Alone
Posted By vbpurcell on August 31, 2009
Filed Under 1. Story Length, Flash Fiction, General | Leave a Comment
Emma opened her eyes then squeezed them to a close again; an instinctive reaction to the graces of daylight. She tightened her squeeze and allowed the darkness to assume control of her mind.
A different sort of light eased into her view. She found herself standing on a beach dune, overlooking a sea of swaying rye. Turbulent breezes whipped her cheeks, stubbly stems of rye and whirling sands scratched her legs. Misshapen clouds were scattered across a morose grey sky.
Why am I here?
Her heart thumped with a dull ache and a longing for something that was missing. A trace of what was. Cut scenes of people, places and a different life flashed through her mind. Tears welled in her eyes. The landscape before her was wrong and incomplete with the same swaying rye and sand. It was a prison.
Emma shook her thoughts away. She unclenched her fists, leaped into the air and landed into an angry sandstorm. She lowered her head and pushed against the force of the wind, struggling to run up hill and away from the baron lands. The sand whipped her skin. It stung her eyes and caused them to overflow with hot tears.
Let me go!
Voices rushed through her ears with words that promised love, passion, companionship and security. Shadows in the sand stopped her struggles. A man emerged before her with an expression of understanding. His crystal eyes danced with light and madness. He was a conundrum.
Emma – open your eyes… His deep voice resonated through out every corner of her brain. Emma shirked backwards and lost her footing. She fell into a bed of rye and a grave of sand.
Open your eyes!
NO! She screamed and struggled against the sandstorm, which threatened to bury her alive.
Open your eyes or die!
Bile burned her throat and caused her to gag violently. She rolled about the ground in a panic; shaking off the sand from her hair, squeezing vision into her eyes and using every bit of strength she had left to stand up.
The sandstorm eased around her face, and a soothing warmth stroke the pain away from her body. The winds died into a calm breeze. Emma watched the image of a valley revealed before her.
She sprinted for it, ignoring the burning to her skin, and fought back her tears and hopelessness.
I don’t want to be here! I want to be home. She breathed and unleashed her determination. She ran faster until the world whizzed into a blur, the wind lost its voice and her pulse beats drummed into her ears. Waves of nausea caused her vision to move in and out of focus, until she slipped off the edge of a cliff and fell. Nothing.
###
Daylight streamed into Emma’s room through papery cream curtains and graced her unresponsive eye lids. Her husband moved the chair, he had been calling a bed for the last few nights, closer to her bedside and leaned forward to take a better look at her angelic face; hoping her eyes would flicker, her mouth would open with any sound and cheeks flush with the doll rose-red blush, which made her skin more porcelain and flawless. He prayed she was still there; her mind still remembering him and their life together. He begged, to a God he had never believed in, every night for her return from the coma that kept her captive in her own brain. And, every night he waited.
###
Emma opened her eyes to the grace of day and breathed in the cool taste of a new beginning. A man stood before her with an expression of patience in his eyes and the stance of a school teacher.
“Are you ready now?”
“Ready for what?”
The man smiled warmly. “To open your eyes of course.”
Images and memories rushed through her mind, evoking feeling and the want to live again. She felt safe.
You don’t have to run any more Emma, the wind sighed around her.
Emma’s smile widened. She closed her eyes and embraced the darkness. A moment later her grey eyes opened to a new day.
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