From his palms to the soles of his feet, Aaron’s skin burned. Face down, he moaned in agony. His consciousness floated in a sea of boiling blood, fever liquefying him from the inside out. Soon he would be nothing but a puddle, a dark red stain for someone to mop up. Would they use one of those spongy things with the blue head that you squeezed between two rollers to clean him up? Or would they go for the white, ropy kind that looked like an alien octopus? A laugh bubbled in his brain but never made it to his lips. Would they use water to wash him away?
Water?
His thoughts frowned. Water seemed important. He had to get out of the water, make it back to shore.
His thoughts laughed again. He was too hot to be in water. He was on fire, and fire can’t survive in water. More likely he had fallen asleep in a volcano, or was shoved into the oven by some evil children like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Was he a witch in a gingerbread house like in some fairy tale? Gingerbread, his stomach rumbled.
Beneath him, he barely noticed the rough stone floor cooling his naked body. He’d never felt so weak, so empty. His insides were a melted mess, his skin a thin layer of plastic barely holding them back. Without his skin holding it all in, he would be a pond, a lake, a river.
River. Water.
If only his skin would release the raging fire and flood within, he would drink and drink and drink until there was nothing left. Nothing. Not one drop.
So thirsty.
“Shhhh.” Moisture trickled into his mouth, and he stuck out his tongue to catch each drop. A cool hand stroked his cheek, nurturing, loving. His body relaxed, the water reviving a tiny piece of his sanity.
There was something important he needed to do. A girl with blond hair, he had to protect her, to warn her. Who was she? Warn her about what?
Aaron!
A hot poker lanced through the back of his skull, a fire of his psychic gifts in the back of his brain.
Tell me where he is!
Quinn. Her name thrummed through Aaron. A slim thread connected them. A familiar magnetic pull yanked him as she reached out with her mind. The river, he had jumped in to save her. Panic filled him. He had to get back to her, save himself, but his body had no fight left.
“Sleep now, and forget about her,” a woman’s voice cooed. His mother’s maybe, its soft, familiar cadence lulling him like a drug. Gentle fingers ran through his hair. “You must forget to remember.”
Quinn’s energy ebbed, and he felt her moving farther away, her voice in his mind growing fainter. As quickly as it came, his shimmer of clarity faded, the girl with the blond hair nothing but a ghost in his unconscious.
“Shhhh. That’s right.”
His breath slowed along with his heartbeat, and within seconds, he found himself in a raging river. Relentless tides dragged at his limbs, forcing him down, down, down beneath the surface. He fought his body’s need to breathe as pressure squeezed against his chest, a thousand ropes pulling tighter and tighter. The more he struggled, the tighter the ropes pulled. Left, right, down, up? No matter which way he turned, nothing but brackish water surrounded him. Ate his strength. Crushed his resistance. Then the currents dragged him deeper.
As Aaron slipped farther and farther beneath the inky waves, a girl’s hand appeared. Small and pale, it reached out to him. Tendrils of red hair glowed in a shaft of moonlight, floating like a luminescent halo around her smooth, heart-shaped face. Ruth. She was the only bright spot in the rolling dark. Fitting that his baby sister would come to take him home. They should have drowned together long ago. Fate had finally gotten around to correcting its mistake.
Ruth smiled, suspended above him like a water angel.
He smiled and tried to take her hand, but it remained just out of reach.
The box. What did you do with it?
What box? What was she talking about?
I need it. Please, it’s important. Aaron frowned. Something wasn’t right. Ruth’s lips spoke with someone else’s voice. The vision of her rippled, red hair turned to black, green eyes to silver. Ruth but not Ruth.
Aaron felt a tug at his leg and looked down to see a swirling vortex open beneath him. The current sucked at his limbs, trapping him in its grip as Ruth floated away, her face twisting in anger before disappearing all together.
A maniacal laugh bubbled to Aaron’s lips. You’re dying. Can’t you feel it? Your organs are shutting down, your neurotransmitters going on the blink as your brain turns off. Soon there won’t be anything left of you but a lifeless body. Aaron’s mind laughed at him again. You’re literally circling the drain, dude.
No use fighting anymore, Ruth was gone and he was alone. Sinking, sinking, sinking, his heart a weight dragging him into an abyss of hopelessness. Hope was nothing more than a lie. Ruth couldn’t save him. Nobody could. He was already dead.