Burning My Heart

by elliegordon2018

Chapter 1

It had stopped. Finally. The horrible, unimaginable pain I'd been in for what seemed like days had at last come to a halt.

My eyes were still closed, I was in so much shock. It seemed to me that now my only memory was of that agony. It was indescribable, the torture eating me away from the inside. I remembered most of all the pain in my heart. It had started to hurt more and more and began to beat faster and faster until it stopped and with it, the pain. Now there was an odd feeling in my chest; it wasn't an emptiness where my heart should have been- I could still feel it there- but it was as still as a statue.

I tried to recall what I'd been doing before the pain, and what has caused it. It was difficult;the excruciating memory of the past day or two was so sharp, so fresh. Finally, a fuzzy memory came to me. I was walking through the woods, looking for something, but I couldn't quite remember what. I'd just been walking alone when, out of nowhere, a figure appeared and attacked me. That was when the pain started. I recalled a glimpse of a pale face with blood-red eyes snarling at me before the teeth sank into my neck. I couldn't be sure if it was a male or a female who attacked me.

It had only been a few seconds since the pain had stopped. My mind was different, somehow. I could focus on several things at once. It seemed to me that the capacity of my brain had been enhanced.

Which made me wonder how I could have been attacked like that and still be alive. Or maybe I wasn't alive. Maybe that pain had been the pain of dying, and my mind was capable of many things at once because I was in heaven.

At least, I hoped I was in heaven. I'd never been extremely religious, but I'd never done anything bad enough to get me into hell.

Suddenly, I didn't really believe I was dead anymore. I could feel that I was lying on the forest floor, and also I was thirsty. My throat ached, I was so parched.

I opened my eyes. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I was still in that forest, lying on the ground. But my eyes saw everything in the branches above me. Everything. I could see with absolute clarity. Every detail, every design on the branches, every shape of every leaf, and my mind registered it all simultaneously. In the shaft of sunlight pouring down into the forest between two oaks like a golden pool, I could see every color of the rainbow. There was also a new color that I couldn't hope to name.

My hearing was also intensified since the pain. I could hear everything in the whole forest; the babbling of the nearby brook, a squirrel dashing up a tree, the flutter of birds' wings, the buzzing of insects half a mile away, and footsteps that sounded very human. I estimated that the person was about ten meters away.

I decided that I should get up and figure out how I was still alive. As soon as I considered it, I was on my feet. My body could move a hundred times faster now. I saw the human standing about where I'd guessed him to be.

He looked to be in his early to mid-forties, and his head was hairless and shone as bright as the sun. Normally, I would have felt the need to squint, but my eyes were so improved now it wasn't necessary.

My eye doctor always said I had perfect vision, but that had been nothing. I'd been blind then compared to now. Somehow, this man's face looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite remember where I'd seen him before.

I breathed in the forest air through my nose for the first time. When I did, I could only smell one thing: this man's blood.

There was no time to think. I was unbearably thirsty, and his blood smelled amazingly delicious. I couldn't control myself. I charged right at him.