On her second morning at the hospital, Beth awoke with a start, hearing a crash and then something rolling across the floor.
It was early, 5:21 am by the clock; the sun hadn't risen yet, and she was breathing hard, having woken up in the middle of a nightmare.
She had been running frantically through the dark corridors of the funeral home, unable to find the window that Daryl had yelled for her to escape through. All of them were boarded up, and she scratched and tugged at the wood, one window after another, as walkers stumbled behind her.
Where was Daryl? Beth screamed out his name as she ran, cringing at the fingernails clawing across the back of her sweater. She sprinted along the main hallway again until the sound of slow footsteps coming up from the basement stopped her.
Skidding to a halt, she braced her hands on either side of the door frame, panting from fear and exertion. The walkers behind her were forgotten, but strangely they had vanished anyway. The only sound in the house now was her labored breathing and the sluggish uneven steps coming up the basement stairs.
"Daryl? Is that you?" It was dark down the stairwell, but she could make out the person's ragged breaths as they came around the last corner on the landing. The figure looked up at her through the shaggy hair falling in its eyes, eyes that moments ago had been filled with such warmth, but now were blank and clouded over.
"Daryl? Are you-," until she looked down and saw the large bite at the nape of his neck. He growled at her and started lunging up the steps, snapping his jaws and tripping over himself to get to her.
Beth screamed and backed into something hard, shaking her head. "Nooooooooo! Not you. No, Daryl-," tears streaming down her face as she sagged to the floor. The hardwood felt cool against her palms as she waited for him to reach her, not caring anymore.
Maybe it's better this way, she thought.
Her heart should have been beating out of her chest in fright as he fell down beside her and grabbed her right arm, but a feeling of calm came over Beth in that moment. She watched as the man who had gotten inside her heart opened his mouth wide and bit down on her wrist. The pain didn't register with Beth. Her only thought was to caress his hair with her other hand as he devoured her flesh.
Beth sat up in bed quickly, shaking off the last remnants of her dream, and tried to identify the noise in the room.
She leaned over the side of her bed to see a pencil rolling across the floor toward her. Puzzled, she reached down and picked it up.
Beth gasped and shot out of bed. Gorman. He wouldn't be in her room, surely? She thought back to the traumatic events of yesterday. No, he was dead.
She scanned the space for signs of anyone else, even looking behind the door in the bathroom but finding it empty, and breathed a sigh of relief. It must be something else.
Turning to survey the sparse room again, Beth didn't know why she hadn't noticed it before. The small table and chair were both laying haphazard, on the floor, as though someone had had a tantrum and struck them over.
Remembering that she'd left the pencil on the table last night after filling out some charts for the doctor, she looked at it again in her hand. Who had been in her room? She strode over and checked the handle on her door to find it was still locked just like Dawn had ordered.
She walked back slowly and sat on the edge of her bed, still examining the pencil, before tossing it on the floor a few feet away from her where it came to rest.
As Beth brought her right arm down it dawned on her that she should be feeling pain. Last night, she'd barely had any comfortable range of motion with it, and wasn't surprised. Back in junior high, she'd torn a leg muscle during gym class and remembered how painful it was. It had taken nearly five weeks to heal back then, and she'd worried this new injury might hinder her next attempt to escape.
Beth swung her arm around, testing it, and was amazed at how quickly it was healing.
On a hunch, she leaned over and pulled up both pant legs for a look at her shins. The dark bruises had already faded to a pale yellow color, and her left knee was completely back to normal...no swelling or mark left to see. There was no understanding it, but she certainly wasn't going to mention it to Edwards.
Focusing on the pencil again, a memory came back to her of watching a movie with Shawn when she was younger.
He'd been so into Star Wars. It was all her brother could talk about, and she thought he was pretty silly, going on about midichlorions or whatever they were called. Beth had caught him pretending to be a Jedi on more than a few occasions, holding his hand out and trying to make something move with just his mind. She'd ducked out of the room each time, holding a hand over her mouth to contain the laughter.
Sitting on the bed now, she smiled at the memory, and shrugged a shoulder. If only to feel close to her brother again, she would try to move that stupid pencil. The other residents here would likely soon be up, but she wasn't ready to be around them yet. A few more moments alone with her thoughts would be nice before she checked in on Carol, even if it was to attempt something so foolish.
Beth planted a hand on either side of her legs and scooted back a bit before turning her attention to the pencil. She leaned forward and stared at it, taking in the worn tip in need of sharpening, the slightly dented orange surface, and the almost nonexistent eraser at the end.
The more she fixated on it, the more she actually felt...connected to the shape and surface of it, like she could sense it with her mind. Taking in a deep breath, Beth directed all of her will at the small object, imagining it rolling away from her, and the thought hadn't even finished crossing her mind when the pencil travelled across the floor and bounced off the baseboard beneath the window.
Her eyes widened, and she froze.
Beth squeezed her lids shut and opened them again to find the pencil just coming to rest across the room. She narrowed her eyes in concentration again and pictured it rolling back toward her, and watched as it immediately skittered across the floor to land at her feet.
This can't be real, she thought. Maybe she was still dreaming.
She reached up with her left hand and pinched her other arm hard. No, this didn't feel like a dream, but how was there any other explanation?
Her eyes travelled from the resulting red mark on her arm to the white cast on her wrist. Was her wrist actually fractured?
She flexed her fingers open and shut but her wrist didn't hurt, yet there was still some kind of residual burn there, hidden by all the layers of gauze.
Beth brushed her fingers lightly where the four cotton swabs had been taped yesterday. It wasn't a typical bandage, but something a nurse would tape to your arm after you gave blood. What were those from? She already had an IV in her left arm for fluids when she first came to.
What else did they do to her while she was unconscious?
Shaking her head again, and more for the sake of curiosity than anything else, she directed her gaze to the chair still laying on its back.
It was a heavy wooden one like the kind she used to sit on in elementary school.
Standing up now, still a few feet away from it, she stared at the object and converged all of her thought into wanting the chair to rise up and sit properly on the floor again, and it tilted up and came to rest on its feet with a gentle thud.
"Holy shit," she whispered, caught somewhere between fear and exhilaration.
Beth walked over to the window, looking at the same dead bodies lying on the roof across from her, maybe a hundred feet away.
Saying an internal apology to the people they had once been, she concentrated on the one closest to her. It looked like a man, laying awkwardly on his side facing away from her, almost in the recovery position she had learned in First Aid years ago.
She leaned her head against the cool window, honing in on the faded material covering his right arm and imagined pulling it toward her. The body rolled over onto its back, the arm flopping out to the side before coming to rest again, motionless.
Beth gasped, her breath fogging the glass slightly, before checking the roof for any other items she could practice on. There were two white buckets in one of the corners, a dark rag draped over the edge of one that she pulled out and tossed to the side with relative ease.
Resting her hands on the window sill, she considered an idea briefly, and then looked back at one of the buckets. Zeroing in on the object, she envisioned it floating above the surface it rested on, and watched in satisfaction as it rose and hung in the air. The white pail moved back and forth at her command until, on a whim, Beth decided to toss it over the edge of the building. It disappeared from sight, the sound of it clattering on the street below seconds later just barely audible from her room.
Beth froze momentarily, realizing that was a pretty stupid thing to do.
What if someone else looking out another window in the hospital saw that happen? Or even if they didn't, it was bound to be noticed that the bucket was missing from the roof.
She shook her head, realizing that whatever it was that was happening to her was best kept to herself. She would need to be more careful.
Walking back over to the bed, she pulled a leg up and sat down on the edge of the mattress.
The clock read 5:58 now, and Beth noticed the table was still lying on its side over by the window. She righted it from where she sat with almost minimal effort now, not hearing the key turning in the door behind her.
Edwards stepped into the room just as the table was coming to rest on its feet. The doctor averted his eyes from the movement he just witnessed in the corner and looked at Beth sitting on the bed.
She turned quickly toward him, appearing startled, and he watched as her cheeks flushed red.
Edwards came to a halt, and a few seconds of silence passed between them before he cleared his throat nervously. "Good morning."
Beth returned his greeting with a curt nod, wondering if he'd seen anything as he came in her room.
The doctor just shoved his hands in his pockets and jerked his head toward the door. "Why don't you go grab something for breakfast and then get started on your cleaning."
He didn't wait for an answer, but turned around and started walking toward his office, his mind on overdrive trying to figure out what he had just seen.
Alright, show of hands. Who hasn't tried to move something with their mind before?
*keeps hand down, scans room with eyebrow raised*
I do it every time I grocery shop. I swear, if I'm ever actually successful in pushing slow people out of my way with just my mind I'll probably shit myself. Clean up on aisle two.
Please leave a comment. It's almost as fun as being able to move crap around with your thoughts.