Blackness starts to invade my vision, withering in from the sides.
No! I silently shout back. I can’t pass out now! Not when my salvation is so close. Not when I can almost touch it.
I let out a roar of anguish and I thrust my leg forward as hard as I can. The tightly bound ropes shift slightly up my leg, giving my feet a larger range of motion. I press against the wooden beam at my back, redistributing my weight so that I can slither my foot closer.
The fire continues to consume me inch by inch. The pain is excruciating. My body is begging to shut it out. Turn off. The darkness still creeps across my eyes. I blink it away furiously.
Stay here, I command myself. Stay present.
I wiggle my legs again, shimmying the rope farther up. I stretch my toes, extending them as far as they can go until I finally feel the hard surface of the locket under my singed flesh.
My mind rejoices but I know I have a much more difficult task ahead of me. I have to get it open.
I feel for the chain and curl my toes around it, then drag it toward me.
The man in the silk doublet is still entrancing the crowd with some kind of sermon about evil. Even if anyone is looking directly at me, I’m confident my actions are shielded by the blanket of fire and smoke.
The pain has reached a peak where I almost no longer feel it. It’s as if everything has gone numb. But the blackness is still threatening to consume me. Take me away. Render me useless. Leave me here to burn to death.
The smoke is so thick now, I can’t see what my feet are doing. It threatens to suffocate me. I stop breathing, wondering how long I’ll be able to go without air.
I hold the locket under one foot while attempting to wedge what’s left of my toenail on the other into the crack of the heart. The flames have reached my waist now, relentlessly ripping through skin and muscle.
The darkness moves in quickly. From both sides. Like a curtain being drawn across a brightly lit window.
Through the growing shadow of my vision, I see a flash of movement. The towering wall of gray smoke around me billows, a sudden gash tearing it open before it quickly closes back up. As though someone has cut through it with a knife.
I just manage to unclasp the heart and open the locket clenched underneath my toes when the curtain closes completely and the night swallows me whole.
PART 2
THE INVASION
17
BOULDER
I dream of water.
Cool and clear and magnificent. It lifts me up and carries me downstream. It runs over me, washing away my past, purifying my soul, erasing my mistakes, soothing the fiery pain in my legs. I can feel it healing me. The beautiful current cleanses my rotted, charred skin, rinsing it to make way for new, healthy skin. Fresh cells filled with life and perfection.
I am whole again.
I want to float here forever. Never waking. Never knowing what will happen next. Never caring.
I hear the drip, drip, drip of water running over a steep rock, fighting to make its way up the sharp incline before trickling drop by drop over the other side. I know I am moving toward this rock. I will smash into it. It will alter the course of this blissful journey. It will change everything.
I attempt to paddle, to steer myself away, but the gravity of the massive object is too strong. All objects are helpless in its pull. Even me. I continue to float toward it, afraid of what will happen when we finally collide. When our strengths are pitted against one another. When we are forced together at last.
I don’t know who will win.
I don’t know if either of us can.
* * *
When I open my eyes I am in a strange, unfamiliar room. It’s large with bare white walls, textured ceiling, and tall blackened windows. My eyes adjust immediately, seeing flawlessly in the near dark. But there is nothing to see. The room is empty. Apart from the bed I’m lying on, which is swathed in soft white sheets and a thick blue blanket, a small table at the foot of the bed, and a single dim lamp in the corner.
There’s an inherent sadness to this room. As though it’s not just vacant but somehow left behind. Abandoned. And now the loneliness breathes in and out of the walls. Like it has seeped into the paint, soaked into the plush beige carpeting, burrowed itself inside the foundation.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I hear the sound again and I turn to see a tall metal stand next to my bed. It holds a plastic bag full of clear, unidentifiable fluid that drops into a long tube. I follow the tube to see that it leads directly into a vein just above my tattoo.
An IV. I immediately recognize it from my days in the hospital in the year 2013.
Frightened, I bolt upright, tearing the plastic needle from my arm and kicking the covers from my legs. I am poised to jump from the bed and run, but something catches my eye. My legs are covered in a thick white gauze, wrapped in perfect symmetrical layers all the way to my toes.