stabbing in the dark ~fransykes~

37

Umm so I lied...this won't be the last chapter, there will be another one after this. Apparently I can't stop writing this book.

Josh stared at the ceiling as pain ripped through his chest, intense and warm, drowning him in a tidal wave of sudden dread. His mind was floating: distant, cloudy. It seemed as thought he was viewing the world around him through shattered fragments of glass, the sound of his lovers scream of desperation echoing through his mind as if they were a mere whisper caught by the wind.

And then the relief came, the euphoria that ripped through his exhausted body as everything inside of him just left go. The pain, the grief, the anxiety: it was all gone. With one last breath he looked up at his lovers face, contorted in pain as his eyes wept with anger and sorrow. He felt warm hands cradle his limp figure, fuzziness erupting in his cold chest for the last time.

And then everything stopped.

He was floating. There was no colour, not even black or white. Just nothing. No sound, no objects, nothing holding him up. He couldn't think, or speak, or hear, or see, and yet somehow he was stuck in a limbo of being able to acknowledge his own presence, but unable to act upon it. So he waited, and waited.

Time itself didn't seem to exists, and yet he felt like he had been there for an eternity. Or was it a second? The line between forever and a blink of a second was indistinguishable. That's the funny thing about time, it's a concept created by human perception, an illusion that doesn't always correspond with reality. But what is time when there is no past, present, or future?

Suddenly, he was falling.

Falling through the nothingness at the speed of light, his body numb yet his mind burning with anticipation as he waited for the impact of his mighty fall to come. Yet it never did, instead he found himself being dragged slowly back into conciseness as if he was being dragged through the ocean waves towards the sea.

Then there was noise. Voices. Whispers. Then colour. Darkness. The smell of lavender. Then feeling. Sensation in his fingers, spreading across the palm of his hand. His fingers twitched, his body ached. His soul aches too, as if it had been ripped from his chest and placed back the wrong way round. He felt half empty, like a piece of his very being was somehow missing.

With the single beating of his heart his eyes flew open, flooded with the overwhelming flash of white. He groaned in pain, his vision still distorted as he closed his eyes again, feeling his skin burn as if it were on fire. He inhaled, exhaled. Repeating this pattern again, he slowly opened his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the abnormally bright light this time before he glanced around him.

He was on a bed, the mattress and sheets white whilst the frame was a pastel blue metal, much like the ones you would expect to find in a hospital. The walls were white too, the floor a pale brassy wood. There was no windows or light on the ceiling, and yet the whole room was bathed in sunshine, the kind that only appeared on the warmest of summer days. He was dressed in some kind of white gown that went down to just above his knees, light against his skin and so smooth he could hardly feel it brushing against his stomach.

Joshua looked down at his hands, tracing his own skin as if in disbelief. His mind was hazy, confusion wrecking him as he looked around the room in disarray. He couldn't remember getting here, or where he was, or snorting really at all. All he knew was that he was Joshua, and that something about this place was wrong. His stomach churned at the thought, his skin still burning as the vile taste of not belonging filled his mouth.

Then he heard the whisperers again, his senses sharpening as he gazed towards the only door in the room. Through the glass panel in the door he could just about make out two blurry figures dressed in white, standing close together with their sides towards the door. Their faces and bodies were just a blur from Joshua's place on the bed, yet he could still just about make out the shape of wings perturbing from their backs.