I Wish

Chapter 59

I hurt. When I woke up, and probably before that too but thankfully I didn’t have to remember that, but when I opened my eyes everything hurt. My whole body protested vehemently to consciousness, and winced. It didn’t help. Sharp needles of pain flashing out in a spiderweb of agony. I whimpered, and it was more of a short whine that was cut off when I tried to swallow back the waves of rising stomach churning. I didn’t work, I just let out this awful little coffing sound. The minimal light was spiking violently into my eyeballs, and making me consider ripping them out. Just pop, gone, nothing left to hurt anymore.

“Why?” I groaned with a mouth so dry that it didn’t really sound anything like the word. Spots danced in front of my eyes, and dizzy to the point of nausea. When you add that to the amount of pain I was in, then what happened next should come to no surprise. I tipped forwards out over the side of the bed, hand white knuckled clenching the bedside table to keep from falling right on over into the puddle that was rapidly forming on the floor. There must not have been carpet under there. My eyes were watering so badly that I couldn’t actually make much of anything out, other than the disgusting orange brown colour I was ninety percent sure were the literally cookies I was currently tossing. The thought made me want to laugh, even though I was thoroughly incapable. Well hello hysteria, it’s been awhile. No beating around the bush, hysteria was much too kind for the raging mental breakdown I was in the process of.

I had never been this sick in my life, and I had some terrible food poisoning occasions because as a kid I a nasty habit that kept me eating iffy leftover takeout. I was sobbing at this point. It was horrible, acid forcing its way out so hard that it was coming up out of my nose. My face was a snotty, teary, spit-cover (and yes we were maintaining that this was entirely it) mess and I wanted to scrub it off with boiling water and sandpaper. It couldn’t have possibly made any of this worse, I maintain to this day that nothing could have made this any worse than it already was. Tears streamed down my face, and with every heave my body would spasm causing fresh waves of agony.

“s**t, she woke up already. I told you we’d need a higher dose,” someone yelled, and I could make out the panic in it and good - because I was panicking why shouldn’t everyone else, but I couldn’t differentiate whether they were a male or a female. Everything is dark and hazy, and all I wanted was for it to stop. To just stop. I sobbed in the pauses between emptying my stomach, everything hurt. Everything. There was no way out, no respite, and no hope. A hand touched me. Grabbed me roughly more like it. Wrapping tightly around the back of my neck, and ice flooded my body. Colder than anything you could ever imagine, I wasn’t sure I was delirious or not but I could see my breath come out in clouds in front of me. The muscles responsible for heaving were so cold that they were too tense to work properly, as more and more liquid ice flowed through me. There was a blissful second where I was totally fine. Where none of my nerves were screaming, and then it was gone. I went entirely limp, with my entire body slumping and hanging slightly in the air when the hand wrapped around the back of my neck held me up. Everything was black, and gratefully, so gratefully, I was once again unconscious.

When I woke up again, I still hurt, but it wasn’t making me puke my ring up so I counted it as a win. I also did not smell like I’d just give a live performance of the exorcist. I hadn’t noticed the smell as it had been happening, but looking back I could almost smell it and I was enjoying not being sick. No need to ruin a good thing, so I focused on what the scent in here was actually doing now. It smelt like fresh earth, and vaguely I thought I could remember noting that earlier during my… Well, we’re just going to go ahead and call that an episode, and then pointedly not think about it anymore. I’m not sure how traumatic that was supposed to be, but as for how much it actually was? The answer was lots, possibly all if we throw Isaac into it. I shivered thinking about him, I did not need a reminder of how wrong this could go. In fact he could just go right on into the pile of things I refused to acknowledge. You know, for my mental health and it could go to the same place in my brain that the times tables songs resided. Never to be seen again. The reason it smelled like it did in here, was because I was in some kind of cave. Where the walls were made of dirt, and the light source consisted of a bowl full of the weirdest fire I’ve ever seen. It was bright and beautiful, had the right colours and everything, but when you put your hands near it the flames were cold. Not icy, but certainly on the lower side of lukewarm. Like there wasn’t anything to them at all.

“Kid friendly, that’s awesome,” I muttered, sitting up with caution. Nothing bad happened, and that was comforting. What was less comforting was the part where I had neglected to notice that I had an observer casually sitting in the room. Nothing worse than having someone speak when you thought that you were alone.

“I see you’re awake,” someone said in a low voice from my right. I jumped, and that only proved that not as bad did not equate to better. Air rushed in between my teeth, as I confirmed that sharp movements were still a no-go. Not wanting to be caught off guard any more than I already had, I turned my head and blinked in surprise. An old man sat in a chair next to my bed, and I felt disturbed that I didn’t realise that he was that close to me. Like I knew in the room was probable, but he was right freaking next to me and I was just sitting there like it was nothing. He could be a serial killer, or worse this could be some kind of personal bullshit.

“Yes,” I answered cautiously and stretched out the word, as I studied him. He had dark ashy brown skin, and piercing dark green eyes. He smiled at me, and it didn’t feel kind, tugging at his long curly grey beard. I started to get chills along my bones that only intensified as I realised that I was in brand new clothes. Brand new clothes that I was beginning to wonder who put me in. The slate grey dress was stainy, and from what I could tell bundled in blankets reached around my knees. It was beautiful, but I was doing my best not to glare at him unnerved and accusingly. I had a feeling it was in my best interests not to bring it up, so I went back to examining his beard. It was long enough to rest comfortably on his lap, and his hair was in a braid down between his shoulder blades. 

“That’s good, I was beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time,” he commented quietly, and then waited for my reaction. It felt like I was about to be judged. To be questioned, tried, and possibly found not worthy. The sheets were a dark black blue and cold underneath my hands. The feeling in my gut strongly advocated against being found not worthy. With all the surety of a metaphorical reflection of a razor sharp blade creeping up behind me, raised above my head and waiting to decide if it should swing. 

“Well what were you doing waiting around on me for?” I replied back sharply, unable to bite my tongue in time. The words spilled recklessly out of my mouth. He laughed, and it was marginally less cold. As if I had a hope in hell of making it out of here alive. Which would be nice, but I wasn’t going to count on him for that.

“Are you sure you want to be clever, girl?” he said sardonically, but didn’t answer my question. I guess that would have been too easy. Just telling me why I was here, and what they had planned for me? No, I had a feeling that this old fucker was going to make me drag everything that I managed to get out of him. In small individual pieces, if he coughed up any information at all. I needed to get myself a gossip friend that could spill all the tea on this place. Walking around blind sucked.

“What happened?” I asked him when it became clear that if I didn’t speak then we were going to be doing an awful lot of sitting here in silence. Yeah, he was going to make me work for it.

“You were injured,” he said, giving only the bare minimum. I almost growled in frustration, because the potential consequences of that held me back… Barely, but as much as I wanted Ivy, I was irritated not stupid, I knew I had been injured the only thing that I could remember had been the…

“Earthquake,” I said out loud a refresher wave of terror and a broken string of memories overwhelming me as the word left my lips, there had been an earthquake and, “Ivy? Is Ivy okay?” He smirked, as if my concerns were cute. Panicking felt like a dumb thing to do, but Ivy was my mate. Someone was going to assume that we meant something to each other anyway, and the need to know she was okay was outweighing all of my thoughts about playing this strategically. 

“The little spring faerie was fine enough to be searching for you. The earthquake triggered a landslide that you were pulled into. I kidnapped you from there,” he said as if discussing the weather, and my eyes popped open and just about rolled out of my head. How cooked did you have to be to admit that to the person you kidnapped if they didn’t already know? More than that, a scary thought suddenly occurred to me...  What was he planning to do to make sure I never told anyone?

I’m going to make the assumption that if he was kidnapping people, this was a bad guy, and I don’t know about real life but in movies they only tell people these kinds of things for one reason. When they were planning to kill them. I did not want to be killed, and I was not having any bright ideas on how to avoid that. I was really hoping Ivy came and rescued me again, because without her I was beginning to suspect that I might just be a little bit f****d over here.