“Margaret Erikson,” I hear my voice betray me. “My name is Margaret Erikson.”
I never really offered to go first, but with a brisk swipe of a pen, I am pointed forward. With a gentle reassuring squeeze of my shoulders, I am motioned forward. With a drop of my stomach, I walk forward. I don’t think my brain really thought this whole plan out at all.
Teddy owes me his cookies. For real. Is the pout-filled thought that fills my head.
We are always told to “not look”. Don’t look at the wreck outside the car window. Don’t look at the TV when the music gets scary. Don’t look under the bed at night. Don’t look in the closet after the lights are turned off. Basically, don’t look at the monsters. Now the monster is a capped, pointed metal cylinder and I can’t stop looking at it.
“It helps if you don’t look.” Miss Lacey’s voice hovers over my panic, repeating the very words I was just mentally debating.
“That’s what they say,” I reply, backing up her words with my small voice. But, I’m still looking anyway.
“That was a very brave and kind thing you did for Teddy, Margaret.” She is roughly rubbing a spot on my arm with the cold, wet wipe. It smells like dread.
“I’m not feeling so brave now.” My white-knuckle grasp on my jean jacket proves the truth of my words.
“It will be over before you know it.” She winks at me but I don’t feel the smile. “Look at your shoes, Margaret, and tell me your favorite color three times.”
“Blue.” I feel the pinch of the skin to make a steady place for the needle.
“Blue.” The sharp tip presses into my skin making my toes curl with the sudden pain.
“Blue.” My arm burns like wildfire and I can’t hold back the tears that invade my eyes.
“All done,” she whispers it, rubbing the spot of the torment. The pain trickles through my arm, making me clench a tight fist as if it can prevent the fire from spreading. She places a blue band aid on my arm, but it brings me no joy as I thought it would. In fact, I am too scared to look up and allow my tears to make me a point of ridicule.
“Teddy is lucky to have such a good friend, Margaret. You were very brave.” Miss Lacey rubs my back with more of a forward motion than a comforting gesture. It is the nicest way I have ever been told to move before.
….both cookies. I tell myself as I stand.
I glance backwards, over my shoulder to see if Teddy is finally moving into the seat I just left now that the tension has been broken by my going first. We lock eyes as Miss Lacey begins to repeat the same process with him that I just endured. Our eyes stay with one another until my neck hurts from holding such an extreme position while walking away. I am glad to glance away before the needle is placed into his tender flesh. A girl is only so brave for so long. At least this girl anyway.
Chapter 7
I was the first to sit in the plastic chair of pastel pain and I am the first to sit back on the cold metal bleachers of boredom. That is what they become as we sit and watch each class lined along the center of the gym. It is what they embody as we watch each child call out their name and walk forward, repeating the same process over and over again and our irrational anger grows rapidly. It bubbled inside me almost as soon as I sat down. Now, with most of my class behind me, toes tap in solidarity of an emotion we can’t explain the cause of, but something just doesn’t feel, “right.”
Some names we remark over whose older brother or sister that is. Some names we remark over their clothing choices as our anger mounts. Some names there are no remarks for at all with no knowledge or memory of them. Mostly, each name is just another brisk swipe of a pen on a hidden tally secured to a clipboard. Each mark, one more student down and the tapping grows louder as another joins in.
I don’t know exactly when it started or when the pain from my arm reached my head with lightning bright stabs dulling the noises around me. It is so intense that my eyes reactively close with each puncture of the pain. I almost swoon from the sudden heat that rips through my body. My mouth grows dry with it as if the heat has evaporated all water from my body with the burning fire. I am not the only one showing signs of distress. Reactions creep up the rows behind me as if on a timer, colliding into each child with a punch.
Teddy sits beside me shaking his head slowly back and forth in his misery. His breathing is hastened with his pain. He pants, unable to slow his breathing, and I watch him fall to the ground. Mrs. Lamb seems miles away from us. The gym’s floor appears to stretch to impossible lengths, pulling her further away from us than it should be possible. I blink, trying to correct my vision, but the corners of the room start to grow black. So, I do the only thing I can think of to signal to our teacher that we need her. I scream.
I scream so loudly, that I stand with the force from it. I stand against the pain that seems to be shredding my brain and against the fire that is roasting inside me. I stand, watching Teddy bounce on the floor beside me with his body’s jerking movements. I stand watching my friends fall like a deck of cards, floating slowly in the air one-by-one before they crumple to the floor. I stood to scream for help for those that are around me, but now I am screaming from the terror that is surrounding me.
Taking an unsteady step backwards, away from what is happening on the bleachers, my ankle twists, unable to support me with my body’s growing unease. The pain is sharp and almost refreshing as it blocks the pain in my head for a short span of a second. When the second is over, the pain rushes back, stronger than before and I collapse from it. I fall to the cool floor of the gym and stare out at what is happening around me, unable to move anymore.
Like a crowd rolling reverse game of The Wave, bleachers empty from sitting children to be filled with crumpled children. Small bodies jerk in various speeds, banging against the metal of the bleachers or the hard floor of the gym. Skin is splitting and wounds are forming from such a rapid, repeated abuse upon fragile bodies. Red flows down the metal risers like a shiny slinky, pooling at the bottom of the steps in thick puddles.
One puddle forms around me and I want to scream my terror at watching it grow as it encircles me, but I cannot. My vision bounces with my own motions, splashing the thick red blood into a film on my body. It applies a jerking effect to the running teachers through a red haze of my vision as if they are sharing in our suffering, but they aren’t.
The gym is now divided into two sections. One section is full with the screams of teachers unable to move to help their students with their own fears, riding them to immobility and the small amount of remaining students that did not receive their vaccine. Those students are being shoved behind adult bodies to protect them from seeing what is happening across the room. They are saved from watching the other section of the gym filling with their friends and siblings beating their bodies to a ruin with jerking convulsions and skull smashing seizures. They scream for them nonetheless.
There are too many breaking bodies. There are not enough teachers to help us. They have no knowledge of what to do to stop any of it, or what is causing it, even if there were. My body feels bruised from the repeated collisions against the hard floor. The heat is cooking me, I know it is. It is too hot to do anything less. Sharp, invisible fingers are tearing my head apart with razor-tipped, pointed nails. I almost hope it will break open from the heat and pain so that it can all escape to the floor to swirl with the blood that coats it. Through all of this, I have no control over my body. I can’t scream with the pain. I can’t blink away the tears that fill my eyes. I am being forced to stare out blankly at so many eyes that are staring right back at me.
Like the wave that started it, the same motion ends it. The metallic sound slowly fades away as children grow still. Some of the blank stares retreat behind closed eyelids. Some stay open as the color dims from bright shades to dull, glass reflections with life leaving them.
The screams retreat in pitches also with the slowing of time as breaths are held in confusion and fear. The only sounds now filling the room are the t
hick dripping of the red rivers that flow from the shining metal steps into growing pools of darker coloring. A pool in which I now lie, coating one side of my body with a warm gel feeling.
The last sensation I feel before the room fades from my vision is a sudden explosion of pain in my head. Instead of the white-hot lights that pain sometimes causes, it strips my world of all color. The room becomes shades of gray all around me. The grays become darker and darker as the heat over takes me until there is nothing but blackness surrounding me. I know that my eyes are still open with the raw feeling of needing to blink, but I can see nothing now.
The last sound I hear is Miss Lacey calling my name. She sounds so far away and so sad as she rushes to me, her brave little girl. As I fade into the darkness, I am happy to escape the pain. I am defeated with it.
The pain dissipates as achingly slowly as it built inside me. A part of me whispers that I am dying now, but I don’t feel any sadness with that knowledge. I am only saddened that I never got my good-bye hug. I never was able to say good-bye. I was forgotten.
Chapter 8
Awareness comes to me slowly. Inch by inch, my body returns to me with a dull sensation. The hot, scalding fire is gone. The pain is now just an ache that fills a dark void in me. There is commotion all around me that creeps into my mind with a memory. It is a fleeting feeling of something that I feel I should know. I should know, but it flickers and fades before I can fully grasp what it is that I should be remembering. I lose interest in it just as easily as it slipped away.
“Margaret?” I know her voice. It lures me into a higher level of awareness and out of the dark blackness that surrounds me.
“Margaret, can you hear me? Open your eyes.” I feel my eyes blink, but it is still only blackness before me. It clears like a cloud of smoke retreating from the wind allowing me to see into the room. The woman is silhouetted at first in a sharp shaded contrast against the lights overhead. I can’t see her yet, but I can smell her.
She smells like sweet confectioner’s candy floating around me. Like the thick cookies cooling on a counter of a bakery. My mouth grows wet with the scent of her. My body craves things that I don’t understand. I don’t understand the images that are flashing through my mind’s eye. I don’t understand the things my body wants me to do to this woman, whose voice I know that I should somehow remember. I have a moment of shame over my weakness. I want to do it all the same though.
My vision clears more, leaving the room in shades of muted colors. Nothing is brighter, or darker, than the basic need for it to be. Light is subdued yet penetrates the dark shadows and allows me to see deeper into them as if I am peering through the tinted lens of sunglasses. My vision is crisp, but muted. Not that it really matters. What I want is right in front of me and I can see her just fine.
She is leaning over me with a flashlight, trying to force its bright beam into one eye and then the other, but I do not blink from it. I can smell her shampoo lingering in the dark curls that cover us like a curtain. Her mouth is moving, speaking to me, but I don’t hear the words. Her words are not important. Only the tender flesh of her neck that pulses like a welcoming neon sign holds my focus now. My tongue dances behind my lips with a hunger that I can’t explain and a part of me panics with it.
Words are being shouted across the room. Words that hold tones of hope from many female voices as eyes open again. The words that bring a smile to the face floating above me now that my eyes are open. It is the sudden scream that strips that smile just as fast as the words pulled it to her face. We are all awake.
A male voice fills the air with his melody of misery. Joy dances inside me upon hearing it. Horror dances with the woman before me. The sound is as sweet as she smells and when she turns her head to see the cause, I show her the reason behind the screams.
My body instinctively knows just what to do, even if I do not. My hands weave into her thick hair, pulling her neck to my mouth with a strength that I have never used before. I lean up into her with a maddening desire which thrills me and scares me with the same weight of emotion. Her screams pull a response from my body that I shouldn’t hold inside me, but I do. It pulls a response that tears out of me as I tear into the sweet meat of her neck like a beast that has been caged and waiting.
Her blood tastes like the thick syrup of honey on my tongue and I am disappointed with every bright red drop that escapes from my mouth. Her flesh is chewy and moist, like a cake surrounding a decadent filling, and I simply can’t get enough of her. All panic slides away from me with each mouthful of this woman that slides down my throat.
Even as my mind soothes with my actions, a tiny voice mentally whispers that this is not right. I am not sure what is not right about it, but some small part of me is unsettled by what I am doing. Each bite brings the pain down. It fills the void that was aching inside me. Contentment settles over me like a warm blanket. A blanket that is as red and warm as the blood that fills my throat. The heavy weight of her now still form lulls me into a daze of joy that I want to stay in the thick of forever.
I know there are still screams that surround me. Screams that perk my senses like the music of an ice cream truck in the hot summer’s heat. They fill the air with many flavors.
The high pitched screams of terror captivate my attention like exotic spices. The twisting of flavors with the screams of agony are like a perfect combination of sweet and sour. Then for a soothing aftertaste, there are the ones of pleading and defeat. Their taste is subtle and rich like a thick after dinner dessert. Each is tempting in their own way and I, with my new hunger and desires, am lured away from the meal in my mouth now that the rich blood flows slower. It grows thicker against my tongue, losing some of its ripe appeal.
The weight is heavy, but I am able to roll her off of me. The screams reach me in a surround sound of style with the division of the room making them bounce with an echo. There are those, like me, overtaken by a set of new desires that we do not understand, but simply obey. We are blocking out the nagging whispers of uncertainty of our actions fueled by the need to obtain the joyful bliss when the pain stops. The pain that can only be stopped by the moist flesh and syrup of thick fluids that are more refreshing than anything I have ever swallowed before.
Standing before me, we are all testing our new bodies now that the pain has dulled some. My fingers are a duo of jerking and yet gliding motions as I command them to move. My head feels heavy and rests at a slightly lowered angle for ease of position. My eyes are also better from this vantage point. I can see into the deeper shadows and once vivid shades now diminish their hues allowing for better tracking of movements. All around me, those that I know were once more than just replicas of my new self, stand immobilized as hunters, narrowing in on the source of the screams.
Eyes watch as we each pick our new target with self-assured results. They run in various formations trying to flee the room, but in their panic, they have trampled and blocked their own escapes. Terror is blocking their logic and that same terror excites me.
There is no signal that I am aware of given to motion us forward. We just all do. At once, like a pack of animals, we move towards the new meals, stepping over the cold bodies from which we have already fed.
We form into groups built around each other’s similarities with the same silent communication displayed before. Each group becomes a strategy of its own to take down the larger prey that we desire. When one of our own falls, with the same sudden force, we freeze, working our minds to find the answer.
She lays fallen and broken, the one that was the nearest of us to the prey. The shade of her hair and the outfit she wears triggers faded memories for me. The brightly colored fabric applied to her upper arm whispers of a lost conversation of sounds that were once words. Words that once we exchanged. A single sound beats against the walls of my mind and I know it belongs to her in some way.
April, it screams, rolling around inside of me.
She was identified once as April, but no longer. We no
longer have a need to be identified to one another by these sounds. We flock to one another instinctively.
We find those matching to that of ourselves for protection. When hunting, as we are now, those same groups split to meld into a variety of strengths to better achieve our goal. The goal of stopping the pain.
We stare at her, confused by her sudden loss and the unknown causes, when another falls in the same style. Our minds track the sound that was heard before the last fall. Like truth seeking seers, we find the object that the prey is pointing at us with shaking hands and false brave words. We stare, transfixed by the knowledge our minds report to us.
His pitch does not match the stance his body holds. His hands shake with his fears. It invites us to him. Our anger over his actions and his visible weakness targets his death as the first of many.
We move again, the same sea of us, forward now that we know who is the real threat. Never taking our eyes away from him, our sea parts, forcing him to narrow his attention. His attention may shrink, but his fear grows like ripe fruit on a limb of a sun-drunk tree. It is fragrant and fills us with curiosity of its taste.
His fear grows and festers like a wound left untreated with the panic that adds a new scent to the air. The first group reaches him, dislodging the arm that was holding the object that took two from us. The screams renew with such a volume that all self-restraint is lost. It is stripped from us with such force that not even the nagging whispers we once held can echo over the need. This need that we can no longer fight, but are slaves to and we obey.
With one mind. With one purpose. With one thought. We obey. They fall before us, under us, all around us with our attacks, like fragile toys to a toddler. Sweet syrup sprays against walls. It arches, forming fine modern art before streaking its way back to the ground. It paints the floor from our preys’ deaths with each heart that slows under our hungry mouths and brutal hands. We claim this room with our new signatures and when the screaming finally stops, the bliss begins. Mindless, peaceful bliss.
The Risen Series | Book 2 | Margaret Page 4