Page 9 of Velvet Deception

It gripped me, crushing me into weightlessness. Floating in space. Suspended from reality. I was lost, stuck in this cosmic loss of self.

Back and forth, it waved. Easing toward the light, toward the presence ofsomething, forward to the concept ofbeing, the pain swept in harder and faster. Piercing rays of agony speared through me. Aching streaks of injuries and inflammation roused me further from the drugging nothingness, but the closer I came to fully embracing the faculty of my senses, I was pushed back, falling and flailing toward the pit of emptiness, dark and bleak.

It wasn’t constant, volleying to and fro. Pushed to wake up, I recognized every impact of pain that I’d received. And shoved back to sleep, forever, I let go of the awareness that I should stay alive, that I should fight to escape this blackness.

In short spells, I registered more than the reality that I wasn’t dead.

Sounds trickled into my consciousness. All of them sounded far away and underwater, indistinguishable and distant. Booms in the sky? Footsteps approaching. A car door slamming? Was someone near?

Wanting to know where I was motivated me to cling harder to the pain that threatened to wake me. I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t backtrack to where I had been. Lying flat, with something hard and steady beneath me, I could only try to breathe.

But then even that changed, too quickly for me to keep up with when I was under this dizzying nothingness of the dark. I was moving. No.Iwasn’t moving. I was being moved. The pressure of hands on my body was unmistakable. The rising sensationof being pulled onto a softer flat surface was something I could follow. Another urge to sleep took over, though, and I couldn’t tell where I’d gone or how.

Motion stayed constant, then not. The dead weight of my body rocked forward, then swayed back, implying I was being transported on something. I certainly wasn’t walking.

Where am I?

Where am I going?

Who is there?

Who…

Panic spiked. That question arrested me, overwhelming my weak ability and energy to figure out what was happening and what would come.

With a stark, horrific clarity, I realized that I had no clue. I was clueless of something everyone should know.

WhoamI?

Searching for my identity, I felt the rise of confusion control me.

I didn’t know.

No name came to mind. No memories flooded in. Not a single damn thing filed through my thoughts.

I wasn’t sure who I was. What I was called. Where I’d come from and how I’d happened to be thrust into this damning, twisting, and unbeatable dark void.

What the hell is going on?

Knowingwhatseemed like a smaller problem. Not understanding who I was freaked me out in a sense of being lost that no one could ever overcome.

Movement ceased again, but this time, the rumbling, vibrating noise that buoyed me on this cushioned surface made more sense.

I didn’t know who I was, but I understood that I was in a vehicle of some kind. It had stopped, and the rush of air that came in to breeze over my skin followed the squeak of a door opening.

The sensation of feeling like I was hovering over myself, in the air and trying to spy down on what was happening, wasn’t calming my frantic mind.

AmI dying?

Have I already died?

The limbo of when life switched into death wasn’t anything I had experience with. Right now, no previous experiences of a lifetime could comfort me. It wasn’t a total lack of awareness. In my soul, I knewwhatI was. A man. An adult. Everything else was a foggy detail that remained out of my reach.

Those cool hands reached for me again, and I was tugged out of the vehicle. Drops came with the passage into the air, and in the distance, those booms heralded like explosions in the sky.

Fireworks?It had to be, spaced out and sounding so high. I hadn’t lost my mind. Not entirely. I was cognizant of things, like cars and fireworks, but my identity remained elusive. A mystery I couldn’t solve.

Closer, though, her voice returned. In the murkiest wisps of awareness and waking up, I’d heard her soft, delicate voice.

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