Chapter 21 - Confusion
Soft, heavy breaths in the darkness stimulated him. The strong smell of pine, like a sharp soap or lotion, pulled him up.
Brandon opened his eyes. And instantly froze.
He felt....like he was dead.
He felt so cold he gasped and bit his cheek to stop from moaning. And even though he felt a weight over his entire body that reminded him of silk, he still felt a silver chill all along his bones. And just off the edges of his mind was this knowing ache. Biting into his skin all around his stomach was a pain that he didn't know the origin of. He felt tight and yet loose there around his hips and on his left side, like his guts were going to burst through his belly. But pain he could deal with. He had to deal with it. But the unknown he had to decipher....or get the hell away from it. He needed to find out where he was.
Brandon tried to claw at the unfamiliar weight on him, holding him down on the surface that he seemed to be on top of, but he felt the sickness all through him.
He wanted to find his feet and get it out of the way, but suddenly, he felt more than the weight of the cover over him. He felt something large and heavily breathing nestled behind him.
Someone was touching him again.
Damn it! Get off!
Brandon shifted and turned on the mattress and snatched his hand away from the stranger before him. Pain sliced down his leg as he moved, but now he was facing this strange person lying next to him. Brandon reached before him and used the palm of his hand to navigate the darkness. The first thing he felt was a rigid definition and cloth.
IT was so dark he couldn't see, but he picked out what mattered by feeling and sound.
He was in a bed. His clothes felt weird. His head was breaking apart. And the person in the bed next to him was flat-chested. And for all Brandon could tell, they were still sleeping.
Shit! Shit! Where am I?
Brandon racked his mind for an answer, but the sharp pounding muffled his thoughts. He couldn't think clearly. He felt sick, so sick and achy and cold. Something in him just wanted to wilt. To borrow back into that warm sleep he had suddenly been jerked from by the tickle of someone's hand on his skin. Holding his hand. The hand he had felt on his had been warm and solid. Strong, like a man's hand, but there was really only one way for him to be sure. Brandon pressed the palm of his hand on the stranger's upper body, down their wide, hard chest and torso and with an anxious swallow, he slid his fingertips against the stranger's muscular thighs and pelvis.
Was it a man?
He still couldn't be sure honestly...
"You know, stranger...." A voice suddenly drawled in the darkness. Smooth, deep...pleasing as it startled Brandon, and he jerked his hand back. "Most people don't wake up and start molesting their mysterious bed partners. Did you like it?"
Brandon didn't think. He raised his leg up. He screamed as agony flared down his entire stiff side. Grunting through his teeth, he kicked out and slammed his feet, which he was shocked to realize were utterly bare, into the stranger's chest.
Something snarled, and both he and the stranger fell off opposite sides of the mattress.
The first thing Brandon soaked in when he hit the ground was the absolute unfathomable pain that sliced down half of his body, then radiated up his spine and back down into his gut. IT was so extensive and deep that he gagged. Dry heaving as the nausea slammed into him, but he was empty on the inside. He could feel the void of no food, no liquid, and no strength as he tried to scramble to his knees and find his feet in all the new horrible sensations.
"Hey! What was that for!" the large stranger hollered from the opposite side of the bed. And Brandon heard him scrambling to his feet. He begged his feet to comply, and he soon stood on legs that felt no stronger than twigs. His eyes darted around the pitch-dark room, searching desperately for some avenue of escape, and then he saw a way out.
There!
He thought to himself. He spotted his escape beneath a slit in the wall behind him. A light shines into the room.
A door!
The stranger was moving towards him. He could hear him getting closer.
Brandon didn't waste the time to think. He dashed, or more like he stumbled over, in the direction of the door. The man roared behind him. "Wait!"
What the hell was that!
Brandon screamed to himself.
He slammed into the door and fumbled along the wood, searching for a door knob. He wasted a few precious seconds trying to push the door, then changed direction and pulled it open...