End Me Quickly

4: Resilience

During the limited lifespan of every mortal entity, we experience what we believe to be normal ranges of consciousness, dancing between wake and slumber and rarely experiencing anything further.

But as my eyelids lolled open again, I was comforted by a foreign slice of consciousness, one just as much of a hallucination as it was reality.

My mind wandered between these  seemingly drug-induced perceptions and the thin, quavering splinters of reality that appeared genuine to me. I could feel my blood wading throughout my veins as though they had been partially hollowed, like empty garden hoses sprawling through my limbs. Dizzy and consequently light-headed, I was able to sit with great effort, beholding with bleary eyes the murderous crimson stains spread out beneath me. I clung to the marginally comforting hope that I was simply seeing things; the walls spiraled around me, a strange yet sugary metallic aroma drifting throughout.

I felt my way through the room, fingers grasping desperately without much thought or logic. Beneath them swam oceans of fabric and dust, archaic wood and metal. My legs trembled, moving achingly slowly, as though trying to run in a dream. I kept stumbling, my breath wrenched from my lungs with every step. Again I could feel my blood sloshing around-- it was an ugly, empty sensation, like drinking water on an empty stomach, but feeling it everywhere.

I reached instinctively for the incisions on my throat, my fingers tracing the familiar wounds. They were numb to the touch, but still open as no scabs had formed; my fingernails dug into the brittle skin surrounding them and fought the urge to tear it open, to dig deeper and touch the muscle underneath. 

My breath came unsteadily, the patterns slow and laborious, my lungs giving a hideous groan with each inhalation. It resembled a death rattle, rasping with each desperate strain-- my hands moved from my throat to my chest, trembling as though it might collapse.

Quiet incoherent voices swarmed, reverberating off distant walls. They grew louder, the words more distinct.

"I saw you carry someone inside last night, please tell me it wasn't a victim."

"Yes but he's already dead; started bleeding out on the way here."

"And you wasted it all, didn't you?"

I stood in the doorway of the bedroom, shoulders sagging and blood rushing persistently. I watched it spatter across the floor, the steady trickle cascading from the wounds on my throat as well as various lesions along my limbs. I couldn't lift my eyes from it, somehow transfixed by the scarlet trail it left across my pallid skin. 

I urged myself to stumble forth, my bare feet treading across the cool floor unsteadily. The distant voices grew closer, louder. I felt along the walls, my eyes refusing to adjust to the enveloping darkness.

Candlelight flickered steps away, a doorway to my left opening into a small room drenched in its flaxen glow. I stood mere inches from it, fingertips barely grazing the doorframe.

"The body will be easier to burn now that it's dry," a familiar voice murmured.

My eyes focused finally on the silhouetted figure seated there-- the boy from last night, Corbin. His features appeared dark and ghostly in the wavering light, his face more angular and sunken in. He sat beside a woman draped nonchalantly across a velvet armchair, dark hair cascading down her face and concealing it from view. She turned to gaze at me as I drew closer, her eyes glimmering with a quiet rage.

She stood without hesitation, her lean frame towering over mine. I grasped onto the doorframe for balance, clawing into the wood with my blood-caked fingernails.

"And this is the boy," the woman drawled, her tone scathing and without patience.

Corbin rose unsteadily, gaping at me in disbelief.

I peered up at the woman as she neared me, extending a spindly hand. Sharp fingernails grazed my cheeks, but her touch remained soft otherwise. Her hand trailed along my jaw, brushing away dry, flaking blood and tears I hadn't previously acknowledged.

"Can you speak?" her words assumed a newer, gentler air.

Anger and bewilderment frothed from my lips--

"Where... where... am I?" I stammered, the words unfamiliarly husky. 

"I'm afraid my younger colleague has been rather irresponsible," the woman lowered her hand, lips downturning in disapproval, "forgive him, he lacks experience."

"What the hell do you mean? He... he attacked me..."

"I understand your dissatisfaction, your anger is quite justified. You weren't supposed to wake up, it is an uncommon occurrence."

"Why... why did I?"

She paused to think, resting a long fingernail beneath her chin. In the flickering light, I could just barely see her face-- her sharp cheekbones and mature yet unsettling eyes.

"You must have considerable resilience-- which is rare. We could use some resilience around here," her eyes flit to Corbin in that moment, his face flushing even further. Her gaze returned to me as she wrapped her hand around my arm, fingers tracing the faded stains. I could feel her tense up beside me as she inhaled, drinking in their scent with a feverish desperation. Before I could fully realize her actions, she swept me down the hallway, dragging me through the shadowy corridor with an inhuman swiftness and ease.

Down rounded flights of stairs she took me, clinging onto my brittle skin and bloodsoaked clothes as though I were no more than a doll-- a miniature plaything left at her mercy.
She only slowed her pace once we reached the lowest level, a foreboding pair of white doors spread out before us.

A chemically hygienic scent poured into my lungs the moment we stepped through them, the cleanly state of the room more uncanny than I'd anticipated.

"Lie down here, please," the woman gestured to a strange table situated near the door, the glow of the buzzing florescents captured perfectly in its surface.

It wasn't a hospital bed or a gurney-- and it was far too hard to be a stretcher.

I sprawled out across the table in wordless compliance, as much out of curiosity as fear of upsetting the woman who now stood over me.

She examined my face in silence, trailing her fingers across my flesh and inspecting the incisions on my throat.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked, gesturing to the table beneath me. I shook my head.

"It's an embalming table," she replied nonchalantly.

A sickening feeling swelled in the pit of my stomach. I glanced around desperately, eyes falling upon the drawers lining every wall.

A morgue. I was lying in a morgue.