I closed my eyes, exhausted from the day, waiting for sleep to take me. My day started pretty early with doctors, nurses, and another new battery of tests; a couple hours later family and friends began arriving. The afternoon was full of visitors, more tests, and physical therapy. As evening began to encroach on the day, I knew I would be alone again soon. It’s funny how more animated your personality can become when you’re anxious for the people you care about not to leave you. I knew they all needed to get back to their lives, but I didn’t want any of them to go. I used to be so independent, now I felt a little like a basket case.
I began to drift off to sleep when Rewsna’s voice whispered in my head, “Lauren, I will see you tomorrow. Get your rest. We have much to talk about.” Her message came in quiet, but clear. Her voice startled me for a second, but I could hear the echo of her words in my mind as I drifted off to a peaceful sleep.
Chapter 2
I awoke to a woman sitting at the edge of my bed. She was as still as a mannequin, as if posed as a pseudo visitor. My dreams had been so vivid that I had startled myself awake several times throughout the night, so I wanted to be sure I wasn’t still dreaming. Once I realized who it was sitting there so calmly, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I reached over and grabbed her hand, squeezing it hard. Her eyes bulged, a little like a cartoon character; my reaction had clearly startled her.
She eyed me closely, “Lauren, you look terrible.”
My first response to anyone was always sarcasm, “I have no intention of going back to working on my beauty sleep, so you’ll just have to get used to this.”
Her tone didn’t waiver with my attempt at humor, “How do you feel?”
I had been asked this same question hundreds of times, but hearing it from Rewsna made me not want to answer with my usual, “fine,” “good,” “great.”
I took a deep breath; she was my ray of hope, my light in the dark. How fair would it be to completely unload on her? I owed her my life. Did she know that if it weren’t for her I would still be lost somewhere between life and death? “I feel like I lost two years of my life. I feel like I lost two years of everyone’s lives. My body’s shriveled up to almost nothing, I can’t walk, I can’t feed myself without a bib, and I have no idea where Max is.” I wasn’t looking for sympathy, but I needed to say it out loud and in doing so I could feel the emotion welling up in my eyes begging to be released. “I don’t know whether to be thrilled that I’m alive, pissed off that I lost over two years of my life, or just thankful to be out of the dark.
She must have known that this was an answer I needed to give someone. She patted my hand, “I know, Lauren, I know.”
We sat in silence for a short while. Previously, when we were silent on the outside, she and I were carrying on a conversation telepathically, but today her mind was not filled with questions or advice of any kind. I finally broke the silence with, “Thank you, Rewsna. If it weren’t for you, I would still be locked up inside myself.”
She nodded understandingly. “I was surprised you were able to summon me at all. He had you so tight in his grips that no one had been able to reach you.”
Cautiously I asked, “Who was he?” The curiosity of what exactly had happened to me had been eating at me since I woke up. Rewsna was the first visitor who wasn’t so preoccupied with the fact that I was awake, and she may be the only person on earth who could give me any answers at all.
“Not who, Lauren, the correct question is, what was he.”
I waited for her to answer as she sat on the bed staring off into the distance. Finally she shared, “We have had many names for his kind over the years. The Council thought his species had been obliterated decades ago. The one that found you was unknown to us. We couldn’t see him until he had taken you. You must know that I would have prepared you had I known it was a possibility.”
“Prepared me? You mean this wasn’t some random attack? But what was he?”
“He doesn’t have a real name because there is no creature in folklore or mythology that you would have heard of. Well before my time, the Council determined this was a creature they did not wish for humans to know about. Every writing, hieroglyph, story, that could have been passed down from one generation to the other was destroyed. The Council had attempted to erase the Beast from existence. You, Lauren, are the only one outside of the Council that has ever freed yourself from one. It is a dangerous beast that can camouflage himself as human, shifting his shape into nearly any animal he chooses, feeding on others’ misery until he completely extinguishes them.”
“So this monster that just happened to find me in the middle of nowhere – you are saying he was feeding on me?”
“Not physically, but he fed on your life force - that which makes you who you are, your soul. He dimmed yours badly for a period. The entire Council came
