Eighteen Weeks After: A Short Story

Part XII

It became harder and harder to fight the darkness that crept into the corners of my vision with each moment that passed as dusk fell and the night wore on. I'd lost count of how many times I'd drifted into the cold clutches of sleep, only to be roused in the midst of finding my balance in a world of dreams by the jolt of my head as it lolled further towards the ground.

Each time I woke my senses would fight to find footing in the clasp of an unfamiliar world, and each time only one thought would surface through the sea of many that struggled to rise to the forefront of my mind.

Kael.

Instantly my eyes would wrestle with the cloak of the night that draped a thick blackness over the fallen walls of the city, desperately searching under its heavy layers for the boy who lay by my side. Only once I'd gazed over his sleeping form and watched in silence as his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths of slumber would I rest back against the inside of the desk, head propped against the cold lifeless wood as once again I was claimed by a pit of restlessness that hovered between the grasp of both consciousness and sleep.

I'd lost track of the time that continued to tick by even as I staggered through a land far from where seconds and minutes governed each moment. For endless hours I tripped and fell through nightmares and horrors; through worlds upon boundless worlds that stretched on along the bridge that ran between the realms of reality and fantasy.

I'd stumbled into jumbled dreams of acid rain and screams of pain; of flesh and blood and tears that cascaded down the supple skin of flushed cheeks marked with streaks of the same filth that dusted every inch of earth that remained.

Flashes of a looming forest had dashed through my mind, boots thudding against the damp ground with a powerful speed as fear clung to the air as thick as fog. There had been flickers of hands doused in rich blood. Sparks of panic that clenched at my gut. Glances of pictures tacked to a wall, the smiling and laughing faces of joyful children smeared with bright crimson that trailed down the captured memories in the sickening trace of a single sinking handprint.

I'd seen a house engulfed by flames, with shrieks of terror polluting the black streets, and human remains littering each and every surface and crevice of the city I once had called home. I'd seen the stiff corpses of everyone I had cared for laid in a row before me, the roaring flames that engulfed my surroundings distorted by the four dead bodies that rested in front of my blurring sight. I'd seen hands fumbling in a pool of blood, desperately scrabbling over a chest that refused to rise as the beating heart below came to a staggering halt.

But no matter what I saw, I was always thrust into the land of the living with the same need clutching to every instinct that sparked to life as I was thrown from the depths of my unconscious mind into the damp interior of the reception lobby.

For what seemed like the hundredth time that night I'd gasped myself awake, hands searching in the dim light of dawn for the warmth of Kael's flushed skin until finally I'd assured myself his heart was still thumping and his breath was still touching his lips.

Only then would the horrors that danced before my eyes drift towards the back of my mind, shrinking into the darkness and looming there until I again was dragged into a restless sleep where they could lunge at me like a predator leaping for its prey.

It was as I was sitting there, head slowly dipping forwards, the stance of those horror-filled nightmares readying to pounce, that the shift in the sleeping bag to my right pulled me back to reality with a speed that nearly gave me whiplash. In the blink of an eye I was kneeling by his side, a gentle hand pressing back against his chest as he fought with a groan of pain to prop himself onto his elbows.