Out of the Black - Lee Doty [14]
Then a strange inversion happened. Her perspective shifted and he was ascending as she fell upside down toward an uncertain end. The darkness he approached was now the bright morning sky; the murk that engulfed him became a bright enfolding haze. The light of the surface that Anne approached was now harsh, like a distant shiver of lightning and fire. As the boy moved further into the light, she thought she glimpsed two men in white clothes reaching out to embrace him. Then all she saw was the blackness around her as she broke through the surface and into the rain.
"Don't... go." She croaked, aloud this time, mouth full of rainwater. She lifted her head and opened her eyes onto a scene that cemented her grim memories. Reflections of her bloodshot eyes and puffy face filled her vision. Her image rippled as raindrops disturbed the dirty puddle.
Her head was the first part of her body to register with her complaints department. Behind that splitting pain was a long line of other aches and agonies jostling for their turn. They washed over and through her... wet blackness.
Her eyes opened again and were reflected back pink tinged and dark in the rain-rippled water. What was she lying on? Memory paralyzed her. Fear took her away.
"Run!" Like a carelessly encountered landmine, the force of the word blew her up and out of the blackness. Her eyes snapped open, cramping and unresponsive arms pushed her up. Terror filled her mind, stars filled her head- and he again filled her vision. Not strong him- broken him. Not deadly him- innocent him, dead him. As she levered herself onto her hands, his arm fell slack from behind her neck and landed with a wet slap on the sidewalk.
She knew he was dead. His face held none of the conviction, strength or intelligence that were so evident before.
"Run!" Her vision shimmered with the resonance of the word, her bones vibrated with it. Terror was cold black milk filling her heart, chilling her toward inaction, but she knew that inaction would be death for her, though she f tdn't remember why.
She attempted to surge to her feet, but ended up going over backwards... surging to her butt instead, hands slapping heavily on the wet pavement. Desperate, she scrabbled away backwards on hands and feet.
He didn't move: legs still twisted, mouth again slack, lifeless eyes half-lidded. The rain was lighter now, but it had removed much of the blood from his skin, leaving a red-black dissolute bloom on the pavement around the corpse.
The glass that littered the ground cut into her palms, but fear wouldn't let her stop her desperate flight. At last her shaky right arm gave way and she fell on her back. Her neck flared with pain and her head connected with the pavement. Her vision narrowed as if she was looking through a short, dark tunnel. Half conscious, she blinked up into the sprinkle of falling rain.
The pain was exquisite, but one thought forced it aside: She couldn't see him. She knew he was dead, but she had known that once before. She imagined his eyes opening again, a wicked smile stretching over curved teeth, limbs like bags of shattered bones reaching for her. She saw innocent eyes, soft and apologetic.
"Run!" The voice seemed to come from deep beneath her, rumbling into her bones through the ground. The voice was a chorus of two speakers: young and old, sweet and hard, tender and terrible, imploring and imperative.
Before she could regain the air knocked out of her by her short fall, she was over on her stomach and pushing up. And there it was, right before her, sticking out of the cracked sidewalk like a severe steel flower. Though it was immediately clear what it was, she spent a few seconds staring as her mind refused to accept this, the evening's newest impossibility. It was a sword, buried nearly to the hilt in the sidewalk. The hilt was a marvel of ergonomic curves that seemed to beg for her hand, the crossbar was angled slightly forward; it's ends seeming to reach for the ground. The small section of exposed blade shimmered,