Shackles

I feel myself sink into my bed, the mattress, a rotten carcass that envelopes me. The outline of my body rises up around me like immense walls that leak and soak me whole. I feel myself float in the residue of past lives lived and the light above me swims and dims into a sliver.

I am lonely. Lonelier than I've ever been in my life. How am I still breathing? How am I still sane? Why have I not decayed into this bed and become a dessicated corpse that floats in its own waste?

Why hasn't my heart sped up, crashed and entombed itself in stillness?

How much more can my mind take before it grinds to a screeching halt and ceases to humour existence and its infinite capacity for despair?

For how long would I still linger in this body, a shell, that has chained my consciousness to the shackles of time?

One

I feel Her seep into me. Cold and vicious.

I feel Her sliding her feeble limbs into mine, the corrosive muck of Her merge with my gut and Her frantic breathing take hold within my chest. She looks through my eyes and all I see is devastation. She inhales through my mouth and all I can taste is the bitter stench of bile and I can't stomach it. I want to retch.

And my mind fuses with Her's. Once again, I am Her. All I can taste is Her. All I can feel is Her. "I'll protect you" she croons inside my head. I believe Her. She's always been right. Despite the fury that blurred her eyes and unleashed the depraved thing within, She has always been right.

And, yes. She has always, always protected Me.

Back to Her

I float down into the pit, my feet landing firmly on the filth. A trail of hair, vomit and piss cover the remnants of what I used to be, now charred and dried up. I hear a low rasping, a struggle for breath and a wheezing followed by a rattling cough, feeble and spent.

My eyes adjust to the darkness and I see Her lying curled up by the wall, clumps of hair missing from Her head, eyes raw, bloodied and lifeless, lips cracked and blackened. Her body, naked. Long limbs of skin and bones hung to Her sunken frame.

I walk over, lean down and stroke Her head numbly. Weak as She is, She can barely turn Her head up at me, searching with unseeing eyes, pupils dilated and grey. She is blind, I realise in shock.

"Where were you?" She whimpers, Her broken voice barely audible. "Where did you go?"

I weep quietly, for Her and for me.

"I didn't mean to leave you alone." I whisper back. A weak arm stretches towards me, grabs my leg, nails dipping into my flesh. I sit down by Her head, dragging Her onto my lap.

I sit and stroke Her head... almost lovingly. "I told you. I told you." She croaks in her weakened state. "I warned you, didn't I?"

"I know."