TWISTED // Clato | ✓

Chapter 17: They Tell Me I'm Clove

CATO'S POV:

I'm dead. I must be dead. 

So why is there pain?

I hover in a dull, confusing expanse between consciousness and a bleak white world of nothing. A place where no feelings exist. Just pain.

But you don't hurt when you're dead. 

A jarring pain shoots through my side and I writhe in agony. My lips part and a strangled sound escapes from them. "Aaaauuggh!"

I have no sense of feeling or place in this dizzying place of white. At least I think it's white. Whether or not I have any perception of color at all is unknown.

I have no perception of sound either; with the exception of a dull, low ringing in my ears. Almost like a vibration. I can't... focus. I can't... collect my thoughts. I sway through the nothingness and then it all dies into a blackness I can't read.

I lose all sense of feeling.

Dark.

Dark.

Dark.

Light! Without warning, my eyes are flung open and I'm staring directly into a blindingly bright light that fills all my eyesight and spreads my vision with spots. I blink rapidly, but the spots grow inside my eyelids like large purple puddles.

It takes a few seconds for them to clear up. I blink continuously, and then I turn my head away from the white-hot glow. My head lolls to the side and I stare ahead through blurred vision. Shapes. Vague shapes. A white mat. A chrome wall.

Pinpoints of light penetrate the blurry barrier blocking my vision and I am able to make out the dark shape of another person lying on another mat beside mine underneath a similar floodlight. I squint. 

The figure is a girl. She lies flat on her back, both hands lying at her side. Her face is pristine and expressionless. Two blonde fishtail braids lie limply on her shoulders. The sight of her jerks something inside my head, but I can't place her. Strange.

My head hurts. I turn over, intending to fall back asleep, but I'm met on the other side with another girl on a mat. She has beautiful dark brown hair that's tied into a fancy triple ponytail. Like the blonde one, she lies completely still, in a sleeping-deathlike pose. It's creepy.

But my reaction is different. Something tugs at me again; a memory maybe; but it doesn't tug at my brain. It tugs at my heart. The girl looks... familiar you might call it. But nothing's familiar. Where am I? Who am I?

I feel like something is seriously missing from my head. Like I know my thoughts... sort of. I can place them... kind of. But it's like my brain's a jigsaw puzzle and every other piece is missing. 

Nearby, somewhere out of sight, a door slams. The sound of the crash of wood against wood has not faded when a bloodcurdling scream cuts through the air. I sit straight up, nearly colliding with the low floodlight over my mat. So do all the other kids. I look around and notice I'm surrounded by other teenagers, all looking as perplexed and bewildered as I feel. 

There's a little girl with dark curly hair and copper-colored skin, and a redheaded girl with a pointed face. I see a younger boy with curly brown hair and a large, tough-looking dude with darker skin. Next to the girl with the blonde braids is a tall, skinny, brown-haired boy. They look around, confused.

In the doorway stands a horror-stricken short, slightly plump woman with curly red hair and a purple striped shirt. She stands staring at us, eyes bugging out and mouth open wide, like we're from another planet. Maybe we are.