***SLIGHT TRIGGER WARNING***
The steady rhythm that is keeping me alive and lets me hold on to what little sanity I have left is all I can hear. It's slow, comes and goes like the tide, never quite enough to engulf me completely, but enough to make me wait until it does. My mind is hazy, barely grasping onto what is now my new reality, simultaneously shackling my thoughts, keeping them from making me want to destroy everything. Time seems to not move at all and too fast all in one and my mind keeps fluctuating between which one is worse - to never move forward, or for time to keep moving without being able to change. Every breath I take feels heavy, as if I was underwater and I physically feel the air move through my body, too thick and heavy and too painful. And it feels like it happens all over again, in a constant, unending cycle and, at same time, like it never stopped being the first breath. Sometimes, I want to claw my lungs out to make it stop, but my arms are heavy like lead and won't move and even if they could, there is no strength in me to make them. They stay where they are, wrapped around the only piece of life I still have. Both my body and mind have given up and were it not for what lies in my arms, it wouldn't matter either. My eyes are closed as I listen to the rhythm ebbing and flowing, tying me to what I must protect, the singular rhythm, all I have left.
My arms tighten marginally, but he doesn't react. He hasn't, since then. He's in my arms, where he should be safe and my lifeline is his lone heartbeat. I don't even hear my own anymore, it doesn't matter, it simply follows his with blind trust, never changing pace unless his does. But that never happens, it always stays the same, the same rhythm, the same pattern, almost as if to reassure me.
When I tighten my arms just slightly more, my hand accidentally touches one of the numerous welts and immediately I see that woman behind my closed eyelids. Her arm as she swings it back and forth to the music of her own manic laughter, not fazed by the deadly impact of each of her swings and I feel the shock settling in the pit of my stomach as it did then, so sudden and so heavy that it took me too long to move. And I see blotches of other people and wolves move around me as my eyes finally lock on and my legs finally run. But even then, even when my mind finally catches up and even when my body finally moves, even then it feels like I'm treading through mud, like something is physically pulling me back, away from him, like long, spindly fingers slowly tightening around my body, refusing to let me go to where I need to be. And I can't remember whether this is true, whether it felt like that then, but it feels like it now. Maybe I'm imagining this, maybe, in reality, it only took me seconds to be there, but even if that is the case, I was still too slow. The only difference now is that the longer I take to get there, the longer this invisible force can hold me back, the more I have to see his eyes as he waits for me. But even while I look at him, unable to move my head or eyes away, too fixated on what I wasn't able to stop, there's nothing recognisable in his eyes. Maybe there's despair, pain, fear, longing, maybe he's angry, I don't know and I didn't then. His eyes look empty and maybe they are and maybe that's why the fear in me grows worse with every painful breath I take until I get to him.
I thought getting to him was the only thing that mattered. Once with him, things would be alright again, would work out because they always do. But I was a fool, I still am, because this tiny glimmer of hope tells to me to believe that should he stir in my arms, somehow, there will be a way. However, his body is motionless, hasn't moved since his eyes closed in anguish just before I got to him.
This place I'm in now is surely dangerous. I know it, it's somewhere between helplessness, anger and pain. And maybe this place is called fear, too. I don't know what I am capable of in this state, in this place that I seem to know, but don't, at the same time. What keeps me grounded is his lone heartbeat, bringing me back with every audible contraction of his heart, letting me drift in between, but bringing me back every time I'm ready to just jump off. At this point, I'm convinced that should his heart skip just one beat, delay a beat, or stop altogether, there is no hope for me. I wouldn't know where I would go, where I would end up, but I know I would lose myself completely. Now, there is nothing else, there is only him, his fragile, steady heartbeat that leads my own.
A low growl slips out of my lips first, it's the first warning, but when I feel the presence come even closer, my head snaps up, my eyes immediately focused on the two intruders. I'm silently telling them to go, but rather than disappear, they only take a step back. When I growl again, they finally back off to the wall and that's good enough for me. I don't care enough to do something about this as long as they stay away from him. I close my eyes again and settle my head exactly to where it was before, sinking into my previous position with as little disturbance to him as possible.
Donovan, can you hear me? The voice is gentle, soft, but it still angers me to no bounds. I don't want anyone to invade in any way right now, especially not in my head, but I try to ignore it, it's not important, not now and probably not ever again.
Donovan, please answer. The same voice again, a bit firmer, a bit more demanding, but still, I don't answer. And this time, there's quiet. An unplanned sigh escapes me and almost unconsciously I snuggle into him a bit.
The relief I feel from being left alone again doesn't last long. Almost immediately, images that I don't want to see and sounds that I don't want to hear invade my mind again. I can make it go away by opening my eyes, but I don't. Because my reality now, my new reality, the sights and sounds making up this reality, are so much worse than anything my mind could conjure. So I succumb to the concoction of memory and nightmare my own mind subjects me to, living through altered recollections of which I don't even know the original anymore. It's hard to tell what really happened and whether what I'm seeing now is better or worse than that, but in the end, that really doesn't matter either. At the end, I still suffer and no matter the path I take to get there it still rips me apart piece by piece, only to put me back together and start again.
It's gotten to the point now where even if I try remembering anything else, it ultimately still leads me to this same place, with the same images and sounds that I'm desperate to forget.
Sometimes, in brief moments of clarity, I wonder how it's so impossible for me to forget something. It's my mind, my memory and my life and yet I am unable to dictate what my brain does to it. And then I begin wondering whether maybe I'm the one keeping myself from forgetting. Would forgetting be even more painful than remembering? Would just knowing what is be more painful than knowing why it is? I can only guess, but it's hard to imagine that anything is worse than now. It feels like I'm dying, killing myself from the inside out while, almost cruelly, he is keeping me from finishing it. His heartbeat, all alone in my darkness, keeping me on the tightrope ready to snap at any second.
Donovan, please just say something. I know you're awake and I know you can hear me. The voice is back now. It's been trying to get to me for a while now and I've been able to stay strong so far, but by now, I've had enough. I wasn't expecting to be feeling annoyance of all things again, but a little tiny part of myself almost revels in the new experience.
Leave. I finally say. There's no malice, it's not even an order, it's simply a statement. The voice needs to leave because I want to be alone.
No. That makes me angry.
I want to be left alone! And I sound angry, too, at least in my own head. That's enough for me though and when I don't hear a reply for a while, I think that maybe, they've listened now, but no such luck.
Do you remember? This time, the voice is quite timid and I'm not entirely sure how to respond to that. It's a stupid question. There isn't anything else to remember. Unless, of course, they are talking about something entirely different. I settle with a I'm not sure, because somehow, I'm a tiny bit intrigued now.
I did what I could and I'm sorry, but I can't help you if you don't let me. The voice sounds pleading now and I briefly wonder why.
You said you did what you could. So there's nothing more you can do. Leave. This sounds logical to me, so I once again ignore the voice and go back to my suffering.
Habit is a strange thing. It makes one get used to anything, even if anything isn't a good thing at all. My arms tighten a bit again and this time, a feel a shift. Immediately my body stiffens. I don't know what to do now. I was waiting for this, but also I wasn't. My hand slips lower when he shifts even more and again I feel one of the welts and again my whole body feels like it's trying to kill itself by administering pain.
But when his eyes meet mine it seems to get even worse. His eyes are somehow empty still. I search for something, anything, but there is nothing. They are fixated on my own eyes, but I'm not even sure if he even sees anything at this point. He stopped shifting as well now, but it doesn't matter anymore. His eyes are better than shifting.
But then I feel it. Something lighting touches my hands, but I don't dare move my eyes from his in fear of them disappearing again if I do and so I don't. But when the touch comes again I conclude that it must probably be his own hand. While his hand moves and our eyes are caught, I'm the one that isn't shifting now, my heartbeat no longer following his because both of the rhythms are foreign ones, not regular and definitely not in sync - and apparently I was wrong. His heartbeat has changed and against everything that I thought might happen, I actually feel grounded more than anything, even if his eyes seem empty.
But then his finger tips reach to where my fingertips are - one of those welts - and ah!, there it is. Now I can see something in his eyes.