Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone. It was this.
That was the only answer my fractured mind could grasp. Hell-raw, searing, and boundless. The kind of darkness that pressed against your ribs, suffocating, until you forgot what it was like to breathe. Until everything hurt, yet you couldn’t feel the pain. The kind you wanna escape yet couldn’t.
Voices. Somewhere far. Distant. But I couldn’t hold onto them. They came and went, tangled whispers slipping through my fingers.
The acrid stench of smoke lingered in my nostrils, even though I knew it wasn’t there. Was it real? Or was my mind playing tricks again?
“Open your damn eyes,” someone growled.
Slap. A sharp sting on my cheek. Another.
My head lolled to the side. My body was mine, but it didn’t feel like it. Nothing felt like it belonged to me anymore.
Who was he? Why did he sound so… angry? So desperate?
I tried to hold onto the thought, to dig into the edges of his voice, but the darkness clawed me back under.
Nothingness again.
The next time I opened my eyes, the world was chaos. Blurred shapes. Broken sounds. Commotion-shouts, someone cursing sharply, a voice cracking with tears. Crying. Was that for me?
The sound sliced through me, splintering something fragile inside. I didn’t know if I was afraid to open my eyes or afraid of what I’d see if I did.
Beep.
Beep.
The noise was steady. Rhythmic up to some point. A lifeline. Or a chain?
“-ina…”
A voice. Called me. Fraying my thoughts with its familiarity.
“Seraphina… open…” The words faded, muffled, sinking into the whirlpool that kept dragging me down.
Mama?
It sounded like her. Or maybe it didn’t. I couldn’t trust my own mind anymore.
I was trying-trying so hard to claw my way back to the surface. My eyelids were heavy, leaden, like they had been sealed shut with grief and fire. My body wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t obey.
Why did I feel so lost?
A memory brushed against me. The fire. The fall. Pain so sharp it had burned the edges of my soul.
And now this. Floating in a void between life and death.
I wanted to scream, to cry out, but all I could manage was silence. Breathing hurt, but not as much as being.
The voice came again, softer this time, but insistent. Pleading. I fought to listen. To feel. To exist.
But the darkness was stronger. It always was.
*******
The next time I surfaced, the world was quieter.
The chaos was gone. No shouts. No sobbing voices ripping through my skull. Just a faint hum of existence. And the beeping.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A metronome of my misery. Sharp. Endless. Unpreventable.
I tried to open my eyes. My lids felt glued shut, weighed down by something invisible but unbearable. The dim light behind them pulsed and shifted, making my skull throb harder.
Stop. Please stop.
My hand twitched, and something cool brushed against my fingertips. It slid. Fell.
A loud clatter exploded in the room, and I flinched at the noise, my breath catching in my chest. Panic clawed its way up my throat, and I squeezed my eyes tighter, but it didn’t help.
Where was I?
What was this place?
The air smelled sterile. It felt cold. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t safe.
My breaths turned shallow, coming too fast, too uneven. My chest rose and fell, the air getting stuck somewhere in between. I didn’t recognize my own body. It was foreign and disconnected. My fingers curled instinctively, clutching at the fabric beneath me, searching for an anchor.
I heard door creaking open.
I didn’t look. I couldn’t. My muscles were locked, my vision swimming even behind closed lids.
“Ms. Rosewood?”
Stop.
Stop calling me that.
“Ms. Rosewood, you need to get back to bed-”
“Ah…” The sound slipped from me I couldn’t recognise. It sounded mine, yet not at the same time.
Pain was my only tether to this life.
My head throbbed violently, like a thousand hammers were crashing collectively. I winced, my fingers going slack. Everything hurt in a way I couldn’t put into words.
I needed… something.
I didn’t know what. A hand to hold? Silence to hear? Air to breathe?
I felt the floor tilt beneath me, the walls closing in even though I couldn’t see them. I forced my mouth to move.
“W-where…” The words came out a whisper.
I didn’t finish. Couldn’t finish.
The beeping filled the silence again, relentless and sharp.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Stop.
********