Page 26 of Palingenesis
I roll over and throw an arm over my eyes, shoving my glasses up to my forehead.
There’s a tickle at the back of my mind, a subtle something that I can’t quite put my finger on that flitters away as quickly as it came. Like grasping at smoke. Scrunching my brows and focusing on it only makes it more elusive, jumbling my thoughts. I sit up with a huff.
“Wait …” I squint against the blinding rays, taking in my bruised and battered skin. My eye is still sore, so is my jaw and lip, but the swelling is gone and the majority of the pain has dissipated. “What the fuck?”
Checking the rest of my exposed torso, I find a few spots of yellowed discoloration in place of the deep bruising my muscles phantom ache with. I was expecting so much worse.
It’s all just … gone.
But I remember fighting with someone. Or getting hit, or…
A frantic spike in my pulse has me flipping back the comforter to continue inspecting the injuries I should have, that should still be painful, and find that I’m just here. In a strange bed. Naked and normal.
“What the fuck,” I sign, my hands moving along with my thoughts out of habit.
My pulse skyrockets at the lack of memory.
Whipping around and searching the room does me no good. There’s no answers in the Victorian-style furniture and four-post bed or the high ceilings and candle holders adorned to the walls. They look heavy. Old.
Dusty.
I’m still disoriented, and when I stand, I sway.
The rugged floor falls out from beneath me, and I land face down on the bed with my head spinning and the nipping of chilled air on my exposed taint.
It’s uncouth but I can’t find it in myself to care with that tickle in the back of my mind blossoming into a full-blown ache. One that sears across my forehead from one temple to the other.
Then the tapping starts.
A pressure thumping somewhere inside my head like a knocking on the door to my psyche. No, wait. A pounding.
Squeezing my eyes closed, palms digging into the sides of my head, I force myself to breathe deep. To focus on expanding my chest as I blink away the water gathering on my lashes.
It works for a moment, granting me a reprieve from the pain long enough to lift my gaze.
The air shifts, loose boards and slats around the room fluttering, wafting up clouds of dust. It lingers, thickening into a blanket over the room. Swirls dance over the wooden floorboards, across the ugly rug and slowly climbing the legs of the nightstand like it’s got a mind of its own and it’s gunning straight for me.
Closer, it coats the top of the table, gathering there before spreading to the bed. I scramble backward, back digging into the wood-carved headboard and I curl my knees up to my chest. It collects like smoke, gathering into one big, twisting plume, then jumps the short space between and curls around the disheveled duvet.
“Shit,” I sign, lips stretching over my bared teeth, my head pounding.
This has to be an illusion. Some fucked nightmare fueled by everything that … everything with …
Why can’t I remember?
My heart thumps as the collection of smoke spirals, growing large enough to arch over me and filling the room with the scent of burning. It’s so strong, sucking up all the oxygen around me and making my throat squeeze. My head throbs like I’m laying on a blacksmith’s anvil, the heat and pressure building until something will surely pop or bend.
Vision pulsing behind my glasses, I watch the thing above me warp and grow denser, the tendrils circling tighter until a large silhouette forms. The edges of it waver, condensing and matching the rapid pounding of my heart.
“Oh fuck,” I gasp, pressing harder against the bed, as far back as I can but there’s nowhere left to go with this thing looming over me. This shadow of smoke.
It swallows all the space surrounding it like it’s feeding on it, pulling in the rays from the window and reflecting them, plunging us in deep, misty haze. Like the midwestern sky before a storm.
It’s just yellow and ominous.
I cough as the room fills, my lungs and eyes burning.
C’mon, Shannon, wake the fuck up.
