Page 35 of Incipient

My heart constricted as memories of my best friend came back to haunt me. Memories I’d worked fairly hard to bury. Not because I didn’t care or because I didn’t love and miss her, of course. But because it just hurt too damn much to think about her at all anymore. Lord knew she would have been right here with us if she were still alive. Cracking jokes and jabbing Ben about his questionable choices in tv shows.

Fuck, I missed her.

“Sorry,” he said, remarking my own gloomy expression. “I didn’t mean to bring the mood down.”

“You didn’t. Don’t worry about it.”

“Alright, so let me get this set up,” he said as he popped a squat on the floor and started typing away on the keyboard. “We’ll start from the first episode and then work our way up. You think we’ll be able to make it through the whole first season?” he asked, but for some reason, I couldn’t concentrate on his voice anymore.

It was as though it had been relegated to the back of my mind, a distant murmuring too insignificant to pay attention to. And then Dominic’s voice came into my mind, taking up the entirety of the space there as though every other thought had evacuated the premises to make room for his.

Lose the Reaper and come find me.

Come find me.

COME FIND ME.

His voice felt like nails scratching against the inside of my head. Painful. Incessant. Overbearing.

“Benjamin!” I yelled out his name, halting him in whatever it was he was going on about. “You need to get these chains off of me. RIGHT NOW!” I screamed and then started tugging uncontrollably at the chains. Apart from making a whole lot of noise with them, not much else was happening.

“Huh?” He straightened out and looked over at me in confusion. “What are you talking about, Jem? You just told me to chain you up?”

More scratching. More tearing at the inside of my head.

“I made a mistake, Ben. You have to get these things off me, please,” I begged as I continued yanking at the chains. “I need to go. Right now. I beg of you!”

He shook his head slowly as though he weren’t really sure of his answer. “I can’t do that, Jem. You told me not to cut you lose no matter what you say.”

My face contorted as the pain radiated from my skull into my eyeballs. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know what I was talking about. Please! You’re my friend! Don’t do this to me,” I hissed as the clawing intensified. “I’m in so much pain, Ben. It hurts too much.”

“What hurts?” he asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”

Sobs choked out of me as I rolled my neck, desperate for some sort of reprieve from the incessant scraping inside my mind. “He’s in my head, Ben! I can’t do this…it hurts too much. Please, take these things off me! Take them off! Take them off!” I screamed out hysterically as I reared against the chains.

“Shit, Jem. I don’t know what to do!” he yelled back, panic overtaking his own voice as he rubbed as his buzzed head.

“Get these fucking chains off me!” I roared as I bucked and pulled against them, using every muscle I had in my body to free myself of these godforsaken restraints. I just needed to go see him. I needed this pain to stop!

Pieces of the cement behind me crumbled to the ground as Ben’s eyes darted over my shoulder.

“Jemma, come on, you’ve got to calm down, okay? This is for your own good. You have to fight—”

“Fuck fighting!” I screamed out like a banshee. “I need to get out of here.” I didn’t even recognize my voice as my own. It was loud and abrasive and filled with hysteria. But not even that deterred me.

The only thing I could focus on was the ear-splitting ache in my head that was begging me to obey Dominic’s command. Begging me to go to him. The longer I stayed chained, the more the pain grew, and I honestly wasn’t sure how much more of it I could take.

Either my head was going to split wide open in the middle of this torture chamber or I was going to pass out from the pain and possibly never wake up again. Though with how I was feeling in that moment, both sounded like a dream.

“Listen to me, Ben,” I said as beads of sweat began to form on my forehead. “This was a mistake. I didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked you to do this,” I said, gasping between sobs. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t. I can’t do this, Ben…I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” he said, doing his best to encourage me, but it was completely misplaced. This wasn’t about will or positivity. This was going against nature. However unnatural it may have been.

“I’m going to die here, Ben. I swear to god,” I said and then yanked at the chains again. More cement chunks crumbled to the floor like little pieces of hope. “It’s killing me!”

“Fuck!” he cursed as he paced the small cellar in a panic, his palms splayed against the top of his head. Freezing mid-step, he pulled out his phone from his pocket and met my water-filled eyes. “I’m sorry, Jem. But I have to do this.”

Like a caged animal, I thrashed against the restraints as tears continued to spill from my eyes.

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