Airel - Aaron Patterson [73]
The beast was hunched over, wolf-like, but standing on two legs instead of four. Massive clawed hands, covered with fur, hung at his sides like broken branches. He paced back and forth outside the boundary of the forest and his robe fluttered like feathers as it clung to his thin frame. He croaked my name and my face burned with heat.
“Airel!”
My eyes shot open. Michael was sitting over me with his hand on my forehead. He had a look of concern on his beautiful face, and somehow he looked as if he had aged overnight. I tried to speak, but my body was wracked with pain and my throat was so dry all I could get out was a grunt.
“Calm down, you’re going to be okay. Here, drink this.” Michael handed me a glass of water and I took it with greed. It burned as it went down, but I drank all of it. I knew it might be drugged again but I was so thirsty that I didn’t care.
Michael leaned over and kissed my wet forehead. He smiled at me, but it was weak and I noticed a tremor in his hand.
“What are you doing here?” I managed, but it sent a fresh wave of nausea through me.
Michael shushed me and said, “You’re still here with the crazy man. He let me see you after you fainted. You have been in and out of consciousness for eight days now. He has been trying to heal you with some weird chanting and some other stuff I’ve never seen before. I’ve been trying to feed you, in between your nightmares and screaming fits. You really scared me, Airel. I thought you were gonna die.” At this, his voice caught, and he held back tears, looking away.
“What are you talking about? What are you doing in here? Where am I?”
“Airel, what do you mean?” Michael was visibly upset.
That’s it. I knew I was going crazy now. I seriously had no idea which way was up, what was real, what was safe and what was dangerous anymore. “I was so worried Michael, I thought you were gone, dead. I don’t know. I’m so confused.”
Michael was silent, then, “Airel…” And I shuddered. I was drenched, I felt disgusting. Eight days?! What in the world is going on here! I felt insane.
“I’m sorry Airel, I didn’t know it would be like this.”
“What is going on, Michael? I think I was drugged.” I noticed that I was no longer dressed in my fancy blue dress. I wondered how that had happened. It creeped me out beyond words. I was wearing pajamas and they were stuck to me as if I had been wearing them for a week. Gross.
Michael tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and took my hand. “Don’t you remember? We were taken, and…I…” He looked down as if he had done something he was ashamed of.
I scanned the room and some things started to come back to me. I remembered having been locked away in this, my "high tower." I remembered rainbows dancing on the bed in the new dawn of some lost day I could not recall as of yet. Like a badly cut movie, random scenes started to come back to me.
I remembered calling out for Michael, banging on the door to my room, which, I remembered, had a really nice bathroom with a huge claw-foot tub. I had been the one who had changed my clothes. Weird. I rubbed my temples. What else? I tried to conjure the past. I felt fury—why?
I was angry. I was angry because I feared the captor had murdered Michael. I saw myself pacing in an angry stew in front of my locked door, and I knew why. I was furious at having been locked up like an animal, no matter how nice the accommodations—and I was worried sick that something horrific had happened to Michael.
The scene shifted and I was flooded with the realization that I was madly in love with him, that I knew it, that I had reconciled my heart to that reality. That explained what happened next in my spastic movie reel vision. I delivered a crushing roundhouse blow to the door of my cell and it exploded off the jamb into a million splinters. I had been Bruce Lee, for crying out loud…Bruce Lee on gamma rays, or whatever.
The movie reel continued. I was running through the obliterated doorway