A starless, moonless night enveloped my mind once more, before I had a chance to proccess what had just occurred.
Hours passed with nothing but the darkness behind my eyelids to keep me company.
Finally, I stirred as the sedatives began to loosen their grip on me.
The pain in my body was unbearable. Everything ached, every muscle and fiber was sore, every cell screamed in agony. I felt the aftermath of the blaze, I was the scorched earth and charred plants that are left behind after the brilliant, dancing flames have died away. My body didn't feel like my own.
My eyes fluttered open. I realized that I was no longer inside of the watery coffin where I had endured those dreams, those beautiful dreams and heart-rending nightmares. I was lying on my side on a cold, hard floor, bleached a bright white and smelling of cleanliness and purity. The walls around me were alabaster colored as well, and I felt I was drowning in a sea of endless white. This white was different from the peaceful white of the snow, the gentle paleness of the ice, this white was blaring and overpowering and screaming. This white was artificial and unnatural, just like everything else in this cursed place.
There were no windows or doors in my prison, my tiny white box that kept me hidden from the world and kept the world hidden from me. Fluorescent light panels blazed overhead, making the white room glow in a sickeningly pale and lifeless manner.
The needles that had protruded hideously from my skin like tiny daggers were nowhere to be seen, and the marks they had left on my flesh were faint and barely detectable. My hair smelled of soap, as did my softened skin; the residue of the strange substance I had been suspended in had been washed away.
I sat up and stared at the white walls, at the white floor, at my white hospital gown. The overwhelming amount of whiteness made my head spin. This world that I had awoken to was much too clean, much too sterile.
A tiny camera peered at me from the corner of the room, where two walls met. I stared straight at it, realizing that the people who had done this to me were watching and listening from somewhere outside these painfully blank walls.
I glared at the camera with a look of such hatred that I was astonished the painted metal and the snaking wires didn't go up in feverishly flickering flames and slowly spiraling smoke. If my eyes had directed my anger and outrage at it any longer, the camera might have been reduced to a pile of ashes and nothingness.
I looked away from the camera and stared at the white wall in front of me, my breathing becoming rapid. The walls were closing in on me, suffocating me in their whiteness and emptiness... I wanted to scream and claw my way out of my white prison, to flee and leave the wretched place behind. I needed to get out, before I went insane, before my sanity slipped away and a crazy look crept into my eyes.
I needed to escape.
YOU ARE READING
The Beast Within (#Wattys2016)
Science FictionEden's world was turned upside down. She was changed, made into a monster, mutated into something Mother Nature never intended to create. Her genetic makeup was tampered with and altered by people who wanted to create a bloodthirsty killing machine...
