Twisted Dreams

🟥 Guardian Angel: Part Two: The Light

Pain rips through your body, sending wave after wave of wretched convulsions down your limbs. Air refuses to reach your lungs as they burn as if on fire, and you hunch over with a strangled gasp. Boiling water seems to have replaced every blood vessel in your veins as it pumps under your burning skin.

Your eyes squeeze tight and an agonized scream is torn from deep inside; you never stop screaming, even until your throat is shredded and all you can do is dry heave.

Your ears pop and ring and thick, hot blood slowly trickles out as what feels like a knife is brutally jabbed into your ear canals. Dizziness washes over you, and would make you heave if you weren't already from the pain. Blood splatters in your next coughing fit, dribbling down your chin.

Your knees give out and you land with a sharp crack on the hard ground, arms wrapped tightly around your stomach. You're certain your innards are going to fall out if you don't, from the wide, bloody gashes in your torso.

The pain lasts far longer than it should, you think, distantly, with whatever shred of sanity you have left. You wonder why you aren't dead or, at the very least, unconscious. Then you see why.

A bright pinpoint of light appears, on the horizon. In a flash of twisted humor, you almost think of the light at the end of the tunnel. But this is far too corporeal, though still otherworldly.

You manage to blink with stiff, dry eyelids, and with blood still trickling from your lips. When you open them again, the light is extending its hand, pressing its palm to your forehead.

And all at once, the deafening, ringing silence of being without pain fills your now-working ears.

Your hands tremble, but not from violent shudders. Your eyes water, but not from your nerve endings being alight with hot flame. Your knees still support your weight on the ground, but not from lack of stability. A mixture of fear and awe and terrifying peace settles upon your shoulders, though weightless.

The fingers trail along your jaw, before slowly retracting into the cloak of light. The light fades, leaving you blinking sunspots out of your eyes and looking up at an all-too familiar face.

Your guardian angel, who stood at the wall of your bedroom with his unmoving face, only varying to whisper stories in an ancient, unearthly tongue.

Here, now, his face bears only the shadow of a distraught expression. But on him, his marble figure, his constant collectiveness, it speaks louder than any human's.