Chapter 6f
When I opened my eyes the blinding white light was back and surrounded me completely. It was all I could see or smell or taste. Sound was returning too me slowly, at first as a dull and constant hum then becoming more clear, turning into individual and distinguishable sounds.
The joy was not there. The pain tried to persist but I had gone numb. I could feel the pressure of it gnawing at my insides and rending flesh from bone but no more. There was no pain, only muddle curiosity.
Everything was still just white, all impossibly white.
Finally I relaxed. I had been screaming to, or at least my body was making the effort, but I had only just noticed. I could feel my throat, dry and hoarse as if I'd been screaming for days, but the sounds I heard did not include my own voice.
I called out, "Hello?" and yes, there was sound, something gravely and bizarre, but the voices I heard, voices which I could hear rising and gathering around me, none of those were mine.
I was somehow restrained. I couldn't feel the bonds but they were there, holding my limbs motionless despite all my best efforts, as the whiteness filled with passing shadows and the air swelled with a cacophony of disturbing sounds. The pain was back, eating at me in some new way that didn't care how numb I had become.
I screamed again.
I screamed with the voice of an ancient leviathan rising from the depths of the sea to unleash its rage upon generations of humanity.
I screamed until I could taste the blood in my mouth and until the lights danced like a thousand radioactive ballerinas. I screamed until I couldn't scream any more.
When I lost the physical ability, I screamed internally.
I kept screaming that way.
Eventually, after many days or weeks or millennia the lights and shadows started to die down and the pain wrapped itself back around the whole of my person like a security blanket. As all light faded to black the pain died with it, as did everything.
Obtained key 7  | |