Node: 111
Slack in the chains, I fight to hold on, to ignore the urge to sleep. In the back of my mind, I see the clasps binding me forever in this place.
I kick. I pull. I thrash. The grasping fingers on my slack hand can almost feel one of the clasps.
I yearn, I strain. My hand finds the clasp, slips across its surface, but can’t undo it.
Shifting my weight, I pull in the other direction and try to free my right hand. My fingers dance as they find the clasp. They dance until they are bloody, but I’m unable to get free.
Panic tries to take me, but I don’t let it. Calm is what I need. I shift my weight again, try again, working carefully at the edge of the clasp. The fingers on my right hand throb as my left hand works.
I dig in with the edge of a fingernail until I’m certain, until I know I can flick and twist and open the clasp. Soon my left arm is free and I’m opening the clasp on my other wrist. Afterward, I try to free my feet but can’t. The wires don’t let me. I rip and pull wildly, with passion and persistence.
My breathing is irregular, shallow. I rip the tube out of my mouth and pull it out from unknown depths within me. When the tube is gone, I cough and sputter, liquid froth coming from my mouth.
I cough and sputter until there is no more of the thick, syrupy liquid within me. And then, finally, I can breathe. Truly breathe. That first true breath I take is like the only breath I’ve ever taken. The air rushes in and then out.
The fog in my mind starts to clear. My thoughts go back to the wires. Some few of them are still attached to my chest, my legs, my arms. I remove them.
I try to bend down to free my legs from the chains, but something behind me prevents this. I reach back with both hands and find a mass of wires at the base of my skull.
I pull at these, but they are not simply attached to my skin like the others. They extend deep within me. Every tug at them sends a wave of pain through me, arcing out in a wave that extends to the tips of my fingers, to the tips of my toes.
Luke found living wires like this once in a high space within the stone ghosts. Touching the wires knocked him across the room. When he came to, he said it was as if he was being burned alive. That’s what each pull on the wires is to me: My body being doused in flames, emerging only when the pain touches every part of me.
Curling into a ball and weeping is all I can think about. But I can’t do that. Or can I?
The wire goes taught instantly as I let my body go slack. Pain follows. I feel myself dangling, with only the wires at the back of my skull holding me up. Nothingness comes with the darkness that swallows me.