Page 72 of To Have and to Hold

Orange.

Red.

Flames.

Burn.

I floated in a red-black, white spots peeking in between. An unconscious galaxy. My fingers twitched first, grounding me to an ice floor. My lower back came next, the cold numbness turning to a searing ache. My head jerked to the side, caught in the between of here, not here, until my eyes fluttered open.

This blackness, I was familiar with.

The room. The basement. I lay in the middle—I think—sprawled on my back. My face felt stiff. With the tentativeness of a wounded bird, I raised a hand to my cheek, testing. Something sticky was on my skin, dry in some places but like paint in others. Blood. I felt around my eyes and noticed only one eye was open—the other was swollen shut.

I tried moving to my side but yelped when a flash of pain threatened to send me under. My left arm, it hurt. It didn’t pound or throb, it was more the feeling of a fire poker dragging along my bicep, causing such flaring cruelness I couldn’t raise my pinky finger.

He hurt me. Badly.

I couldn’t move. My mind attempted to heal and bring me back to logic, but it was blurred and bouncy and brought a sickness that had my empty stomach threatening to shed its lining. Pictures popped through the black—of what I did, where I was, who could still be with me.

Gasping, I propped myself up on my good elbow, using my bent legs as anchors—my left knee, it hurt—and searched, ignoring the fruitlessness of the task. My ears weren’t injured. I could hear him if I rid my head of this cotton-ball protection my brain created.

The Skull was too injured to go anywhere far, even if he could crawl out of here. But did he leave the door open during his flee? In his severe pain—which he for sure felt because nobody liked having their face becoming a matchstick—did he stop caring about what he left behind?

I groaned through each spike of rebellion my body put me through when I made it move. I couldn’t sit up, or crawl, but I could slide, using my good arm and legs, pushing with the friction of the concrete floor and inching me closer. Swimming without water.

I’d think about getting up the stairs later and making it outside. And making it across not only this room, but the one on the other side. One feat at a time, and right now shifting an inch every five seconds was awesome.

The inside of my brain flickered, not so much with a vision but with the wobbling threat of shutting down. But the Skull needed hospital attention too, surely. He won’t attack me again. Couldn’t.

Please, no.

This was a prolonged agony I’d never endured before and I wasn’t primed for constant battle. My brief spurts of survival could only last me so much longer. This was my last chance at escape, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to take it, crawling along the floor with one good arm or not.

My left fingers hit on something soft, my reach stretching long. I touched it lightly, the reptilian part of me knowing what it was, but belief took a while to catch up. A pant leg.

He was still here.

I swallowed back a cry. The Skull was between me and escape. He wasn’t moving, but with each inch past, I risked rousing him. Maybe he was dead, or so deep in a coma there would be no chance of waking him. Keep going, keep sliding, the door was mere feet away. If I could walk I’d reach it in three strides. I had to think about that, how close it was, what success tasted like.

Almost. There…

His heel caught me in the shoulder.

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