Time Loop

Day 1 Part 2

It was seconds before she was banging her fists on his chest and sobbing. Only a few more seconds before her fists became weak and she collapsed against him. Her anger drained and turned into sadness. John hadn't seen this amount of emotion coming from his mother since his parent's divorce. 

John had lost his ability to speak. Lost too much to the memories that always seemed to threaten his conscious state. So much had been covered up during his parent's divorce. The courts had placed him in his mother's hands thinking that she was stable. She was when she was without his father. And he was more stable without her with him. Their emotions seemed to always explode and cause a mess whenever they were together. It was loud and dangerous and so filled with hate that it wasn't enough to just inflict it on each other. 

John held his mother in his arms for a while, not really thinking of anything in particular. His mother had begun to spew on and on about how much she missed being with his father. About how it was John's fault that they had separated. If he hadn't been born...If he hadn't been born.

It was something that he had thought plenty about before he settled on the thought that he was protecting his mother from herself. He knew already how much she missed his father despite the restraining order and the divorce. They had gotten it on her mother's request for John's safety. It was never really about John's safety though since he was still caught in the middle of them. 

"Why are you even at the hospital? I didn't leave you any texts or voice mails saying that we were here. That he...that this happened." John's mother said after nearly a hour of calming down.

John suddenly remembered why he was there and that he needed to get to the roof. That something terrible was going to happen if he didn't. Something terrible had already happened though.  What worse could possibly happen at the moment? What could beat his father dying and his mother hating him for it? 

Abruptly the power shut down in the entire hospital for a few seconds before all of it flickered back on. Everyone and everything seemed to fall into silence. The world seemed to have frozen and have been plunged into coldness. A draft of cold seemed to slip through the hallways of the hospital, causing all who felt it to shiver. It was merciless and daunting. 

John and his mother slowly looked around before John pushed his mother off of him slowly. She still clung to his shirt though, her face having taken on a steely look. 

"John, what were you doing before you came here?" She asked, her voice colder than he had ever heard it before. 

She grabbed onto his arm and dug her nails into him as he tried to pull away from her. Pain shot through his arm and he hissed lightly, he continued to try to pry himself away from her grip. 

He remembered why he was there. Why he had come to the hospital in the first place. John tore himself away from her grip quickly and began to move down the hall to where he was certain the elevator to the upper floors were. He had already mapped out the building in his head when he had been walking through it earlier. 

His mother was hot on his tail, hissing and demanding answers from him. John ignored her as he ran through the hospital.

When he reached the elevator, the lights flickered again. He pushed the button, only to find when the doors opened a brick wall. John looked around him, confused as a mist slowly began to crawl across the floor towards him. He could hear screams of terror echoing through the hospital. 

John took off, away from the mist that was following him, and to the stairs. The steps lead all the way up to the roof of the hospital. 

From behind him he heard his mother scream as the mist seemed to devour her in its murky depths. John nearly stopped, thinking that he should go back to get her. To save his mother from the terrible mist that continued to creep closer to him. He didn't though. He couldn't. John only looked back once before he was racing up the cement stairs to the roof. He had been on the first floor and there were four flights of stairs to cover before he reached the top. 

The mist was climbing the stairs behind him, seeming to become faster with each step. 

John ran as fast as he could manage. Taking two steps at a time to reach the top of the building. The lights continued to flicker through out the building. With each flight he countered, John grew increasingly tired and out of breath. 

He had to take a breath when he finally reached the top floor. He had exhausted his strength. John went to push on the metal door to go out on to the roof only to find the door was locked. The mist crept quickly up the stairs after him, filling every corner and crevice with its opaque body.