The Undoing Of Villains | ✓

thirty four

thirty four 

I WAS floating. I couldn't see where I was, or how it looked, because a heavy blanket of dark covered my field of vision, rendering me blind. All I could feel was the sensation of gently swaying atop waves of silk. They were soft, yet they seemed oil-like in their viscosity. I couldn't feel my body, but only the sensation of having one floating atop that strange sea I couldn't see. All I had were remnants of thoughts, brief flashes of memories: sounds, colors, faces that had made up an existence. 

Those pictures were impossible to interpret, as if the sea I was resting on blocked out any attempt at piecing them together – as if I was encased within a bubble, isolating any attempt at communicating with any other thing. Instead, all I had was this endless swaying, deceptively soft. The brief pictures of faces, the sounds of an explosion, the bitter taste of ash and blood – they all swirled around me head, without combining into an understandable memory. Like water swirling down a drain, they seemed to float endlessly, just as I was.

A bubble of frustration rose within me, but another part of me popped it just as quickly, and it sunk away into that sea of apathy, disappearing with remnants of memories. The waves seemed to turn thicker, like oil, and they felt sticky – as if they were pulling me into them, caging me within an inescapable grasp. A sensation struck me, of a hand struggling against its bindings – an image rose up, me shackled in a dirty basement. A face – familiar, snarling. The feeling of pain, of being slumped over in those shackles, every part of my body burning. 

I could almost taste the memory now. Parts of it formed, and I saw myself, turning my head, the other familiar figure beside the sneering, angry one – yes, and the other prisoner. I almost formed their names, had them on the tip of my mind, letters almost forming to make a word – then I was once again swept away by that sea, apathy ripping those fractions of memories away from me. A scream wanted to rise, but was fiercely quashed. 

I attempted to recollect anything else, anything that would help me find my way out of this place. Wherever I was, there was no sensation of a body, nothing physical I could hold onto. No sense of comfort. 

Almost unknowingly, my mind grasped after comforting memories. There was a sudden jolt that ran through me, almost like an electric shock, my mind switching into another gear, nerves firing off in search of anything in the form of comfort. There was an almost immediate switch – the fragments I had grasped for turned more vivid, colors almost bursting out of what I could recall. Another face floated to the forefront of my mind. Despite me not being able to picture my own face, I felt this one looked alike to mine. Almost as if we were family. 

A mental 'click' resonated through me, as if the word family tugged at the lock keeping me from my memories, from who I was. Family. The face returned, a word surfaced – Sawyer. 

After that, a rush of pictures returned, but now with words, with people, faces and places that could piece them together. It seemed as if a rush of air had flowed into my lungs, releasing me from the oily grasp of that sea, and I felt my body, could feel my legs, my arms and my head – then my mind spun, wildly, before it came to a complete stop, that same electric shock running through me, – 

The bed was soft. I felt tired, as if my bone marrow was made of lead, and awkwardly uncomfortable – as if I had been standing in direct sunlight for hours on end. Despite this, I registered the fact that the bed was soft, the cushion behind me keeping me semi-upright. My tongue was heavy, sticking to the top of my mouth, so when I felt the sensations of my surroundings my eyes shot open, searching for some type of drink.