Of the Blood

by Joshua Laack

Chapter 28

  Andrew stared into the darkness above him, wondering why he was awake since it was obviously the middle of the night. He was still a little groggy from sleep and moved to check the alarm clock beside his bed. At least that is what he meant to do. Despite his best intentions, his arm didn't follow his mind's command. It was at that moment that his dream returned to him, but it wasn't a dream. The scene that had just begun replaying in his head of the final moments of that terrifying car crash was real. He had been in that car and there was no possible way that he could have survived.

  Trucks at highway speeds make mincemeat of smaller cars like Trusty. That truck had blasted him at more than sixty miles per hour. Yet no matter what he had expected, it seemed as though he had survived.

  After that initial moment when Andrew first woke and then recalled what had happened, it took him a little while before he began to register anything. The first thing he noticed was that his body felt numb below his neck. That explained why his arm wouldn't respond. In stark contrast, his face was freezing. It was pitch black wherever he was. So dark that there was no difference between having his eyes shut or open.

  Andrew tried to call out to see if there were anyone nearby, but found that he couldn't speak or even move his face at all beyond blinking. At that point, the thought entered his mind that he was dying. Worse yet, it was possible that he was dead after all and this was some sort of afterlife. After considering that for a moment, he realized that was doubtful. It was much more reasonable that it was night time and he had been thrown from the car. He must have broken his neck since he couldn't move anything or feel anything except for his face.

  Time passed with Andrew stuck in this state, how much he couldn't say except it felt like hours. Nothing changed in that time. Then, out of the blue, he felt a jolt of intense pain in his neck. It felt like someone took a sharp knife and jabbed it into the spine, right at the base of the neck. He couldn't think well with the pain. The only thought that did register was confusion.

  How was he feeling this with a broken neck? Shouldn't he still be numb? In the next moments after that thought, the pain exploded outward from the spot, traveling down his spine and stopping at his tail bone. It tingled there, at a level that would have had him writhing in pain, if he could move, before fading to a manageable level.

  As the pain settled into a soft burn, Andrew noticed a slight tingling in his fingertips. It spread up his fingers and into his hands and then he could wiggle his fingers just a little. What was going on here? Spinal cords didn't repair themselves, maybe it had only been pinched or something. This theory seemed to fit as the minutes passed. The tingling spread throughout his hands and up his arms, along with the ability to move them a little bit. They weren't steady, but he moved his hands out, trying to feel around to see if he could discover where he was. The result was nothing that he expected, nor was it pleasant.

  Andrew was in a box, lined with soft velvet, and he wasn't wearing his work clothes. He was wearing a suit and he was laying in a coffin. He was dead and buried after all, yet somehow still aware. His first thought was that he should be terrified, but he wasn't.

  This was nothing like a nightmare about being in a coffin that comes from going to a funeral or watching horror movies. For one thing, Andrew had to assume that he was dead, so there was no real reason to panic. For another, this box designed and built for a dead person was actually quite comfortable.

  As he lay in his coffin, Andrew wondered if he was going to be there for a long time, or if maybe there was a heaven out there waiting for him. He thought that he been a pretty decent person, especially over the last few months. Maybe that was enough to get him into heaven. Or maybe this was his moment, the time he was supposed to make a decision whether he chose God or not. It didn't feel like that though. It seemed that there should be a spirit guide, or an angel, or something.

  Then Andrew had a darker thought. What if there was hell, and his hell was that he would be stuck in a coffin for all of eternity. That didn't seem right either though. The hell he knew from the fantasy books and movies he liked so much was a fiery place of eternal torture and while the now muted pain in his back was uncomfortable, it was far from torturous. Also, Andrew somehow doubted that there would be comfortable coffins in hell.

  How long Andrew lay there pondering his situation, he didn't know, but in the midst of one of his darker thoughts, another sharp pain wracked his body. This time, it felt like a knife stabbed into the middle of his back. Maybe this was torture after all. A moment of the sharp pain and then it too exploded outward like the first. This time, the pain didn't dull after it exploded. It just spread, growing stronger as it went.

  As it reached certain points on his spine, Andrew felt as though more knives were stabbing him, from the back of his head, all the way down to the tip of his tail bone. If the pain were steady, it might have been bearable. Instead, in each of these spots, it felt as though the knives were being twisted, ripped out and then plunged back in again and again.

  It hurt so much more than anything Andrew had ever experienced or expected. It didn't seem fair since he was already dead. Yet that fact wasn't enough to satisfy whatever was causing this. A giant fist, plunged into Andrew's chest and gripped his heart, squeezing so that it couldn't beat. He felt his back arch involuntarily.

  Then Andrew began to spasm. As if that still weren't enough, the knives left the spine and began to explore other parts of his body. They turned from invisible knives to sharp claws, no longer stabbing so much as just tearing every inch of his body to shreds.

  Andrew heard someone screaming at the top of their lungs. He realized that it was him. He couldn't help it. The pain was so intense that he almost couldn't breath. The sound cut off mid scream, leaving behind eerie silence, as the claws plunged deep into his lungs and his breath gave out leaving him without breath for real.

  A moment later, fire began to spread from his shredded lungs. At first it was just a light burning, like when he held his breath past the point that it was comfortable. It was almost inconsequential in comparison to the rest of the pain that he was in, but as it spread across his chest, and as he struggled to take a breath and couldn't, the burning began to increase.

  Despite the darkness, Andrew saw white spots appear in his vision. His thoughts ran rampant within his mind. What if he were still alive, but dying somewhere else and imagining this whole thing? What if it was a terrible nightmare? Though if that were the case, it was more real than any nightmare he had ever experienced.

  Through the agonizing torment, Andrew struggled to force himself to wake up. Whenever he had realized that he was dreaming before, the dream either ended or changed to something else. Nothing happened to the coffin around him. Nothing happened to the pain destroying his body or the burning from the lack of oxygen. His head was the only place that didn't hurt. Andrew would have kicked himself for having that thought if he could have.

  As soon as it crossed his mind, an ax dropped into the center of his skull. It felt like his head should have exploded into a million pieces from the force of that blow, yet somehow, it held together. Andrew wished that it had not. He couldn't take this anymore. He wanted nothing more that to just die so all of this pain would end.

  When death didn't come to relieve him, he thought he might be able to make it long enough to pass out from the pain, or maybe from the lack of oxygen. Even that was a boon that he was not to be granted. Instead he lay there, aware and in agony for what felt like an eternity. He had no way to judge the time. It could have been an hour, or it might have been days.

  The pain eased just a little. To his surprise, Andrew had been adjusting to the constant level of pain. He hadn't known it was possible to become accustomed to so much. The lessening of that pain felt like the greatest relief that he had ever known in his entire life. If there had been any air in his damaged lungs, he would have sighed in relief.

  The respite was brief. He Andrew didn't even have enough time
to appreciate it and then the exquisite pain doubled and became the new worst agony of his life. In the face of this new level of pain, Andrew couldn't think at all. The only thing he was aware of was pain. Agony, torture, hell and pain, agony, torture, hell and pain. He burned in every cell of his body.

  The pain increased yet again. Andrew was so incoherent at this point, that he didn't comprehend how much it increased, only that it did.Andrew lay there, somehow still aware after so long without breath, still alive at this level of agony. Time passed and the pain remained constant. His only capable thought beyond the pain was a longing for death. A longing for escape from the cruelty that life was imposing on him. Cruelty that crippled him beyond recognition.

  Then, in an instant that would have left him breathless if there were any breath within him, it was all gone. Andrew's heart shuddered and began to beat once again.