Awakening
Page 84
*
At first, the going was tough, as Barsch's limbs had apparently yet to fully awaken from their slumbering state. He grimaced with every step, his wound crying out with every impact. Thankfully things got a little easier after a while, as delirium and numbness set in. He could feel his mind begin to slip, but was too distracted by the effort of putting one foot in front of the other to care. Random images began to appear in his mind, as his thoughts became muddled from the pain.
After a time, the images began to speak to him, however, in his disconcerted state, they resorted to using his voice to do so. Each voice was a memory, a painful reminder of events he desperately wanted to forget. The voices continued unabated, screaming his name, laughing at his inadequacies, crying out in fear. The voices grew in volume and spite, calling out his every flaw and failure.
Barsch tried his best to block them out, but they somehow always managed to filter through, probing for cracks in the wall that divided sanity and madness. If the wall broke, he would lose himself to the madness, his consciousness ripped to shreds by tendrils born from pain and self-loathing.
However, Barsch was no ordinary 16 year old, and he found that he was able to retain a sense of sanity by constantly repeating his father's teachings.
“Through fire, through ice, through deepest despair, never lose your stride.”
Suddenly, an older proverb came to him. It had been spoken by someone who's face Barsch could barely remember, but they had been the words of one who had seen much and done much more. Although Barsch had been but a toddler, he could still remember the message clearly.
“Once you let the fear in, it never leaves. You have to accept that it's a part of you, live with it, and continue moving forwards.”
Thanking the nameless stranger for his helpful words, Barsch managed to finally snap back to reality. His eyes grew wide when he realised that he had been about to step off the bank of a massive dune. Had the maddening visions continued, he would have been lucky to escape with merely another broken bone.
“The voices, they're trying to kill me! No, wait, that's wrong. It's only the combination of heat-stroke, starvation, stress and infection. Given the circumstances, It's actually pretty natural for my mind to wander. Even so, I can't lose my stride...”
Although Barsch had made up his mind, the hallucinations persisted, though they did so in a lessened capacity. They appeared at the corner of his vision, not quite visible, but making their presence known. Occasionally, he would hear snatches of conversation, just barely at the edge of his hearing. With his free hand, he tried to block them out, but they seemed to emanate from within his mind. As he walked, he repeated the words of his father and the stranger, again and again, hoping his mantra would protect him from madness.
“Maybe I’ve already gone mad? Do mad people realise that they are mad? Do I? No, a mad person wouldn’t think that he was mad, he would simply think that everyone else was…”