I hear it first. The long whine of metal grinding apart. The pipe gives. With it, I plunge into the cold blackness again. Smashing through the scenes of my life, through memories I didn’t know I had,
I fall. Every significant moment whirling by me like a film. I watch, unable to stop the inevitable, unable to change the ending.
It’s torture.
Finally, I collapse into her room in the infirmary, the place I last saw her. Something inside me tells me this is going to be my final stop down memory lane, except this memory hasn’t happened yet.
I’m lying on her bed. The room still reeks of death. One of the fluorescents above flickers in the twilight. Everything is blurred. The walls are dancing. The tiles are spinning. They spin faster, turning end over end. The clock on the wall stretches to the floor, melting like hot wax. Its hands, like propellers, match the impossible speed of the tiles. The people on the TV are laughing at me. They point and scream my name from their tiny, thin box. It does me no good to even look, she’s not here. I am alone in this place. I am alone.
All my weight enters me at once as I’m knocked back further into the bed I smashed into. The now possessed mattress pulls me into it, trapping me. The sheets wrap around my wrists and ankles. I scream her name into the nothingness as I struggle not to be swallowed whole. The nothingness remains silent.
Suddenly, a nurse appears over me.
My mouth opens, but only silence escapes me. There is no air in this place. No sound. Every one of my muscles refuse to work another second. My resistance halts. I just want it to end. I feel myself fading. Slowly disappearing.
“Palin, are you still with us?”
My eyes pry open. Burning light uncontrollably floods in as I fight back with little opposition. It’s hard to breathe, every desperate attempt chokes me. With a raspy, sleepy grunt I beg into the brightness, “What happened?”
It answers me with the tender voice of a woman. “You’re in the infirmary. Jacee found you. Luckily, she got there when she did. She saved your life.”
It all starts rushing back to me. My eyes begin to clear. They scan the room and find someone leaning against the chrome railing of my bed. Her face, impossible to focus.
The people on the TV are carrying about normally again. The walls still sway a bit – just barely. The clock ticks at a usual tempo. This means I failed. What type of cruel joke has the universe played on me? Maybe this life is my only death, a death without end, without escape. My eternal punishment. My hell.
Falling in and out of consciousness, I lock myself inside my mind. The woman continues talking to me, but I can’t quite make out what she’s saying. Her words are too muffled, and quite frankly I don’t care what she has to say. My ears quickly forfeit, and she too fades from the cold, dark room.
Time creeps by. It’s just me and this place now, everything else has vanished. I reach for my throat with a little resistance from the IVs on my arm. It’s sore. I can barely swallow my spit. How long have I been here?
The oxygen mask strapped to my face close-lines me, swiftly stopping me from rising. Throwing it over my head, I toss my legs off the side of the bed. It stands taller than I expected. White
sheets wrinkle under a worn grey blanket. Looks warm. I’m not interested in warm.
Sliding off the edge I rip the IV from my arm. When my feet hit the tile, shockwaves shoot up my spine. My legs quiver, but at least they still function. Four dark walls tower over me. There’s a dim light peeking from under the door. It illuminates the thin layer of fog that eerily begins to crawl over the vacant grey tile.
One step closer towards the light and my legs are begging me to get back in bed. The Lethe Corp eagle plastered on the backside of the door watches me closely. It stalks me waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Reaching for the door handle, I take a deep breath and pull it open allowing the low light of the hallway to conquer the ghastly room. My curious eyes see no one.
A quick peek from around my doorway- nothing. A bleak, empty hall stretches towards a quiet, smoky exit with no one in sight in either direction. The air is dry and warm with an undertone of something burning. There’s a closed-door every couple of feet each under its own pale light, a few of them out.
I take a step out of the room, and immediately feel the ground shake beneath me. The doors rattle. The lights flicker. After a few seconds, everything is normal again. My brain struggles to decide if this is real or not, expecting the infirmary to crumble any second now.
I step past the nurses’ station, still no one in sight. My heartbeat thuds against the walls of my chest. My palms begin to sweat. The infirmary walls remain intact. The night outside the windows at the end of the hall shimmers uninterrupted. Where is everyone?
The sound of a small explosion beneath this floor faintly brushes against my eardrum. The ground rumbles again. My left-hand finds the countertop of the nurse’s station for balance as one of the paintings of a simple sunset falls from the wall, crashing to the ground near the doorway behind me. The gap between the truth and my mind’s assurance of this reality is quickly met with the screech of the screaming fire alarm.
The lights go out.
The entire building falls dark.
A red flash cuts through the darkness blinking in sync with the alarm beginning its hallowed cry.
The stomping of boots.
