Page 105 of Shadowed With Fear

Darkness sweeps over my vision, painted the corners in an inky black. A color that I want to drown myself in. Anything to get away from the deep red I’m soaked in.

Sounds are starting to fade away, the things Ethan and Issac are doing to me dull. I don’t even react to them anymore, my mind and body becoming numb.

In and out of consciousness I float.

One second, I’m tied to the chair.

The next I’m laying down. Maybe on something soft covering the hard floor. I’m not sure.

After that a silhouette hangs above me, a dark shadow. My clothes are gone. The cold air washing over me, almost a comfort.

Then nothing. A white golden light cast in a reddish film. I blink slowly, watching the light sway to and fro. It reminds me of that rock last year. Rolling over and over, going through the motions. Never react unless provoked. Just cycling until it reaches that inevitable moment where the energy is gone, and potential sets in.

But the light doesn’t stop. The potential never comes, it just…is, does.

Rocking against all odds.

And I think of what I have done the last two months, since that day I decided, I wasn’t going to just be the rock rolling across the pavement anymore.

I had…fun. I opened myself up to the possibility of love. I started to see the value in myself again. I felt like me. The real me. The old me.

And if I lay here, each second passing bringing me closer to death, I can at least say I lived again.

“Dahlia!”

A faint voice calls out a name from the room. It sounds familiar, but the constant pendulum is calming, comforting. I’ve never been hypnotized, but I could guess this is what it might be like. A drifting into unconsciousness. A promise of peace.

“No, sweet girl. Look at me.”

I blink slowly, but I can’t make out anything but the void like darkness closing in. It calls me the way it always did looking into the eyes of the Shadow mask.

“I’ve got you. I’ve always got you. I can’t let you die. You’re mine, Dahlia. Do you fucking hear me.”

I do. I’m sorry.

And I fall beneath the surface of the darkness I want to call home.

Dahlia

A steady buzz wakes me up. It’s a dull sort of noise, like people talking loudly through the walls. My eyes flutter open and snap shut at the sunlight filtering through a window.

I groan, lifting a hand to my head filling the scratchy bandages wrapped around it.

“What the fuck?” I groan, turning slowly away from the light, blinking again.

The room spins, and I see double but eventually everything clears and I’m lying in my bed at Brahm’s house.

The buzz I heard was voices coming from the hall.

“We should take her to the fucking hospital!”

“And then what? Explain to Micheals that she was fucking tortured for hours, but oh don’t worry. No need to call the cops. One of East End’s finest took a fucking sledgehammer to one of their heads and it burst like a goddamn watermelon.”

“Hush, I heard something.”

My doors open, Liz’s eye peering in the crack before she jerks it open, running at me full speed.

“Elizabeth!” Brahm barks, the high volume making my ears ring. She stops abruptly turning to him, looking like a kid who was caught stealing candy. “No. She needs to rest.”