You Cannot Love That Which You Do Not Know
It happened on my way to school. My nightmare suddenly became real.
My ancient hover car clanked along down the empty stretch of road, wobbling precariously in mid-air as I pushed it forward. The morning had been mundane. A cup of coffee, a terse goodbye to Charlie and with a thick protection suit in hand, I left the house quietly. I supposed that I had looked like my usual apathetic self, but when I looked in the mirror I saw myself differently. Dark, purple splotches had begun to form under my eyes; bruises from the nightly beatings of my nightmares. My eyelids hung sleepily over glazed over eyes. Worse still was my grey pallor. My fair skin looked sick, diseased. I could have been the Grim Reaper's daughter. And if my changed appearance was any indication, it looked like I would be visiting dear old Dad soon.
Clank, clank, clank: my hover car's rhythmic splutters brought me back to that desolate stretch of road. It was foggy. Light green vapors rose lazily from the ground. The ugly trees that lined the road bent their boughs to the floor. They were dripping. Sticky pools of green goo collected on branches then slowly slithered off the smooth bark. Drip, drip, drip…It would rain soon.
My nightmare came rushing back to me. Trapped! Coffin! No way out! My name being called over and over by that cadaver; Edward's eyes staring at me; boring into me; dead, they were dead, his eyes! The fog roiled menacingly around the hover car. Trapped! I was pounding on the coffin! The trees dripped ominously, their ooze pelting my windows. I couldn't get out! I was trapped with a dead man! Clank, clank, clank, clank, my hover car had a pulse! It was a heartbeat. It was my heartbeat! Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. Those eyes! Dead, they were dead! Drip, drip, drip. I glanced at the rearview mirror. My grisly reflection looked back at me. Clank, clank, clank, clank. My skin! Beads of sweat appeared on my grey forehead. I need to get out! I need to leave! Da-dum, da-dum.
I quickly cut the engine, killing the steady pulse of the hover car. The silence did nothing to quell my anxiety. It amplified my frantic heartbeat, invited the onslaught of green, tree sap (drip, drip, drip), welcomed the throb of my blood as it rushed through my veins. I lunged for my protection suit with my left hand while ripping open the door with my right. I slammed the hover car door, fumbling with my protection suit. My breath was coming in jaggedly, as I slipped one foot, then the other into the suit. I began walking away from my hover car while I zipped up the adult-sized onesie. I didn't know where I was walking to; I just needed to get away.
The barren dirt road provided a certain solace from the chaotic churning of my own thoughts. I was going to be late for school, I realized. I found I didn't care. One foot in front of the other, I trudged on. Slowly, my heart rate returned to normal. Gradually, my thoughts slowed when I recognized there was nothing on this dank stretch that would trap me. I came to understand that there were no coffins to be seen and as dead as it seemed, Forks was eerily, quietly alive. The gentle thuds of my footfalls were a simple meter but I missed the steady clanks of my hover car. I turned around, intending to work my way back to my dinosaur of a hover car when I realized I could no longer see it. And it had gotten foggier, which made it impossible to discern how far away the hover car actually was. Stifling some of the more colorful language in my vocabulary, I began to march back the way I came. After five minutes of walking, the fog was so thick I could barely see more than a couple feet in front of me. That's when I fell.
Later I would learn that I had not seen the bend in the road and had unknowingly stepped over the edge of a small precipice that dropped twenty feet to the terrain below. But at the moment, all I knew was that I was falling.
The assurance of solid ground disappeared. My stomach lurched painfully, bumping my heart into my throat. I screamed. The shriek, carrying nothing but pure terror, was abruptly cut off when I landed on my back. My head landed a split second later. I can't remember anything else of the next half an hour.
I know that this is a bit darker for me, but I think Bella needs a psychological kick to establish a connection to Edward. The title of the chapter is the only hint I'm giving you for the big twist that's coming up in the next couple of chapters.