Conundrum

Chapter 18

      A constant, annoying beep made him open his eyes, then immediately regret it. Despite the room's gray tint, the overall white of the room made his eyes burn. Without the twitch of his hands at his sides, he wouldn't have realized that they were no longer tied behind his back.

      With a trembling breath and a wince etched into his face, he stared at his open palms. They looked the same as they always had, but instead of the steady confidence they used to hold, a deep-seated tremble had taken them prisoner. Maybe it was because they were under his confused gaze or the fact that just holding them in front of him was making his arms ache; he couldn't tell. He curled them into fists and closed his eyes, letting himself fall into the complicated comfort of the dark.

What kind of dream was this?

      He swallowed and allowed himself to look around one more. A white blanket had fallen from its original place at his chest and scrunched at his waist, providing a warm embrace that he hadn't felt in a long time. With another calculating look around the room, he saw a door that led into darkness, four old chairs that desperately needed love, and a blanket hanging on the wall opposite the main door.

      A dozen different machines and devices sat next to his bedside, including an IV drip that snaked from the stand and into his bloodstream. Bedside. Bedside?

Something stabbed his heart.

      He looked at the door opposite of the weird hanging cloth, and saw that light was shining from underneath it. Every now and then, a shadow would mold the light into elongated shapes and if he listened hard enough, he could hear soft footsteps over the beeping that had woken him.

      A small, muffled voice made the unknown object in his heart dig deeper. "Mama, after we visit Grandma, can we go get ice cream?"

      When he realized his chest had started to heave, he expected the familiar cold burn in his throat and lungs to tear him up from the inside out, but nothing came. He grabbed at his hair and pulled, extracting a sharp pain from both his scalp and the place where the IV had been injected.

Why would the nowhere do this to him?

      Everything felt so real, as it always did, but instead of giving him a distraction, a peace, all it did was shove an unobtainable dream in his face. He should be swimming in the deepest ocean or flying atop the highest clouds. He should be laying in the cold, abandoned and accompanied only by the torturous demons he'd been presented with when he had arrived.

      The nowhere was a place where he could stand in between the unyielding passage of time and all of history. It was a place where he could pass time without processing anything, without having to be.

      But here he was, laying in a soft bed, warm, and floating in a pleasant numbness. None of this should be happening in the nowhere because he didn't --

      Someone from the outside of his little room coughed, and startled by the abrupt sound, he flinched back, pulling on the IV attached to his arm. The beeping next to him had steadily increased, ringing louder and louder inside his head. He tried to scream to drown out the noise, but something that felt distinctly like nails curled around his throat, allowing only a soft croak out. The machine beside him kept on beeping, until it was thunder, until it was a metal force crushing his skull, his entire world.

Why was the nowhere doing this to him?

Everything had abandoned him. Everything. And he deserved none of this comfort.

      His mouth dropped open into a silent scream, before a deep, ragged inhale scratched at the inside of his throat, forcing a horrible gasp coiling beneath the surface to spring out into the world. But nothing was there to witness it. No one was there to witness the shattered pieces of him scatter across the world, out of reach and irreparable.