Immortals | ✓

03 | aethera

━━ αθάνατοι ━━

THOUGHTS in my mind were ceaseless at this point, speeding from one corner to another, a chaotic synthesis of every negative and positive detail I could possibly imagine. I felt overwhelmed and underwhelmed, anxious and calm, all at the same time. Time, simply, wasn't enough in my hands to comprehend what had happened in mere moments. 

There was too much happening and I was losing count of things which had creeped me out, freaked out my mind and made me question reality. Ever since I had gained consciousness, I felt as if my brain would literally burst out of my skull. As ghastly and dramatic as that may sound, it was exactly how I felt. My eyes had opened to the almost setting sun, its rays prancing around my arms and legs and for a few moments, I felt as if I had woken up after a refreshingly long nap until reality hit me like tons of bricks.  

The next thing I noticed was Art, still unconscious and laying in a bed near me. His body seemed so still at that moment that I panicked for a split second until I saw his fingers twitch. He was gaining consciousness like me too. Seeing him this way when our last few moments had been so different made me alert. What was he doing here, unconscious? Had he also felt that pain?

The entire ordeal that followed with Mrs Rose, the nurse, and the doctor had muddled my brain further. Here I was, trying to understand what had felt different since the pain had subsided, what had shifted within my body which made me feel unlike me, and there, the doctor kept on reassuring us that nothing had happened. 

Of course, I didn't pay attention to any of the bullshit he fed us. 

I felt foreign in my own body. That was the best way I could put it after trying to fathom what had happened for hours. Nothing except that thought was even considered by my mind. Like a chant, it continued in the back of my head, until I no more could. 

I wasn't going mad or imagining any of this. I knew it the moment I checked my scars in the washroom and none actually showed up. That is when everything went haywire again. And that is when I began to notice further. Blemishes on my face and arms, scars, birthmarks, nothing existed anymore on my body. 

When Art suggested we should leave, I didn't question him or even hesitate for a second, I couldn't. Something within me urged me to not consider any other option. I didn't know his father, but then I didn't know Art too and yet I was ready to leave the life here behind to run away from whatever this was that was happening to us. I gave in without a second thought. 

My mind and my body suddenly seemed to have shifted their modes. When I had noticed my eyes in the mirror, I had blinked a hundred times, making sure that this was real. And as much as I hated the acceptance of the same, I knew it was. It was clear to me then that whatever this was, I didn't have answers to it yet but neither did that doctor out there. 

Something beyond reality had touched us, and that had caused that agony earlier. 

I am not one to believe in folklore and fantasies, but when you stand in front of the mirror, barely recognizing yourself, hearing voices you shouldn't possibly be hearing without a device, feeling more energized than pained; you just know. Scars don't disappear in seconds, neither do eyes glow the way mine did, and for a second I believed that I was hallucinating, I had read too much maybe but when Art walked in through those doors, his eyes shining as bright as mine, the only explanation that remained was that either this was real or we were so high that everything was a hallucination. 

Before these thoughts had even begun to haunt me further, Art and I had heard the conversation between his father and the doctor who had clearly lied to us before.