I have risen. Risen from my sleep. Heavy feet on hard wood flooring, walking with shaky muscles and unfolded mitochondria. I almost felt overcome with the sensation of falling, yet never stood so tall. I never felt so breakable, yet invincible. I never felt so lost in the world, yet so alive. The blurred sensations in an alien world were so numbing, but I felt ever ounce of it. Intoxicating.
Boney webs of fingers clutched onto the door, pulling apart the seals. The seals that kept it intact for so long. It disintegrated through my hands into nothing, like everything they said. It was never real.
Now I was left defenseless, a deer in headlights, in a realm filled with framed faces of delight and memories. An eternity of false emotions, striped raw for attack. Yet they hid in the shadows of twilight, a monstrous landscape casted by those grand images. They once fascinated me, but yet now seem so distant. A portal of another life. The life I once had. A life filled with divine romantic pasts and rebellious futures. Nostalgic memories and bird-like dreams, so fragile and delicate. Now shot and dead, feathers ripped apart as the girl with the white hair curls the ileum around her HB pencil. Little green marbles reflecting sheer pleasure.
Where did she go? The words roll off an unaccustomed tongue,slurred yet more powerful than any rifle. They echo down this eerie hall, vibrating the glass. It would not hold forever. Desperate eyes skated everywhere, trying to find an answer. No more teasing clues deep in the caverns of the floorboards, bloodied finger nails perilously grasping onto any twisted hint. She liked to play this cruel game.
Then her face appeared. Just a flash. It lasted a lifetime. I could see everything. The smooth bridge of her nose. The kaleidoscope of greens, slowly flexing around the dark tunnel to her retina. The pink innocent lips, pulled aside with a childish smirk, venom seeping through their slight parting. A confluence from the River Styx trickling down her chin, a sleek flow over a soft jawline. Yet she looked so flawless.
She disappeared again before I could clasp the pale skin of her shoulder, covered in a mess of snowy locks. An eternal winter. I fell hard on the breach flooring, sharp elbows and beaten knees slamming down in unison. A chorus of resonance breaking the hush, a baby's cry of daggers fill my ears. Sound was a remote memory. Thorns spiked through my flimsy bones, but I stayed unshakable. I was immune to pain.
Then she returned. Miles away in the gloomy shadows, she stood illuminated. Her angelic physique concealed in that cotton summer dress, flowing down to her knees. Knees now undamaged, all scars of childish play vanished into unwrinkled skin. Fresh and raw. Green eyes met mine, like hydrogen bonds between adenine and thymine, never letting go until that one crucial moment. Her hand lifted, dainty outstretched fingers summoned my lost spirit. A spirit suffocating under societal demands and expectations. A chamber filled with molten desires scaled my throat with immense speed and ease. It could not be contained. It could not be ignored.
Then my body went limp. No movement, no sound. A sprawled corpse. I felt no pain. I did not feel afraid. I was willing. First the dark, then the strain. And finally the letting go.