LITANY
In the beginning, when We created the universe, the planets were formless and desolate. The raging ocean of fire that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and Our power was moving over the water. Then We commanded, "Light be with all" - and the light was summoned. We were pleased with what We saw. Then We divided the light from the void, and we named the light "Day" and the void "Night." The evening set and the morning rose - that was the first day.
- Volume MCDXL, Sourcal Axiom 01;01:11
A crackling beep chimed every few moments. Its weak, but sharp echo pierced the air.
...Beep! ...Beep! ...Beep!
The hum of lights above created flickering and the sound of scraped glass shards within the illuminating beams. While partially working, the enlarged rods of white light didn't reach the corners and edges of the room creating patches on the wall with dim shades. Only the artificial lighting revealed the room's white tones and colourless interior.
Stained with shadows, the white walls and the reflective, shiny floor didn't induce fear of suffocation, nor did it allow the room to provide a breath. The box was in a perpetual, yet restricted sense of freedom.
In a white bed, under white sheets and white casts, Mathaino lay there, completely silent in the orchestra of the room's blinking lights and beating monitors. His body felt no sense of touch, yet his face allowed his surroundings to build up until he was conscious of where he was.
His eyes beneath his lids first moved, then his tongue, and then his jaw. His facial features subtly twitched or flinched with every sound of the machines beside his bed.
...Beep! ...Beep! ...Beep!
Despite his face moving ever so slightly, his chest didn't rise. His chest didn't move. His lips were shut beneath an oxygen mask that only satisfied his nose. Even then, they were coated in dried-up blood and other bodily fluids.
He couldn't breathe.
The desperate attempts to move his body remained futile. His fingers lay beside him, and his legs and feet were all sweating and frozen beneath the thick, horribly blistering blanket. No purpose of the blanket was found, yet it only seemed to cause boiling torture for Mathaino's skin, as if invisible needles penetrated every waking pore of his skin. The heat beneath the blinding light and weighted sheets made Mathaino's skin cry and weep, turning the casts on his body moist and home of infection and disease.
He couldn't move. Mathaino's body ached for its itch and irritation. The charred senses over his bandaged body gave the feeling of sunburn under his deepest layers of skin. The sensation of sand under his casts never ceased to turn and dig into his sweating pores and wrinkles.
His nails desperately desired to scrape his skin off, given the moist, prickling sensations down to his flesh and bone. The pressure onto his blood from the casts all over his limbs, waist and chest gave Mathaino the greatest pain he had ever witnessed.
'Is this what Core is like?' Mathaino thought, eyes dashing in the darkness under his eyelids, 'I can't move...'
He felt paralysed, a corpse beneath thousands upon thousands of rock and stone; a body lost to the bed of a magmatic sea. He was kept in a perpetual feeling of suffocation but never perishing.
'May someone please get me from this torture...' Mathaino calmly said to himself, paralysed on this cotton coffin, 'I beg of anyone! Please hear my prayer! My words to you speak with anger, but I call from mind to mind, soul to soul. Please release me from this pain!'
YOU ARE READING
Many of Whom
Science Fiction"Man fears not the unknown, for they have the courage to destroy it." A boy named Mathaino Apodochi thrives on gaining knowledge, no matter the path ahead. However, others have their own stories and motivations that interweave and flow into, across...
