Page 19 of Irreversible

And I hear it again. A soft voice. Like a jewel-toned bird.

“Sara.”Oh, God…she’s here. She’s here, and I can’t lose her again. I can’t let her leave. “Don’t go.” The words slur.

“I’m so sorry,” she says again.

But as the room fades, I decide that maybe I didn’t hear anything at all.

Maybe I didn’t lose the only bright spot in my dark, damned life.

Maybe I’m not trapped in a room, God-knows-where, listening to the apologies of a ghost.

Maybe I’ve been dead for a long

long

time.

4

Sometimes I’ve wondered if Sara would be waiting for me when I finally got myself killed, which, according to Tanner, was only a matter of time, due to my “chronic dumbassery.” Looks like he might’ve been right, and that pisses me off.

It’s dark here. Quiet.

Don’t know why I was expecting angels; if a place like that exists, then it isn’t meant for guys like me.

I try to shift a foot, just enough to test my body—assuming I still have one. Serrated agony rakes a path from my toes to my knee and keeps going. My groan sounds like a zombie from a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

Wait…

I’m in way too much fucking pain to be dead.

Then, something rattles below me.

Chains?

Was I dreaming? I figured I’d fucked up and binged a bottle of vodka, but no… That asshole Dolph Larsson beat the shit out of me. There was a needle in my neck.

Now I’m here.

There are chains…

A door…

It’s coming together now, and?—

Fuck.

Panic hovers, but I can’t let it take over.

Victimology 101: the second you lose your shit, it’ll come right back and bite you in the ass. Before you know it, you’re one of those screaming blond chicks with the big tits who are the first to go in every low-budget horror movie.

“You’re awake.”

“What?” I twist around automatically. “Ah, Christ.” A high-pitched wheeze squeezes out of me. That fucking hurt.

All I can do is lie here, panting, which doesn’t help, since my ribcage has apparently been turned inside out like a T-shirt.

Silence settles while I catch my breath. Then, just when I decide I was imagining things, I hear it again:

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