by T. Rudacille
***
I was twirling through the endless starlit sky like a toy ballerina in a child's prized music box. In the distance, the moon shone as bright as a lighthouse's beacon leading ships mercifully to the steady land from raging seas. I wanted to pull myself through space to reach it. I wanted to find salvation on its surface. But the stars around me faded as I tumbled forward, projected towards a hollow, menacing black hole where our earth once stood. The black hole had consumed it, erasing it from view as though it had been a dubious mistake. Someone, more than likely our Creator, had furiously blotted out our precious Earth with permanent ink. And it was permanent, that absence, that blackness...
Or so I thought...
The next time I blinked, the planet had reformed before me in all its vivid brilliance. The blue oceans and the green lands were amplified ten-fold in my weary eyes. The sight took my breath away. I widened my eyes, my impulse to blink again becoming overwhelming. My eyes burned, and tears streamed down my face from the effort it took to fight that basic reflex. But soon, the pain became unbearable, and my eyes shut for but one millisecond.
When I could see again, the ambiance that I had only just seen had vanished, replaced by a horror so lethal that I felt my heart begin to split. I wanted to reach up, grasp my chest, and through some miraculous cure, aid my heart's return to its normal two-step. But the sight before me was too harrowing. I was being eaten alive by it from the inside out.
Fire had engulfed the world in several blasts. I could hear the screams of every last man, woman, and child as they ran for cover, only to be consumed by that wave of flame I had seen so clearly myself. I could see every person I ever knew, whether I had felt any semblance of affection for them or not, as they perished in the overwhelming blaze.
My mother did not even try to run. The flames had erupted, and she had stood firm, awaiting the moment they blasted her from this life to the next. I wanted to scream out to her, but the pain in my chest had reached such an agonizing point that I found myself unable to draw the breath it would take to warn her.
For the first time, I was sorry that I had left her. Tears of physical pain mixed with those of emotional torment fell as my arm jerked forward, reaching out to the image of her that was so clear, I thought I would be able to embrace her if I just strained myself to reach with enough effort and pain.
When the fire surrounded her and burnt her right before my eyes, I finally did scream. I screamed until I felt the blood pushing against the skin of my face. I screamed at my mother with fury, guilt, and sadness so strong, I knew that it would end me.
Over and over again in my mind, these words-- so meaningless, it seemed, so stupidly sentimental-- repeated:
“She carried you.”
I screamed louder. The idea of it, though it was all the aforementioned negative descriptions, jolted me out of my drugged sleep.
“It's okay. It's okay, Brynna. You're okay.” James was telling me. His hands were on my face as the screams continued to pour from me. Those panicked wails were the words I should have said to her. They were the protest that I never gave James when he told me I had to leave both of my parents behind. I could not form a coherent sentence. Only guttural, animal shrieks could tell those around me of my regret.
I allowed myself that moment. I allowed myself that vulnerability, because I knew that I was safe there with James. I allowed myself to feel something other than the normal disdain I had for my parents. I owed them a moment of grief as their moment of death came and went.
An earthquake had ripped through my chest, pulling my heart in two separate directions with a bottomless chasm of space in between. My cries of torment choked off suddenly, and I found myself unable to gather breath sufficient enough to clear my clouded mind.
It was the drug they had given me. I was the one who was having the side-effects when I had been so worried about everyone else. I watched as James shouted to someone. Two men in white coats were beside me, and one was ripping my shirt down the front. Even with the unthinkably horrendous pain in my chest, I still found the strength to reach over and hit that doctor hard in the face. My body was going into the defense mode I knew all too well. Despite the fact that a very small part of me knew that those two men were going to save my life, I was still horrified to be in such a vulnerable state with them in the room.
“Everything's going to be okay.” James was telling me softly as he held the hand that I had used to slap the poor doctor to his chest. When I went to strike out with the other, James grabbed that one, too.
“Look at me.”
My eyes snapped over to him as a result of their own wish to be comforted by the sight of his face. I was calmed by his soft brown eyes, despite seeing the smallest traces of fear reflected back at me in them. When he spoke, his voice was steady. In his firm show of calm, he was able to soothe me with an ease I didn't quite understand.
“I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, Brynna. I promise.”
My hands tightened around his as I felt two patches being secured to my chest.
I couldn't breathe. Everything was beginning to disappear in swirling clouds of black. Within those ominous clouds, I could see silver stars twinkling. They did not mystify or calm me; instead, they terrified me, because as they appeared, I realized that I was falling back into space where I would relive that blood-chilling moment when the entire world I knew disappeared in a blaze that turned everyone and everything to ash. I couldn't see it again. I couldn't breathe.
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
“Let go!” One of the doctors shouted at James. I grasped his hands even more firmly, and the doctor had to bark at him again before he finally wrenched them free.
When the jolt of electricity coursed through my body, I heard a deafening bang that I was sure had shattered my eardrums. The ringing that followed the deafening sound was the same as the one I had heard just before the blast. I was still on Earth. I was going to drown in the wave of fire...
BANG.
It was the blast. Why wasn't I burning?
It hadn't hit me yet. It was coming.
BANG.
There was more than one explosion. The flames would surely come barreling towards me with a force that would rip what was left of the air from my lungs as I struggled to take one last, sweet breath before I died...
Silence.
It was coming. It was coming.
“Brynna?”
So, God really was a man. I wondered what my eternal punishment would be for living with such hate in my heart; both Maura and my mother had promised to meet me in Hell. The condescension I felt constantly had been towards those I did not care to know. But the hate had always been reserved specially for the two people who had made me. Surely that was quite an offense, one worthy of a place in at least the first of the many fabled levels of Hades.
“Brynna?!”
Why did God sound so frantic?
“Come back to me, baby.”
...Okay?...
As my senses came back to me, I realized that I was not dead, nor was I being called “baby” by an anxiety-ridden higher power. It was just an anxiety-ridden James Maxwell. My eyes opened, and I found myself looking up into his worried face. I couldn't think of something witty to say that would assure him of my return to normalcy. I could barely process what had happened. My sarcastic nature and intelligence that were the partners in crime behind such snidely clever remarks were put on the far back-burner of my consciousness under the circumstances.
“You look horrible.” I managed to croak out as my hand came up to grasp my chest. There was very little pain there anymore. A few aftershocks rattled my bones, but they were mere flies compared to the beastly creature that had been the actual heart attack.
James smiled slightly and tilted my head back. He poured some water down my throat, and I managed to swallow it before I started to cough.
“Easy.” James said gently.
“What are you telling me 'e
asy' for? You are the one pouring it.”
“And she's back to normal in...” James looked up at what I guessed was a clock on the wall, “Forty five seconds. That has to be a record.”
When I went to sit up and found myself unable, James eased me up himself.
“You would not even know what to do with yourself if I wasn't getting on you about something.” I managed to whisper before smiling at him just slightly.
He smiled, too, and replied, “You're absolutely right.”
The memory of the awful dream (was it a dream?) that I had been having grasped my jugular and choked off my newly restored ability to breathe.
“Is it coming back?” He asked me. I could tell that he was forcing his voice to remain level.
I shook my head.
“I think I saw it happen. I saw the blast.” My voice was trembling slightly as I told him the details. “I saw my parents, and I felt...” I shook my head, stopping myself. I could not bear to relive it all again. “I don't feel it anymore. But I felt it then. And it was so strong and so...”
Without thinking about it, I reached out to him and grasped his arms, pulling them so that they were encasing me. Then I wrapped my own around his neck. That gesture showed more weakness than I could stand, and immediately, I went to pull away. But his arms stayed locked around me as we laid back on the small cot. I was beneath him, embracing him so his body was pressed to mine. The urge to push him away was rivaled by an equally strong urge to hold him close. The two desires fought valiantly, but the latter won when I looked up at him.
But I had to pull away. I had never needed a man before, and I certainly did not need one now. I especially didn't need him. Since the moment we had met, he had purposely aggravated, insulted, and angered me, all in an effort to put me in my place. The concern he was displaying just then was meant to manipulate me into feeling a strong level of affection for him. It was also meant to make me shed my self-calming capabilities in favor of a dependence on him. He was holding me and gazing at me so warmly because he wanted to engage in a physically intimate act of carnal eroticism. Then, after he had gotten what he wanted, I would never see him again.
That was what Maura would have told me, if she had been awake.
I had to pull away.
But I couldn't do it. In the event of that near-death experience I had suffered through, I had no choice but to show vulnerability, as my desire to survive far superseded my need to remain unfazed by any passing terror, be it big or small. But I did have a choice in that moment, and I needed to move away from him and force myself to face that horrible vision I had seen on my own. I faced everything on my own, and I certainly couldn't afford any cowardice then, not even when it made me feel, once I managed to look past the blinding reservations I had about it, so safe and almost loved.
Though I knew that I needed to pull away, I found myself holding his arms around me, my body shaking as those horrifying images played out clearly in front of my widened eyes.
I was still very afraid.
After planting a gentle kiss on my forehead, he turned us both sideways so that he could lie behind me. I felt the scratchiness of his unshaven cheek as it rested against the side of my face. I squeezed him tighter and whispered softly so no one could hear but him:
“Stay with me.”
I felt his lips press softly to the side of my face now.
“I will.”
