chapter 41

The ground slams up against your back, sending an explosion of pain through you and knocking the wind out of you. You let out a scream and suddenly realize: you're buried in snow.

The ground is hard beneath you, and the snow is packed above you. The coldness seeps into your clothes as your body warmth melts the snow and you become soaked. You draw in a small gasp as the ground rumbles again and you hear a loud explosion and screams. Snow water fills your mouth, and each breath causes more snow to trickle in.

You shiver and try to move your arms, but you can't. You can only scratch at the snow with your fingers.

Outside, you can barely hear the muffled voices of commanding officers, and people are scurrying back and forwards, trying to obey their officials.

Something heavy stomps onto your right ankle and you yell again as you feel a snap and you can hear a cracking noise. Pain shoots up your body and you grit your teeth. You can't even focus anymore on breathing, the pain takes up everything. You close your eyes as another wave of fresh pain shoots through your ankle and you yelp again.

You start breathing heavily, not knowing what to do and afraid to be stepped on again. You start moving your hands and fingers in all directions as crumbling snow fills your mouth, melting quickly. You start wriggling your arm, bending it with as much force as you can. The snow gives way and collapses, covering the area where your hand was seconds ago.

You scratch frantically at the snow above you, and it moves aside. You feel fresh air touch your hand and you quickly push yourself up. Pain radiates from your ankle up your body, but you try your best to ignore it.

You push yourself up slowly, and you find the streets deserted, snow, dirt, and rubble from half-crumbled buildings littering the ground. You wobble on your one leg and attempt to put pressure on the right, but the leg collapses in weakness, making you feel as if you can't control the light.

You look around skeptically, wondering where all the people went. Wondering where went. Slowly, you push yourself up again. You try to drag your foot with you and hop around, but it gets tiring, and you are forced to lean against the side of the building. The pain in your ankle persists mercilessly.

You look around for your hotel, put all the buildings are collapse to the point where you couldn't even tell the difference. But when you look up, you realize that you're standing right in front of your hotel doors, as you can see the 19 floors of the building.

There's no one around you, and you want to know where you're at is. You yell, "Ed! Ed, where are you!?"

But what comes out is a whisper. You can't yell. You want to stomp your foot in frustration, but you can't, as you only have one reliable foot. And suddenly, you have no idea what to do. You sum it up all in your mind.

You conclude. But you still don't know what to do.

Suddenly, a weird, warm, fuzzy feeling takes over your mind. You lean heavily against the wall, trying to catch your mind to clear up. Slowly, you place your injured right foot down against ground.

Your eyesight becomes Lori, and you can't buoy think. The warm feeling spreads through your body like you just had some butter beer, but the feeling makes you feel weak, and makes you want to just collapse and lie down and go to sleep. You guess that that's probably not a good thing.

Without warning, a cold feeling spreads from your chest across your body, feeling as if someone had dumped a bucket of freezing cold water on top of you.

And you hear voices. You hear the same voices that you had heard when Ed tried to attack you. You heard the same voices that held so much resentful resentfulness and hate towards you. A shiver runs down your body, and you feel a small prick of pain coming from your ankle, which you reckon you probably sprained.

There are so many different voices, but you can only make out a few. The cold feeling coming from your chest persists, and you feel as if there something sitting on your chest, preventing you from breathing. You feel as if you can't take in a deep breath, and you feel as if you can't get enough breath.

It's a horrible feeling. You simply feel like just sitting down and giving up on life. You feel like you don't deserve to be in this world.

But there's a small voice in the back of your mind that tells you,

But the voice is just a small voice, and the voice gets over powered by the other, bigger voices.

You hear a huge crowd. The sound of humanity. It's growing closer and closer for you, and you feel better than you did before.

You can hear a lot of shouting and yelling in the crowd, like they are trying to promote something, or support someone. You try to stand up better on your 1 foot and up towards the sound.

But as the new sound comes closer, you realize that the noise isn't a crowd of supporting fans, but a committee of reading people, all going against you.

They all have the familiar, blank faces and the weird lopsided walk. You know immediately that they have been infected by the "experiment", but the thought is pushed aside.

Another, more sinister thought takes up your mind.

The voice says. You try to block it out, but it's too loud, it's too demanding.

The crowd of rioting people grow closer and closer, and the thought becomes more and more dark.

Your mind feels oddly fuzzy, like there's something buzzy in your head, but you can't seem to take it as a serious problem.

Suddenly, a cool feeling spreads over your body, like someone had dumped a bucket of cool water over your head. It isn't as cold as ice water, but like a nice summer breeze.

You let the feeling wash over you, and your mind feels so much more relaxed and less stressed. You smile a bit.

Something heavy lifts off of you, leaving you feeling light as a feather. It is like a huge burden has been lifted off of tour mind.

You grin bigger at the feeling of having no thoughts, at the luxury of thoughtlessness.

Someone commanding whispers something in your mind, but you can't quite hear or understand the soft speech.

And the next thing you know, you're holding a knife, and it's pointed towards your own heart.

*****

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~Sky-chan

Word count: 1253 words