We Loved

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WITH A gentle push, the nurse leads my back onto the bed. ‟The M.R.I. is just like a big camera, so no need to worry, alright?"

I nod, the florescent lights burning my eyes, but I don't bother to avert them from the cracks on the ceiling. It makes me wonder how long that wall has been up, how much it had to endure, how much more it will have to. It carries my mind to a thought of a needed rest, if the wall could take a break from all the pressure on its bricks, if it would crumble over us otherwise.

The bed raises up, drawing me closer to the ceiling, if only by a little, making a clicking sound as it moves. The doctor smiles at me as she places cushions on each side of my face and then puts a wide white helmet over my head.

"We don't want you to move, so you'll be able to see your husband through the mirror." The nurse gestures at the mirrors stuck to my helmet.

Though I don't need to look at him, I nod, too tired to protest. The bed is firm, a little too firm to provide any comfort, or it could just be that my body is too stiff. My fingers dance on the sides of my thighs as I wait for the test to begin, but a squeeze on my leg stops them to a halt. I look down to find Noah massaging it, smiling at me in attempted reassurance. My eyes still on him, for a bit too long, pushing him to retrieve his hands and he looks away clearing his throat.

My glare softens on the side of his face. I don't know if staring at him like that was right, and whether or not I have the right to reject him. I am his wife, but he's a stranger to me.

"Please stay still." The doctor remarks and I realize that I have moved my head to look at him and forgot about the mirror.

The bed moves beneath me. Having the mirror be my eyes, my view panels up. The bed enters the machine's mouth, allowing itself, and I being on it, to be devoured by the darkness of its core, it washes over me placing me in my own world, far from the people, and the thoughts, waiting for me.

The machine makes a continues growing chirping sound. Closing my eyes, I imagine the trees, the birds as they chirp in the morning sun, dancing in the sky, respiring the dew. But the noise grows too much, that it sounds rather like a construction site now. I am pulled out of the forest, into a dark room, onto a wooden chair, and I am tied. The rope, like a snake, wraps around me and crushes my bones.

I snap my eyes open and I hear it. The metals clashing.

They're here.

They will take me back, with their guns, with their loud heavy metal, ringing it against my bones.

‟No!" My voice is engulfed in the noise.

I struggle to get out, but hands press on my legs. ‟Don't move," a voice sternly says.

My heart beats in sync with the metals, mind clouded with only one thought; I need to get out of here. My screaming shakes my lungs and tears my throat. I kick and push the helmet off my head, scrambling out of the machine and jumping onto my feet to make the run for it.

Pain. Instant and sharp. My injured leg fails me and I fall on a pair of arms, they pull me up. The florescent lights blind me. They will take me somewhere and I cannot let that happen. Somewhere dark. To be tied up. To be punished for escaping.

‟No! Let me go!" I push the person and stumble back.

I get held from behind so I kick. They will not take me back. No, God, no. Hands hold my legs down, and I flail my arms instead, but they are held together on my left. I am defenseless. My throat comes out from the intensity of my screams. Fingers dig into my arm and a thin sharp pain spreads from it. My vision is too blurry to see what just got injected in me.

My body stills. The clashing of metal is but only a fading noise in the distance, and my eyes decide it's rather better that I see no more. A feeling of tiredness and comfort engulfs me, filling up my weak lungs, and so I drown, unable to swim up.