“Wake up, my love,” she soothed, her voice a calm whisper.
I shivered at her touch, shivered at the breathy whisper of her voice.“
“My love,” I repeated the phrase with a sigh, reaching up to place my fingers over hers. A deep part of me wished that she would say my name, that she would give me that tiny piece of who I was, the piece that I was missing.
Hearing myself spoken about in such a way was enough of a treasure, the simple admission soaking into my bones and lifting me up. I sighed again at the name, at the touch, and with one swift movement I swept her up, rolling over in the sand as I held her against me.
She was so warm, her skin such a strong heat that for the first time the breeze that swelled off the surface of the ocean was wanted. It was comfortable.
Pressing her into me, I nuzzled her neck, sending her into a fit of giggles as she squirmed, the motion making me laugh right alongside her.
We wrestled in the mirth until sand was everywhere, the joyful laughs ending in a sigh as she lay down on top of me, her head nestling into my collarbone.
“I love you, Joclyn,” I whispered, running my hands up and down her back as she settled into me, her breathing moving to match my own.
“I love you,” she responded, her fingers moving to run through the stubble of my hair. “Not just in here, either. I love you out there. Your memories show you that. You know that.”
“I do.”
Joclyn propped herself up to look me in the eyes, so close that for a moment I was sure I was going to get the kiss I had dreamed of for so long, that I was going to feel her lips against mine.
I prepared for it, ready to make the move and steal the kiss I had longed for.
“Then wake up, and find me.” Joclyn, teased, leaning towards me as my heart accelerated.
“I will,” I promised, every nerve ending alive in expectation as I closed my eyes.
And waited.
And waiting.
Instead, the sand vanished into hard stone, the sound of the waves faded into screams, and the bliss shifted to agonizing pain.
My deep sigh of relaxation became a shuddering breath of the purest sorrow as the dream left. Although I felt a hand run over my back, I knew it was not hers. It was not the one I wanted.
“Wake up, Jan.”
Kaye whispered above me as the soft touch turned into more of a shake, the motion hesitant.
“You need to wake up.” Her voice broke with desperate tears as the shake became a little more abrasive, the movement a rough rock now. “Please don’t leave again. Please don’t give in. We will find her, I promise.”
Her tears were falling in earnest now, I could feel them on my face as the sobs broke her voice up in little gasps. The sound was heart-wrenching, but it was only barely distinguishable from the sound of sobs that was echoing around us.
“Please Jan,” She pleaded, abandoning her focus on my back to clench my hand as she tried to rouse me.
It took all my strength to squeeze her hand back.
She gasped at the pressure, still holding tight to my hands as she shifted her weight, slowly moving my exhausted body over the impossibly hard surface.
“You’re alive,” I was sure the use of the word was incorrect but given with how I felt I was sure that it wasn’t. “Please be okay. Please.”
My head moved again as she shifted it into her lap, the odd positioning making my already pained bones twist further, and I grunted, the soft noise like a lifeline to her.
“You’re here.” She gasped, running her fingers through the stubble of my hair now. “You’re alive.”
I wasn’t sure if she spoke more to me, or to herself, or to whoever was sobbing in the room, but it didn’t matter, and right then I didn’t care. Her joy at my existence was enough.
My face ached as I slowly began to force my eyes open, the subtle motion sending agony through every tiny muscle from the crown of my head through my neck.
“Hi there, My. Blue Eyes,” she whispered, her fingers continuing to run over my buzzed hair. I tried to smile at the words, at the exact phrase her mother had used so long ago, but I couldn't make the motion come. I couldn’t even drum up enough emotion to do so.
It was only agony, it was only hot tears as they rolled down the side of my face.
Even though my eyes were open, I saw next to nothing. The world that drifted above me was a mass of color, splotches of red obscuring most of it. I could see the shape of Kaye, I could see a stream of light from somewhere above, a blinking light of what I assumed were my monitors off to the side, but everything was a faded mass of color.
“Where am I?” I could barely get the words out, each one stung and burned as the warm sludge of my magic attempted to react.
“They moved you to the north wing,” Kaye said, her voice choked with something I didn’t recognize. “I don't have much time. They are still trying to get the camera online after we cut them. I can't be caught in here.”
“I don't understand…”
My words shook as the world continued to shift in and out of focus, the pain that hung from my body making it hard to see for long. Everything wobbled in smears of color. I attempted to focus on one spot in the hopes that it would stabilize, but it only shook more.
“The north wing. The hall before Nastya’s torture chamber,” she hesitated. “It’s where they keep the ones they use.”
She didn’t have to elaborate, I already knew. I knew from the hard floor and the smell of urine and mold. I knew because I had heard the sobbing child echo through the halls as I was wheeled by them, same as now.
“I need to get out of here,” I groaned, trying in vain to lift my body from her lap.
My agonized body screamed with every attempt, the sound beginning to seep from me as bones and muscles began to twist in threat of break, my entire body erupting in waves of electric aftershocks.
“Shhhh,” Kaye whispered me as she held my head still, trying to calm me down as I continued to writhe. “Shhh. You must be still.”
It was a plea bound in fear, her panic dripping from her words as I continued to twist in pain.
“Remember that beach you told me about once,” Kaye whispered desperately as she continued to sush me. The words caught me off guard, thankfully giving me something else to focus on other than pain that one movement had created. “Remember how you get to see Joclyn there. Think of that. Focus on her.”
Joclyn came right to my mind, snapping in place at the prompting. I could see her. I could almost breathe her in. I gasped in air as I closed my eyes, blocking out the red and grey and the stained walls of my prison and bringing the beach right back.
The touch of Kaye’s hand became Joclyn’s, the way she quieted me became a familiar hum in my heart. The pain in my body eased as the sobs that still echoed against walls and air became the gentle pull of the waves, the sound of the wind through the grass. In my mind, it all became real, and my magic reacted to the fantasy in a warm buzz that shot through me, numbing the last of the pain before it too began to fade, taking the moment of calm and the beach with it and leaving me in the cold damp room, my magic as cold and dead as the misery around me.
I opened my eyes. The smeared world of before had left, my magic healing me just enough that I was left to stare at the peeling paper and swinging light of a new misery. The box in the corner that I had thought was monitoring equipment was only one large box, a grey IV tube trailing from it-- right to me.
“What have they done?” I asked as I stared at the machinery, tracking the tube towards its destination, toward the arm that was locked in a brace. To keep the tubing in, I realized.
“You are severely drugged, Jan,” Kaye whispered, my head jostling as she shifted her weight, looking at something behind her. “It’s something different than what they were using before. A mixture of several different drugs; ethanol, morphine and a few others that have no place in a hospital. I don’t know what it will do to you. It has done different things t
o the others.”
She faded off, her words losing some of their power as the honesty behind them dug into me.
I wanted to ask what she meant, to ask what was coming, but I didn’t need the answer, I could already hear it in the way the child cried out. Besides, it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t take me out of here and away from whatever they were doing to me.
Only one thing mattered.
“I need to get out of here,” I repeated, the words firmer as my vision continued to focus, the red slowly leaving. “We need to get out of here.”
“I am working on it,” Kaye reassured, placing her hands on either side of my head, looking down at me from above.
“How?”
I had spent months tied to a hospital bed, years trapped in comas that showed me the powerful man I used to be. Right then, however, I didn’t feel powerful. I felt broken. I felt like a man already dead.
I wanted there to be a way out. I wanted to fight it. Laying in this woman’s lap, unable to move, unable to think clearly thanks to the drugs, nothing seemed possible.
I needed to know there was something to hold onto.
“I’ve been in receiving for almost a year now.” She said, matter of factly, her face in focus enough now that I could see the determination there. I, however, didn't see how that helped.
“I’ve met some people there,” she hesitated, looking around as if she expected someone to be behind her. “They have a plan. Now that you are here I will try to get transferred. I won’t leave you alone.”
“You have to,” I hissed, my eyes and soul growing hard with what I was about to tell her. “It’s not safe, Nastya…”
“I know,” She interrupted me, obviously trying to calm me.
“No.” I stopped her with the single word, the hard snap catching her guard. “No, you don’t. Nastya… she’s like me.”
She froze, eyebrows arching as she tried to work through what I had just said. “I don’t understand.”
“She had magic,” I clarified, the look of horror that crossed her face the same as what was dwelling in my heart. “You have to get out of here.”
She stopped, swallowing hard as her focus drifted to something on the other side of the room, her jaw tight. Tension filled the air, drowning us the longer the silence lingered until it was a smothering weight.
“Kaye?” I asked as the steady rhythm of her fingers through my hair came to a stop.
I wished I could sit up and face her, wished I could dispel whatever had just taken over her, but I was trapped below her, looking helplessly at the only lifeline I had.
“I can’t leave yet,” she whispered, her hand soft against my scalp. “I still have things to do. I’m not leaving you yet.”
“You need to leave.”
“And I will,” she promised, her eyes hard as she looked into me. “But it’s not bad for me yet. You just need to hang on until I get transferred.”
“Hang on?” The words were confusing, but it could just be the drugs that infected my veins.
“I won't be able to come back here until then,” she finally said, her words increasing the tension into a hard rock in my stomach.
“Until you get transferred?” I asked, she only gave me a single nod in response. “How long? A month?”
She shook her head, “I don’t know when I will be able to come back, Jan. It could be a month. It could be a year.”
The phrase caught in my chest, swelling into a panic that was rising up. I tried to shift again, desperate to look her in the eye, but the slightest motion sent the world spinning and I froze, letting my agonized body sink back into the hard floor.
“I will get back here,” she said, squeezing her hand around mine. “I just don’t know when. There are some things I need to do first…”
“But you will return.” I cut her off, the strength of my voice rising to meet hers.
“I will not leave you behind, Jan.” She promised, her eyes determined.
“That’s not my name.”
“You let me know when you figure it out,” she teased, a light joy leaping from her eyes before a loud noise from the hall caused both of us to jump.
The sound repeated itself in another loud jump before the sounds of sobs and screams followed behind. Doors. Someone was opening doors.
“I have to go.” Kaye groaned as she began to shift her weight, carefully placing me back on the floor again. “I am out of time.”
“Kaye…” I whispered, knowing that there was nothing I could do to stop her.
“Stay strong, don’t give up.” She said as she stepped toward the door, the rhythmic thunk-thunk of doors opening and closing growing closer. “I will come back.”
“Promise me we will find her,” I gasped, the words choked with tears as I lay on the cement, watching her disappear behind the heavy metal door.
“I promise.”
It was the last thing she said before she left me alone.
Before she was gone.
15
Hush now, child. Be still, be calm. The world will change at the new dawn. And when it does, you will see, just how you and I were meant to be.
Joclyn’s calm voice sang through the grey hospital, the song trapped in my head as I looked toward it, expecting to see her standing there.
Sometimes she was, sometimes she wasn’t. Today it was only the grey wall, the peeling paint, and splatters of blood. The image was a haunting vision against the song.
Slowly, I lifted myself from the hard floor, the residue of grime sticking to my skin.
“A když ano, uvidíte, jak jste vy a já měli být.” I sang along with her in Czech as the words began to repeat, the same calm tone in the melody seeping through me as I walked toward her, my body moving flawlessly as the door to the hall opened before me, the twisted delusions of my dream escorting me into my house beside the beach. My dreams had brought me here so many times before, but now it was practically unrecognizable.
It was the same as the hospital.
The wide granite tiles were now cracked and broken, the large ornate paintings peeling to reveal layers of dirt and smears of red. Chandeliers swayed from the ceiling, their dripping candles flickering over everything as they hung from strings and broken chains.
Still, she sang.
Through the rubble, through the broken heartbreak of my mind, she sang.
Her voice grew louder as I stepped through the carnage of my former mansion, tiptoeing around piles of furniture and partially burned window dressings.
“Svět se změní,” I sang, my voice off key from hers as I stepped down the stairs.
This simple motion would cause me extreme agony in life, but here it brought little more than the ripple of the impact of a foot against stone.
It was an amazing feeling, it was freedom, and even among the rubble I smiled; letting the comfort flow through me.
Heavy creaking echoed through the massive space as I made my way down the steps. For months, the sound had kept me upstairs, sure that this destruction of mind and soul was going to collapse around me.
It still could, I knew that, but it was worth the risk. If it meant true death, I would rather die here, surrounded by her voice, close to her touch, than in the prison of my reality.
“Změní v novém,” I sang louder, letting my voice rattle the already unsettled structure as I yelled alongside.
The creaks of a swaying foundation grew louder as I reached the door, the entire house heaving as I swung the burned wooden slab open to the bright sunshine and the long black hair of a beautiful woman, her voice carrying away.
“And when it does, you will see, just how you and I were meant to be,” her voice was sweet, it was calm, it moved in time with the waves, it traveled on the back of the wind.
I let it fill me as I stepped away from the house and onto the wide porch. The calm, perfect beach stretched before me, the terrors of mind and reality already fading away.
“I was worried you wouldn’t make i
t,” she whispered as she placed her hand in mine, her eyes soft.
“I will always make it to you,” I said, lightly tapping the tip of my finger against her nose.
She smiled at the action, even though my heart tightened at the promise I couldn’t keep.
“Come,” she pulled me away from the house as she began to run down the stone steps that led to the beach, the sound of the waves growing louder as they called to us.
Her laugh echoed with each step, the sound in time with the waves as she pulled me right into them, water splashing around our ankles.
The water was so cold against my skin that I briefly wondered where the sensation was coming from, if they had soaked me in acid again or if this was just in the dream. If this was just some unremembered piece of my memory.
“You are safe here,” Joclyn whispered as she stepped before me, the cold water rising to our knees as she took my hands. “Don’t go back there yet. Stay here with me.”
Her silver eyes sparkled with love and light as she looked at me, as she looked into me. It was not the first time she had given me that look, and every time I saw the rare treasure it took my breath away. There was something there that I knew I had forgotten, some memory that I knew it was pulling from.
Each time I grabbed for it, only to come up empty. After so many attempts, however, I no longer took the effort, I just let the love in her eyes swallow me up. I let it shield me from whatever horrors were waiting.
“Everyday forever, Můj navždy,” I whispered, brushing away her hair from her face as it blew in the wind, letting my hand linger against her neck, my finger circling the soft skin just below her mark. I could feel the line of rough skin, feel the bit of raised flesh, the texture sending a pleasurable ripple up my spine.
I knew better to ask about it, to ask why she was alive and why the bite from the Vilỳ hadn’t killed her. But I already knew the answer, or rather, I didn’t. The memory was still locked in my mind, along with all the other fragments that taunted me.
Joclyn. Ovailia. Sain. Wynifred. Talon. Ryland.
Everyone but me. This one piece of vital information was still blocked from me.
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