Warm Bodies: The Little Brown Bear

The Confession

R struggled to surface from the dark, his mind a chaotic jumble of sensation and memory; smothering heat and frigid bone-deep chill, sharp pain and empty numbness, the lingering horror of the dream...

be careful

too late

"Julie..." he rasped, his voice scratchy and raw, stirring him from oblivion.

As his eyes opened, blurry shapes of muted color bloomed in his vision, then swam dramatically in front of him as his eyes rolled back up and the lights went out.

no... wake up... Julie...

Struggling again, R tried to move, groaning as his body cried out in a thousand voices of pain. God... why did everything hurt so much? Why couldn't he move?

Why was it so fucking hot?

His eyes flickered open again, and the blurriness sharpened somewhat.

He was in a room, though he couldn't see any real detail, just splotchy shapes of yellows and reds and dark browns. A large window blazed in a bright halo across from him, framed by shapes that looked like curtains, that much he could make out. The place wasn't familiar to him.

Why was he here?

R tried to rub his eyes, but his arms wouldn't budge and his fingers screamed in protest. Staring down at himself blearily, he blinked to clear his head, and slowly the world came into focus.

He was wrapped up like a mummy, on an old fashioned couch, in a tight bundle of floral bedding.

Tied with rope.

R stared at himself for a long while, not understanding why he was tied up. He tried to make a cohesive whole of the jumbled mix of memory and dream in his head, to remember how this had happened, but the puzzle pieces wouldn't fit together.

He had been walking... snow everywhere... his mom was there...

R blinked. Mom?

Shaking his head, he tried to find more pieces as he worked to shimmy himself free.

Julie looking through him... an empty kiss... his mom telling him to be careful...

R stopped moving and stared down at nothing. Why did he have memories of his mom?

The images kept coming. A breathtaking chill, an insistent blurry figure, the girl on the bench, and a struggle with something dark and terrible.

too late

R's heart squeezed hard. Julie. Where was she?

She'd been searching for him, with dad, in the car. Wait... how did he know that?

But they'd gone back to the city. That's where she had to be... right?

Deep down, something told him that wasn't true. Something was terribly wrong.

His struggles to free himself grew frantic as fear and dread sharpened his mind, and he finally succeeded in bringing his forearm up to his chest, though his fingers burned, and his side pulsed angrily.

"Hello again," came a soft male voice from across the room.

R froze. The dream echoed in his head, the voice of the dark thing saying the same words, as he tried to see who had spoken.

when you wake... I will be waiting

A sudden movement made him focus, and he caught the pale eyed stare of a man dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt leaning against the far side of the room next to the window. The man pushed himself off the wall, grimacing as he did so, and walked over, his arm pressed tight against his chest.