by Eleanor Keith

 

Falling.

I am falling.

Falling through dark space.

Stretching forever.

An endless plummeting drop.

My heartbeat leaves my living body.

My soul leaks out through my mouth.

     Where is my life? 

     Why is it such an endless cycle, cycle? Do over. Again, again. 

     Falling forever.

A last breath is released, squeezed from my airless lungs as I slam into something hard. I can’t even feel it…

                                                                     * * *

     Bright spots pop before my eyes, bright… white…tinged with purple… so beautiful… I breathe in; the spots turn red. A sharp pain in my ribs. Ribs? My ribs… I have ribs. Bones. Wait. 

     There is tingling all over. The rest of my body. My body. I’m alive!

     My eyes fly open. The ground is rough; dizziness pumps through my head.

     Angry waves of sensation wash over me. Blood pounds in my ears. My heart pounds in my chest. But it’s beating. Yes, I am alive. 

     A sense of urgency pushes me up off the hard ground and into a sitting position, and spasms of hurt ripple through my body. I gasp. It’s excruciating. 

     My eyes dart around as the spots fade, but the world around me is blackness. I am lost in a sea of black, so blind I can feel the lack of light boring into my eyeballs. 

     I tilt my head up, trying to swim through the darkness with my eyes, break the surface of this ocean of nothing, and see something, something to stop my drowning; pain sparks in my neck, like flickering flames licking at my flesh. I stifle a scream, and try to scan the up for…wherever I came from.

     I struggle to remember, but my memories are shrouded in an amnesiac fog, rolling in and blurring over any details. I try to grasp at the wisps of what little memory I have, but bring back only a sensation of falling, in the pit of my stomach. But why can’t I remember…

     At last, my eyes catch something; white specks…stars…? Stars!

     Relief knocks through me. I am not in a black void, after all. I am outside, in the dead of night, completely isolated, and I have no idea how I got here.

     Suddenly, the hairs on my neck stand on end and my tingling skin pops with goose bumps. My pulse quickens, sending a fresh round of blood through my body, and wooziness and faint take my head . I am being watched. 

     I whip around and strain my eyes through the dark. Sharp jagged breaths escape my mouth and my hands shake harder.

     As I stare into the blank blackness, a change in this dark world makes me jump. 

     Two yellow spots, stark against the black.

     Small, but visible, and completely identical, forcing my eyes into a squint. They throw a golden glow onto my face and shadows scatter out behind me. I watch them dance and shine, and they carefully wander my mind away from its current troubles, placing me at peace, while meanwhile the spots grow bigger… and bigger…

     My wonder is broken by a nagging in my brain; the same I felt when I woke up, but now stronger. Louder. 

     You know what these yellow spots are, it whispers in my ear. And somehow… I do.

     I know what they are.

     I know where I am. 

     I am laying in the middle of the road.

     I leap to my broken feet, and tumble down the dark road, because I know that those headlights are targeted for me. 

     I sprint faster than I ever have in my entire life, if I could even see my life, outside of this clip that I am stuck in. What did I do to make this happen? 

     The street is now partially illuminated by the vehicle’s headlights, but all I can see is my bare bloody feet pounding on the road ahead of me, taking in every sharp pebble. It doesn’t matter though anyways, because I’ve gone numb. Not even a fleck pain as I wear what’s left of my broken body into the ground, tearing through the dark streets. My desire to survive fuels me.

     And now, a final time, I feel that nagging, louder than ever. 

     What is it? I scream in my mind.

     My feet keep reaching forward, pounding on the rough road.

     The nagging insists louder.

     What?

     Louder.

     Feet pounding.

     WHAT?

     Louder.

     WHAT?!

     Broken fragments. A glass picture I can make out only shards. A woman screaming. Dejavu splitting my head open along the cracks, the cracks of these memories, the woman, her screaming, screaming from me, I made her scream. I’m the evil one.

     And then there is no more road for my feet to pound on. I am flung into empty space, the street crumbling away, the headlight’s glow disappearing, and I am stripped of sensory, except…

 

     Falling.

     I am falling.

     My heartbeat leaves my living body.

     My soul leaks out through my mouth.

     Where is my life? 

     Falling forever.