Beautifully Damaged

This is completely my own work. Similarity to any other works are completely coincidental. This may not be copied, built upon or re written in any way. Beautifully Damaged should not be seen on any site, under any names other than my own.

BEAUTIFULLY DAMAGED (c) Olivia Moore / Jisabella. All Rights Reserved.

IMAGES (c) Night Fate www.nightfateactions.com / night-fate-stock on dA

COVER (c) Olivia Moore / Jisabella

---------------------

I woke up with a start to blinding white lights; explosions went off in my head, protesting the intensity. Everything flickered into place in slow, broken fragments. I could hear the beeping of a machine to my left. The rhythm of it lulled me into stupor once again when the slow cliché question came to mind: where was I? My atmosphere sharpened and my pulse thumped in my ears. I tried to blink the endless whiteness out of my eyes- but there was nothing except monotone space. My breath rasped into the echoing emptiness around me, quickening as I grasped for a memory that wouldn't come. I turned my head to the side to see blurred ghost-like machines connected to my body through tubes and needles. I couldn't make sense of anything.

Help!

I tried to yell the word through a sandpaper mouth, but it stuck in my throat. Why couldn't I speak? Forcing the grogginess out of my mind, I reached for the tubes on my arms, meaning to pull them out... before I noticed that I hadn't. Sourness stirred in my stomach as I stared, wide-eyed, down at my arms, limply lying at my side.

Help me!

I cried, but the words died at my lips. What was wrong? I couldn't understand; my body wasn't responding, I didn't know where I was. What could be worse? The more panicked I grew, the worse my apparent paralysis became. I could barely keep my eyes open, could barely breathe.

Somebody please, please help me!

My sobs were barely distinguishable as words. A heavy weight pressed in on my mind. All I wanted was to go home- until I tried to picture it. Home mimicked the long expanse of nothingness inside my head and outside of it. I scrambled to take hold of any memory I could, but I couldn't drag a shred of familiarity and comfort from my severely mute thoughts.

Please!

Only a frightened moan escaped my mouth. The expanse of white grew grey, darkening in gradual shades. Time between blinking shortened, falling away with the light of my prison. Numbness pressed down on my body, threatening to destroy, to smother me.

Please...

I uttered a helpless plea to my approaching oblivion.

Help...

A pointless mumble fell away from my lips.

Me...

Darkness fell around me.

***

The sensation of falling wasn't one that I particularly enjoyed. Infinite shadows had swallowed me and all of a sudden there were no machines, no paralysis and no weight pressing down on my consciousness. Overall I was pretty calm- except for the fact that I was falling.

I had left my stomach somewhere a few hundred meters up and my chest was clenched painfully, my heart was in my throat. The wind whistled and whipped around me as I flailed in the air, trying to grab something, anything. Tears streamed up my face and soaked my hairline. I wanted all of this to stop; it just needed to go away.

I didn't realize I was screaming until my throat was raw with abuse.

A small light danced below me and grew by the second. Fleeting thoughts of the white nothingness I had experienced before swallowed me, encasing my frantic heart with fear. As I fell, and fell closer, I felt the heat of the white light. That warmth absorbed my fear; I closed my eyes and stopped fighting. I dropped into the heat gladly, welcoming the presence of any sensation at all. The warmth slipped into heat, growing in temperature until it scorched my skin.

It was as if my soul was being burned out from my body; everything about me melted and was stripped away as I fell into the white light. I was blinded. I was melting. I was- I was-

Nothing.