No One Ever Truly Cares

Bittersweet

I'm walking down a long dark hallway. I don't know where I am. All I know it that the hallway never seems to end.

I hear a screech sound, like chalk on a black board.

I stop and look around me.

Nothing but hallway.

All around me.

I can't see where I've come from. I can't see where I've been.

A draft hits my feet. And I look down to see I'm barefoot.

The draft is ice cold and slides up my body from my feet. It creeps slowly up the back of my legs, hitting the back of my knees making my legs feel like jelly. It's a weird sensation.

I don't like it.

I start to move again.

The draft carries on its slow creeping pace up to my hip bone, it becomes all consuming as it hits my spine. The ice cold feeling seeping into my skin and bones instantly.

I pick up my pace to a run. I can't see where I'm running, I just know I can't stop.

As the draft hits my arms making its way to my fingertips all of my hairs are standing on end.

It's like my body knows something bad is coming even though I can't see it, I can sense it.

Terrified I run faster until I'm sprinting. Running for my life, straight into the darkness.

The never-ending darkness.

The ice-cold draft finally hits my neck, spreading quickly to my head, my whole body covered in what feels like ice. I come to a sudden stop, finding myself unable to move.

Like I'm paralysed to the spot.

Unable to scream, unable to breathe, my lungs burning as I try to bring in air, trying to stop the sudden suffocation.

Then all at once the ice-cold sensation stops.

It disappears, and I can breathe again.

A hot searing pain in my lower back brings a scream from my lips. Then another one. The feeling of a stainless-steel blade breaking my skin. My hand reaches for my back and I pull my hand back, its warm and wet. I look down and see the red liquid that is my blood.

I'm terrified as I slowly turn around.

What I see sends another shiver down my spine. I feel it in my fingers and toes, and the 2 knife stab wounds in my back. The shiver doesn't help the wounds that burn.

Gemma.

Gemma is stood in front of me. Knife in her hand, hand at her side.

The blood.

My blood.

Slowly drip, drip, dripping from the edge of the blade.

Then she steps forward and says the one word that kills me inside.

"Run..."

So, I do.

I run as fast as I can.

But I hear her footsteps behind me.

Closing in on me.

And I slow down.

No matter how hard I push myself to run faster I can't.

It's like I'm on a conveyer belt, the more I move forwards the more it pulls me back.

But I keep fighting it.

I push myself.

Until I feel it.

The blade coming on down me, splitting my skin as it enters my shoulder.

The force of it knocks me down.

I land hard on the floor.

My arm stuck under me.

My cheek bone connecting really hard with the concrete floor.

The pain in my face masks my pain in my back.

Until Gemma sits on me.

I turn my head and watch her raise her hands, fisted around the handle of the blade.

I see the dead look in her eyes as she looks down on me.

I feel the overcoming fear take over my body.

Then her hands move.

Down. Fast. Until the blade is plunged into the middle of my back.

And I can't feel a thing. Nothing.

And then the darkness surrounds me.

Pulling me in.

Suffocating me.

And then there's nothing.