shift in any direction to rid himself of the numbness but he soon realised he couldn't quite place where his limbs were. As if they were detached from him. He knew where his shoulders began, as the faint flare was still present, but he didn't know where the rest of his arms ended. His legs were worse as there wasn't any sort of throbbing for him to identify where they started, leaving him completely in the dark. He knew he had to open his eyes to see, were his limb were placed, where they connected to his torso, so he could try and move and do something to rid himself from the horrible sensations, but he couldn't even force himself to do that much. His eyelids feeling incredibly heavy and beyond his command unable to open them. Even as he registered and understood this, the back of his mind wouldn't relent from the constant nagging and kept on pestering him to move when he couldn't.