Carnivore

vii) De Dimissione

THE DARKNESS SWEPT IN AND FILLED THE WORLD IN BITTERSWEET SMILES, and in its embrace, rest returned to the broken souls and the damned.

It was often said that life was balanced precariously upon a precipice, up high beyond the reach of man. The realm of the Gods, and only those who sought to trespass on such grounds were the fallen, demons. But those demons were not as terrifying as the act of fighting to stay up on that cliff, bound by the shackles that life ensured. They were human, they were not; They were everything in between. Their limbs buckle as they struggle to cling to their reservations and beliefs, containing them within their shallow embrace. Like Atlas the Titan, condemned for eternity to support the weight of the world, it was as if every face, every ounce of life encountered piled more upon ones shoulders.

Would they keep him caged there, forever holding up a dead weight in the guise of life?

Would they cage her, too?

She tumbled, flailed, struggled in vain to remain balanced up on that jagged cliff, holding the weight of her own world upon her shoulders out of harms way, and yet the darkness was the only reprieve that greeted her when that world grew beyond her meagre hold.

It felt like perhaps, she wanted to reach the true darkness; To tumble down into the depths and remain out of the light, unobserved by others, only emerging when it suited her desires at the time.

But she hesitated.

She knew the darkness was cold, and she feared becoming equally as cold in a world where fire was the only thing that kept one going. And she knew that once she fell, her return to the light would be barred, caged off until her last dying breath.

Will she relent or resist?

It was a choice she still hadn't found the answer to.

And until she did, she would struggle to contain the bounds of her own world, even the demons swallowed her heart and left an artifice in its place.

Kennedy Zinnia's world was dark when the waking world demanded her consciousness, peppered with sounds as familiar to her as her mother's face. Mechanical beeps touched the darkness, painting a vivid picture of exactly where she was, and the familiar scent of chemical disinfectant hung on the air.

She had no grasp of anything beyond her location, being a hospital bed tucked safely away in what appeared to be a lone room of its own, with its monitors hooked up to her, and its lights dimmed to only show rough outlines and prevent the resident within from being kept awake by invasive fluorescent light. Nothing else came to her mind, however she could tell without a shadow of doubt that she was under heavy medication. Morphine, she surmised as she managed to look up at the drip stand just over her bedside. She could also tell that she had an oxygen mask securely placed over her face, possibly adding to her addled sense of coherence.

It didn't take her long to identify that she was in pain, but it was a dull edge that only flared to life as she tried to move in even the slightest way.

She could hear the faint edge of noise in the distance, seemingly enough. Of muffled voices, the rolling of gurneys down linoleum corridors, and judging by the faint hint of familiar voices, she was in the adjacent ward to Hosu's emergency theatre in one of the closest rooms. Close enough for immediate attention, but far enough that she was in an enclosed room of her own. And she could tell that it wasn't after hours, judging by the far off sound of mischievous and young children squealing down the corridor.

Zinnia struggled to recall much of what happened, what had lead to her winding up lying in a hospital bed. It felt like there was a portion of her memories that was blocked off, inaccessible for some reason she couldn't fathom. She recalled slamming her head on the floor after those girls had slammed a basket ball into the back of her head during lunch break, but beyond that, she remembered nothing.