Endless night encompasses me in velvet wings of warmth as I float amongst the stars. A heavy symphony of silence reverberates through my being as if I was resting at the bottom of the ocean. Peace, freedom, and serenity are all I know now. Nothing hurts anymore; the pain, a memory so distant it seems to be frayed on the edges of my mind. It can't reach me here.
A multitude of colors and lights reverberating off the endlessness surrounds me in a cascade of exploding luminescence. Purple for my mother's favorite dress, yellow for the sun I drew in the corner of every picture, blue for my prized teddy bear my father bought for me, and green for the eyes that were the last to look upon me.
All those colors bring an unimaginable sense of comfort and exhilaration. I see them even as the sound of my mother's voice lulls me to an even deeper sleep with a lullaby. I let go and allow it to carry me to an unfamiliar yet inviting place.
Suddenly, the song stops and a pinprick of blinding white erupts from the curtains of black, tearing my beautiful tapestries of death apart. The colors fall like fireworks all around me as my mind is ripped open and I'm catapulted through the new unforgiving expanse. My Eden is destroyed as a blanket of warmth is ripped away, causing me to shiver and curl in on myself from the bitter cold torching my insides. Shrill noises shatter my eardrums as the cold turns to fire and my throat aches from screaming into the blinding void.
I mourn for death being ripped away so violently before I'm even brought back to life.
It pains me to shiver from the sheet of ice beneath my skin. Something between fire and permafrost ignites my arms as the beeping from the monitor blares like a siren in my eardrums. Everything is spinning and loud until a single electric touch brings back a bit of warmth from the other side.
A muddled voice emerges through the chasm of drudge to distract my mind from the infernal beeping. "Amara, thank god. Can you open your eyes, sweetheart? Please, god don't let this be a dream."
My lips part, but even the breath that escapes hurts. Liquid immediately touches my tongue and slides down my throat to calm the burn in my esophagus. I gulp it down like a newborn calf, the water restoring my cold, aching body with its delicious vitality.
Harsh light floods my vision as warm blood courses through me once again. I move to reach for the cup, but a familiar sharp force holds my hands down at my sides with only an inch or two to give. I cry out from the sting my confines shoot from my wrists up.
"Please, it's best if you remain calm."
Is that really...
I blink away the fog as my vision readjusts to the light. There is no time to grieve for the light that was ripped away when two fierce pools of emerald dance with passion inches in front of me. The exact shade that put to shame the stones they mimic that thrived for me in death now do the same for me in life. The sincere relief and admiration in them are unmistakable, but so is the clear and present danger of my situation.
"Daniel," I croak.
He lifts a hand to hold my cheek in his palm, calloused fingers brushing over my features like he needs to commit them to memory. I make no move to stop him, knowing my efforts wouldn't do any good. So I study his features while he peruses mine; his plush lips a hair's width apart, bloodshot eyes, and stubble he definitely didn't have before when he chased me through the woods.
The woods.
Bile rises in my throat as memories from that fateful night resurface to play rapid fire in my mind. My blood burns as blood red as crimson casts itself over everything in my frame of sight. I thrash in Daniel's grasp, screaming over whatever it is he's trying to say. I don't hear him so I don't hear the other voice mumbling a few feet away. What I do hear is the return of the dreaded beeping, but louder than that is my heart beating like a drum and thundering through my body. And like a ship at sea, I rock back and forth, relaxing as a new liquid euphoria paints my vision black again and fills my dreams with dancing colors I will crave forever.
-
The beeping is back, but this time it's more like a distant hum than a harsh siren. And there's more than bandages and a tight ring of metal around my wrists. The warmth is back to send shock through my system. The light is still as blinding as it was before.
I just want to go back to the dark.
"No, don't say that." Daniel's voice breaks through. I guess my inner monologue was more outward than I thought.
His hands cover mine, toying with the cuffs keeping me chained to yet another bed. This might be proper procedure for someone on suicide watch, but conceding with the fact he brought me to a hospital in the first place is confounding to say the least.
"Here, maybe this will help." He hums as the lights dim. "Do you need anything? Any water, food, morphine; tell me what you need, princess."
"Take these off." I request rather meekly, nodding towards the cuffs. Daniel's expression is forlorn as he releases a heavy sigh.
"I want to do that for you, Amara, I really do." He massages his jaw as he ghosts a finger along my bandages. "But doc insists and quite frankly, so do I."
The sting of his words settle like a pang of disappointment in my gut. Disappointment over the Sysephenian task that is escaping captivity, but even more than that: desperation to go back to the safe place.
Through a blur of tears I find my anchor and do my best to do the only thing I'm currently capable of doing and take deep breaths in and out, keeping my gaze locked on Daniel's. There might just be more desperation in his eyes than there is in mine. I consciously lean into his touch when he lifts his hand to caress my face. The pads of his fingertips drifting along the contours of my cheek fuels me with that familiar warmth. His boyish smile of relief is debilitating.
"Why am I here, Daniel?" I ask in a whisper, tears obscuring my vision.
I watch his adam's apple bob as he presses his lips to my white knuckles. "Let's not talk about that now, princess. You should relax."
"No," I shake my head as his lips set in a grim line. "I need to know what happened. I need... something."
His arms are around me before the first sob is ripped from my throat. Even with the warmth he provides, I'm so cold. Not the kind of cold you get from trudging through the snow with a red nose and toes that are close to falling off, but the kind of cold that the human body isn't meant to withstand. It's a constant shiver that runs imbued within my bones. It's a hopeless chill that claims my body as a cadaver rather than organic material that used to mine.
"You're here. You're alive." Daniel speaks into my hairline, his kisses just as comforting as his embrace. "That's all that matters."
I shake my head, seeking the only comfort I can find in the crook of his neck. "I don't feel alive."
He's holding me physically to this plane of existence, but my soul is blindly clawing its way up an endless tunnel, doomed to dredge through an empty and despondent void. I had a taste of what actual peace and safety was like only to have it ripped away before I fully had the chance to realize what it was. Without it, I'm a withered addict chasing a release so euphoric everything else feels like walking death: empty and debilitating.
"I don't feel alive," I repeat. "I don't even remember what it felt like to be alive. I just..."
I choke out my words as the corners of my mind are painted scarlet and my severe bed head absorbs Daniel's tears.
"Please don't say that." He quietly begs.
"I should be dead, maybe I am. Please, tell me what happened. I shouldn't be here right now." I insist.
"Amara, you died." He admits ruefully. "I almost lost you, and I was so afraid you had left me forever, but you're back. I saved you. You needed blood and mine brought you back to me."
"No," I stutter in disbelief, sure that this is part of my eternal punishment. "You didn't save me. I want to go back. Please, let me go back."
"Absolutely not. You're the single most important person in my life. Even before your heart pumped my blood through your veins, your soul was bound to mine." The dark intensity in his tone arising complex feelings within returns to remind me - dead or alive- that Daniel is incapable of professing anything but the truth regarding his feelings for me. "Of course I saved you. There was no other way."
I shake my head in protest, managing a weak whisper. "There was another way."
His already feral gaze turns vicious. Our conjoined blood turns cold under his penetrating stare.
"There was no other way," he commands. "In this world or the next, you are mine to cherish and protect until we're a mess of bones and rot."
"You could've saved us the time and energy by joining me." I scoff, unashamed and unsurprised when he doesn't react.
The dread and intensity wash away and what's left is the last man I remember before everything went cold. Those emeralds gleam with tears and warm my chest from the inside out while confessing endless ways to love, worship, and devote themselves to the altar of my affection. Strong, wiry hands that will drip with blood until the end of their days flinch with each involuntary movement to reach out and touch what they so desperately crave. Perhaps those same eyes and hands are fuelled by a heart and mind similar in nature. Perhaps they will be my next weakness and I'll be gone for sure.
"I did." His tone is grave.
"Wh-"
"You were clinically dead for three minutes and nineteen seconds. Your heart stopped beating and your skin turned blue. It's like you were already on ice." He shivers, staring off into space at the memory that will no doubt haunt him to eternity. "Your breathing had gone from erratic to steady, but it was slowing down. Then, like it had overstayed its welcome, ceased. People were shouting from one wing to the next as every monitor started beeping out of control. No one said the typical doctor shit like they were losing you."
We share the sting of tears as his eyes join mine in a dance of despair. Whatever pang of anguish is in my heart has no doubt been amplified in his.
"They lost you. My physical body sat right here but my soul joined yours as soon as they said you were gone. My life and anything it's ever meant was gone as soon as my only reason for living was no longer here."
His confession is haunting, yet floods my icy veins with fire. It's a mimicked mockery of the safety in my short state of death, but it's close enough. My bloodied soul can halt searching for the end to the void when letting go and trusting the bottomless depths to catch me is temporarily appealing. Even if it's what trapped me there in the first place.
"Can I ask you something?" I ask whilst blinking away the fog.
He nods, expression ablaze with worry and an eagerness to please me. "You may ask me anything."
"What's the point of all of this?"
"Of life? You're going to have to be-"
"No," I interrupt him. "You and me. I knew I was going to die when you took me; I waited for it. I craved it and I still do. At first I thought I would try to make it as long as I could because I owe that much to my parents and all the girls who came before," I gulp, their faces flashing across the shadows of my mind. "I don't remember much about how I felt before besides an intense need to survive you and a harrowing ache to give it all up and die like I was supposed to. So tell me, Daniel, what's the point? What am I destined for now?"
Shock and anxiety paint his features so perfectly, my despondent mood is lifted knowing the power I've apparently held over him since I've died stretches this far. In some twisted way, it feels like I'm winning a game we never intended to start.
"Don't say that, please. You were safe with me. You were always safe with me. All of those girls were safer with me, but I was never going to kill you. Maybe it started out like that, but as soon as I saw you the second time in that coffee shop I knew, my little bird, I could never part from you."
A voiceless scream claws at the back of my mind to shut myself off from the warmth of his words and strange sense of comfort his devotion provides. Gazing into his eyes, I imagine the consequences of turning my back on the last remaining slice of warmth life has to offer.
I shudder at the thought.
"And neither the angels in heaven above or the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul," his melodious tone washes over me to transfix my corpse, a necromancer with his words. "My life," his kisses trail across my cheekbones and back again until his lips meld against mine. "My life."
"Your life?" I question.
"My life." He confirms. "Like I told you before, sweetheart, we're bound. Before we met. Before you were even born."
The familiar deep shade of forest green returns in its usual intensity. I can't fight the blush heating up my neck from the way his words greet my ears. The first time he recited poetry this beautifully I was drugged and dragged to a basement. Now, there's comfort in the void. That's all I will probably ever get until I'm able to kiss death once again.
A twinge of guilt for my newfound desires forces me to send a silent apology to my mother. I never thought I would prioritize the feelings from the other side over life and freedom, but the schism between the two has grown astronomically and one is forever out of my reaches. If I should return to the void of nothing, it will be because my options have been exhausted. Even then, I'm betting on life's only guarantee.
"So, what does this mean for us?" I ask my last remaining connection to the light. It's genuine and without the underlying motives I may have had before.
Unsurprisingly, Daniel notices.
He instantly perks up, his calloused hands returning to cradle my face. He looks so content to simply stare and hold what he's been waiting for. "It means I want to spend forever hearing you say us just like that. Reminders of me on your skin," a hand ghosts over my stomach where his carving has scarred over. "Only memories of me, Amara, do you understand?"
He's desperate, but why wouldn't he be? I might just be his soulmate. And so long as we're both getting what we want, he can keep his obsession like a dog that won't stop gnawing at his bone.
"I understand."
"Good. This isn't a proposal Amara, not yet anyway, but I promise I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. You've changed me. I didn't think I needed that, but you proved me wrong." He grins.
The warmth his words provide bloom like a garden to liven the corpse I inhabit. I hardly process the meaning behind them, but focus on how I can finally feel my heart beating again.
I want more.
My garden is decimated as needles penetrate all over me and the ice beneath my skin becomes an unbearable inferno. My teeth hurt from how my wrists want to explode beneath the metal cuffs. As soon as my body siezes under his, Daniel is frantically pounding on a button at my side as the monitor beeps out of control. The memory of him reciting Poe mingles with the blaring siren at my side as the rest of the world spins out of control around me. There's another voice, familiar yet indistinguishable, as an actual needle plunges into my arm.
The sirens grow quiet until they become a distant hum, submerged with the pain. A euphoric relief covers me, annihilating the blazing trails of fire and ice within. It's all warm, not just a drop, but an ocean. I'm floating in an ocean of warmth as the drug courses through my entire body, mingling with mine and Daniel's blood. The void seems meaningless as long as I'm floating in warmth and peace.
Perhaps this cage won't be too bad as long as this supply of egregious euphoria and Daniel's warmth keep me company.
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Thank you to everyone for your support for a story I really suck at updating. Now that I have a viable outline and an ending I'm happy with it won't take me as long to update. Thank you for your continued patience and support as I make some edits and publish more chapters.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter even if it was about as fucked up as Daniel.
- L.D.