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Light… Shattering agony, so bad that sound was coming from him… How could he hear his own screams when his vocal cords had been burned away an eternity ago along with all vestiges of a physical body? But yes, that was his voice. He was screaming, screaming the way a banshee screams. His eyes were squinting at the light, streaming with tears as he stared wildly around the room of people, things that he couldn’t see clearly but fumbled to understand. Medical equipment, lights. He spoke words, he didn’t know what, a wild stream of gibberish that turned the faces around him as white as their clothing. There was actually a moment they all stood back and he felt the weight of their wide-eyed stares even if he could not clearly see the features of their faces. Then he collapsed back on the gurney and the moment passed. They pounced back on him.
A haze as time churned forward. Lying somewhere, somewhere soft. Voices.
“You should have seen this guy in the ER…it was like we were transported to the set of The Exorcist. Scariest shit I’ve ever heard coming out of his mouth. His eyes…” Nathan felt a shudder run through the hand resting on the blood pressure cuff wrapped around his arm. “Colleen even fainted, if you can believe that. Man, nothing fazes that woman. We’ve had homeless people in here that acted way less crazy. ”
“Well, what did he say?”
“It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it… To be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what he said. It was just…it sounds stupid, but it was like the room got cold as Alaska when he started screaming. For a minute we were all just frozen. I felt like I’d just found out my whole life was over, the worst feeling of despair and rage you’ve ever felt. You know how sometimes when you get so crazed by everything around you and you want to break out and you don’t know how? You think up some crazy shit like shooting everyone? That was what this feeling was like. ”
“James, I think you’ve been on too many back-to-back shifts. ” Trembling, shuddering, speaking words that he didn’t remember… The worst feeling of despair and rage you’ve ever felt. That was probably as close to the truth as anything.
Consigned to Hell, denied the ability to scream until he’d woken in a mortal body again.
He lost consciousness again, leaving the invisible James and his cohort behind.
Moved through a thick fog where he had no sense of anything except he wasn’t being hurt, tormented, burning or freezing. But he did ache. Deep inside him something ached, wanting to call out a name. He couldn’t remember that name. That was the most horrible thing of all. He had to remember that name. Had to remember it…
For several days they kept him under heavy sedation, for he was so disoriented that everything frightened him. They told him his name and it meant nothing. He forgot it a moment later and had to ask again, mumble for it. They treated him with some impatience, which, compared to what he’d known, was akin to being given every consideration. As some cognizance returned, he noted one of his hands always remained handcuffed to the bedrail. He had a vague sense of a guard walking in and out at times, sitting outside the door. A prisoner. He’d always been a prisoner. The thought stretched his face in a grim smile. Having skin and a body…was strange.
Perhaps he was free now, despite the handcuffs? He didn’t want to be free. Needed that name. Need the name.
Then he’d doze and the nightmares would come back, nightmares even more powerful because he knew they weren’t nightmares at all.
Fire…monsters…every fear that a person could imagine having. Those that lived in the darkest part of the psyche, things he hadn’t even known he feared above all the other, more mundane fears, such as falling, being buried alive, spiders crawling across the skin to bite the most tender areas of the body, high-pitched shrieking laughter while being tortured, cold, darkness… No, there were worse fears. Shut in a small, dark place deep under the earth, being forgotten, unimportant for all eternity, tortured for amusement until the mind had shattered at the weight of all of it. Knowing that it was all deserved, so not even a sense of injustice provided a haven. There would be no escape from it, not ever.
He’d surrendered. Just surrendered, with no other choice. Standing free of all bonds, no longer even trying to draw away as everything was done to him and more. In the end, rationality fled, the mind, soul and body broken, nothing left. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought of anything, a macabre meditative state based on torment instead of peace. His soul had floated, no longer weighed down by anything.
Then, lying on cold, wet stone, he’d felt a touch, a brief flash of eyes too powerful to be met, wings so pure white the beauty of them choked him.
Goodbye, my child. You have paid for your sins. Now forgive yourself and love her as she deserves.
Don’t fuck up. That from a different presence, male. A brush of gray wings along his brow that offered encouragement with the warning.
A few days later, he remembered a conversation. Dr. Adams.
“Mr. Powell…can you understand me? You were stabbed in a fight at the prison.
…died for nine minutes before we restarted your heart. We think…Mr. Powell? Still with us? We think that may explain some of your disorientation and your memory problems…”
It was an understatement. At first, his vision was cloudy and he could only see blurry outlines of people or things. Everything startled him. Noise was too much. All of it could be the fire, monsters…
With his physical body, the attempt at rational thought returned. As he gained in strength, his mind tried to tell him that he’d had some weird hallucination when he was gutted in the knife fight, that none of it had been real.
No, it wasn’t his mind trying to convince him of that. Not exactly. Jonathan. The part of him that would always be afraid of truth. But sometime during those minutes when he’d stood on the other side of the threshold between life and death, Nathan had taken the reins and Jonathan wasn’t getting them back, no matter what he tried.
Nathan. That was what someone had called him, long ago when he was young and more possibilities had been open to him. Then later… Nathan and Jonathan. Two parts of the same whole. Made whole by someone… Someone…
It hurt so badly, the not knowing, that as he lay in bed on the tenth day he curled into himself and made the agony worse by putting the pressure of the position on the largest stab wound across his belly. He cupped his hand over it, held it as he rocked.
I have to remember, I have to remember… It’s not real. You’re losing your fucking mind.
There’s no one. No one…
I love you, Nathan. I always will.
He jerked up out of the bed and immediately bent double, cursing as the stitches tore and blood leaked onto his fingers. Looking down, he saw the blood drip and land on his bare groin, the skin of his cock. He had piercings. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? Jesus Christ, piercings all over the place. Barbells up the bottom, a ring in the tip, a ring in his ball sac. His fingers touched the ladder, explored it, even as the blood wet his fingers and his genitals, mixing with the metal. A canvas of pain and memory, tormenting him as badly as his nightmares.
Her voice. He’d heard her voice. Who was she? His life depended on it, he was certain.
