Liminal - Excerpt Only

Liminal - Excerpt Only (Chapter One)

My hands vanish.

Someone's whimpering and— Oh God, it's me, the frantic sounds torn from my throat as I try to shake life back into fingers that I know must be there. Except I can't feel them anymore. I. Can't. Feel. Them!

Worse, so much worse, the strangeness is spreading, crawling up my arms to suck the life from them, fading my skin tone to the nothing color of watery powdered milk. My chest heaves. I feel my lungs inflating, my mouth stretching into a scream. And in the blink of an eye I'm standing before a full-length mirror and the scream strangles unborn in my throat. I'm naked. And my face, my body—all of me—is now colorless and insubstantial, the merest suggestion of a human figure such as an artist might sketch with a soft charcoal pencil.

I lower my eyelids, shuttering the smears of blackness my eyes have become. And when I open them again, the mirror reveals no reflection. I know I'm standing right in front of the mirror. I know it absolutely. But I'm invisible. To the rest of the world I no longer exist.

~~~

If I could force a genie to grant me three wishes, my first wish would be simple; I'd wish to be gently coaxed awake by warm streams of sunlight stroking my face. I'd even settle for twittering birds. Or my mom yelling "Wren, you'll be late for school if you don't get a move on!" and yanking open my drapes to drench my room in early morning light. But she hasn't rousted me out of bed since I turned sixteen. And I never thought I'd say this but I miss it. Heck, even Dan bouncing on my bed and whacking me with a pillow, like he used to when we were bratty kids, would be a welcome change.

Anything would be better than this recurring nightmare, this waking with a desert-dry mouth and my heart drumming on the walls of my chest like it desperately wants to escape.

I'd love to escape, too, if only I knew how to go about it. If only I could be certain it wouldn't follow me. If only I understood exactly what "it" was, and why it had chosen my life to ruin. Mom says karma always comes back to bite you in the behind. But aside from some kissing sessions with my ex-boyfriend that might have involved tongue, I'm that well-behaved "good girl" teen all parents pray for. So I figure I must have been bad in a previous life. Real bad.

I lay in bed with my eyelids squeezed tightly shut, debating whether to bother getting up. But I'd missed dinner last night—again. My mouth watered at the mere thought of food and the hunger pains stabbing my insides were too insistent to ignore.

The blackout drapes shrouded my room with a comfortable gloom that didn't prevent the headache kicking in the instant I dared peel open my eyelids. I ignored the throb behind my temples, and flopped out a hand to grope for my alarm clock and fumble the buzzer switch to Off before it could blast my eardrums. Because I couldn't help myself, I lolled my head to the right to check the time.

Yep. Same old, same old. I'd awoken five minutes before the alarm blared. Uncanny. And probably a good thing, considering the shrill screeching would probably make my head explode.

One. Two—this was so gonna hurt. Three. I tensed my stomach muscles and hauled my protesting body upright. The ache in my skull ratcheted from a dull throbbing to bite-your-lips-so-you-don't-cry. Guess I could spend my diminishing allowance on a jumbo packet of aspirin. I could swallow a handful and wait 'til they kicked in before even attempting to get out of bed. But that would be giving in. The headaches are linked to the now-you-see-me, now-you-don't stuff. I don't know why I know this, but I do. Somehow. And although I can't control much in my life right now, I can control whether or not I pop painkillers.

I tell myself this is exercising my right to choose—that it helps me stay strong. But the truth is I'm scared. Medicating the headaches might numb everything—the pain, the frustration, the anger. The hope, too. And then I won't care enough to fight anymore.