Awake. A word without meaning when the world is dark Where am I? What am I? And why am I asking myself these questions? Why don't I know, why can't I see.
The questions hurt my mind, and I stop them, feeling them fade away, and suddenly, like knives in my skull, here comes my memory, slamming into my consciousness, and I gasp, and my lungs are filled with liquid. Drowning! I must escape, I must breathe real air, I know that now. I remember real air, the way it feels so sweet in my lungs.
Struggling to escape, I claw in the liquid, searching for air, and alas! I feel it, sweet cold air, I push weakly towards it, and hit the surface, spluttering and clumsily sucking down life in the sweetness of the air. Letting my lungs work on their own, I take stock of the situation, knowing only that there is something wrong. I can feel things in my arms and legs, and there's a thin monitoring strip attached to my head. Every limb feels weak with fatigue, and yet I know that my body hasn't moved in days. Slowly pulling loose the IV's from my arms and the needles from my legs, I sit up and look around, searching for some evil looking doctor to notice me and try to shoot, "The Creature". But nothing happens. Confused, I step from the tank full of the brackish liquid I had apparently been sleeping in, reaching up to pull the strip from my forehead and sighing with relief.
In seconds, I heard alarms begin to beep, telling someone, somewhere, that something had happened.
Acting on instincts I didn't know I had, I quickly grabbed a nearby sheet and dried my bare skin, grabbing another and making a crude toga. Taking off down the hall in a lurching run, I could hear unknown feet pounding down other halls, moving toward the tank where I was meant to be.
Suddenly, turning a corner, I saw a burly man with a huge gun aimed right for my head. Before I could react, my body did it for me, my right hand jerking up as if throwing something. And suddenly, like magic, I WAS throwing something. Namely, four large shurikens. The deadly metal stars spun through the air, ripping through the guard's throat like tissue paper, one after another til his spine was severed. With a sudden scream, I fell to my knees, unable to comprehend what had happened. Where did those ninja stars come from? Why were my reflexes so obviously NOT my reflexes? I wasn't a killer, I was absolutely sure of that, and yet my hand had moved almost on it's own. Like someone else was in my body.
"Nice work poindexter, now let's get the fuck out of here!"
"What?" I said, confused. The voice in my head was nasty, cruel, heartless, and yet.. It was me. I could have swore I had just heard the dark half of my soul speak, and it was chilling.
Suddenly, my legs and arms went numb, and started to move. With economy and obvious skill, my body shifted to a standing position and then took off down the hall faster than I thought possible. The weakness was still in my body, and yet my legs were pumping faster than a speedy man could run.
"That's because you're much more than a speedy man. You're special, Matthew, but not special enough to warrant a second life, so if you don't mind, BREATHE FASTER!"
Worried and confused, I focused on breathing faster, letting the unknown person save my life by running me along the hall. Suddenly, we swung a hard right, and slammed through a big door into the brightest light I had ever seen. The sun was especially bright today, and for a few minutes I couldn't see. Opening my eyes some, I caught sight of a sports car with a sports bag in the back. The voice in my head started to mutter to itself, and suddenly, my legs and arms were my own. Taking a second to orient myself, I sprinted to the car, hearing the man in my head rambling on, and grabbed the wires under the wheel, jerking them around and suddenly realizing I had hotwired it.
Where the fuck did I learn to hotwire a car at?
"Don't worry about it, just drive! Gnats, gnats everywhere, eating my hamburger's asses.. Why must the gnats follow my spleen?"
Shaking my head, I spun the wheel and sped out like a bat out of hell, not sure where I was going or when I would get there, but not caring much about either. Nothing was more important than figuring out who the crazy man in my head was and why I suddenly had the ability to throw shurikens from thin air.
It's gonna be a long, long drive.
-Fin-
-Stephen
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