My Dark Mate [2021: Editing]

Prologue

I felt pain. There was just overwhelming pain. A pain that was both foreign yet familiar, similar to the kind I had experienced before. My eyes strained to see, regardless of what it was I just needed to see something, anything in the endless darkness I currently floated in.

"Is anyone-anybody here?" I stuttered, wincing as I fought the howl of pain that was slowly inching its way up my throat. "Please help me!" The scream echoing in the empty chasm around me.

A sense of helplessness settled within me, making me go cold as I tried to come to terms with the fact that I had absolutely no control over what I could do in this horribly empty prison of mine.

My scream from earlier rang out through the space around me, the sound bouncing off of invisible walls, seeming to gain volume as time went on. I paid closer attention to the words within the echo and could have sworn that they weren't mine.

Soon, those words were being thrust back at me with such immense volume that my body vibrated with each wave of sound, my attempt at identifying the actual words forgotten. I gritted my teeth, praying that this would all end soon.

When it finally did, I realised I'd squeezed my eyes shut sometime ago. I looked around, hope filling me as I saw a sliver of light in the distance. I had no idea if I could even move forward in here so I just began flailing my arms around until I saw the light getting closer.

I'm going to get out. I inwardly cheered to myself, needing to get out of this menacing place. Come on, just a little closer, please. I prayed, exhaling in relief as my fingers found the light.

Confusion had my eyebrows pulling together. Were my fingers always this short? As if in control of itself, my hand pulled at something I soon identified as half of a double door.

The light blinded me as I pulled myself out onto a hardwood floor, my palm scraping against a crack between the floorboards. Out of nowhere, something collided with the side of my body, hitting me so hard it knocked the wind right out of me as my face and chest landed hard on the ground.

"You haven't had enough yet?" A foreign voice demanded, as a sharp, jagged object stabbed me in the back of one of my legs. I looked up into cold, dead - looking eyes. The last thing I saw was blood spattering over the wall behind the figure with that menacing gaze before I shot up in my bed.

I looked around me, disorientated with my surroundings. I kicked my blanket off, my skin covered in a thin layer of sweat that matted my hair to my forehead as well as the sides of my head and neck. Sobs racked my body for reasons I couldn't comprehend.

It was just a dream. You've had them before. It's alright, it always is. I repeated that to myself until I calmed down enough to lay my head back against my pillow, willing myself back to sleep.