When You Wake Up

Fire makes my heart race.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Pounding like war drums inside of my head.

I can feel the pulse of my heart straining herself to her limit, sending gallons of blood running in my veins.

Before my shadowed eyes is a single match, held upright like a soldier by my steady hand. My soldier holds the heat of the Sun on his shoulders - Such an unbearable burden.

Shoot him down and watch him fall.

Now.

The second I let go everything is out of my control. Wild, untamed, like an unshackled beast.

Just what I wanted.

In all its simple beauty my match dives, plunging through a lifetime. Years and years and years of my life.

Pain. Despair. Grief. Agony. Betrayal.

Nothing.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Time drags on and I wait for a million years. Waiting for my life to end, waiting for my life to begin.

So this is what it feels like to stand on the edge? To fall. This sweet numbness is something to be savored. It's inhuman but it makes a pleasant change.

Three... Two... One...

With a wrath that would shame Lucifer himself the fire rushes up, reaching. Reaching for the sky I cannot see. Stretching for something more. A small smile plays on my lips and my dead eyes soften. Such delicacy in such violence. Such love in such hate. This raw brutality is the purest ecstasy for a soul long gone.

Why does time move so slowly here? Too slow. Quicker, quicker, quicker.

Each picture, each memory, catching alight. Every day of my life burning down in turn.

My mother tucking me in at night, her gentle tones whispering stories that I wanted so badly to be true. My father's voice, all velvet and coffee, telling me that one day I'll achieve my dreams.

You, then you, then you, until you're all gone. Gone, gone, gone.

''Take me with you.'' I plead.

Well here you go, Daddy. Are you proud? Are you ashamed? This is my dream and I relive it every time I close my eyes. This is my story now.

My mind breaks free of its restraints as I imagine the dancing flames caressing my flesh, pirouetting around my body. Leaping, twisting, turning. Dance with me.

And then I'm spinning. Spinning around and around and around until everything I know is a chaotic blur of scarlet. My arms stretch up above my head, grasping for something I can't quite reach. What I wouldn't give to find out what it was...

BANG!

I tumble to the floor, a fawn caught of balance in the freshness of his first Spring. I can feel the floor beneath me raging with a dizzying inferno. But I feel cold, freezing from the inside out, heart and lungs transforming to ice. How peculiar. How impossible.

I try to open my eyes but blackness is all I see. Black, angry clouds of smoke billowing around me like toxic fumes. Poison seeping as quiet as an assassin. Oh, how I welcome you, my friend. This darkness is peaceful; being blind to the reality that confronts me.

Never ending nothingness. Time and space stretched out forever before me. So many wasted years. A blank void of what should have been a life painted with vibrant colors.

With this blackness, this coldness, this numbness, comes a shield against the pain. Suddenly I'm laughing, humorless. I can feel a tingling sensation where the lips of the flames lick at my skin. This is meant to hurt? Is this some kind of sick joke? I feel nothing at all, not even fear. I laugh again.

I'm not scared!

I'm not scared!

I'm not afraid of dying. I'm only afraid of living.

Glinting like a million bullets the flames consume and devour, embracing everything in their path.

I'm here. I'm here. Look here!

''Rot me.'' I demand. Heck, the decaying remains of what could have been would be more human that what I've become now. This being is just a shell to decay, and once I'm dead I'll never even remember who I should have been.

What does it really mean anyway - To be dead? Is being dead when your heart stops, when you'll never again fill your lungs with life? Or is being dead when you forget how to live?

I'm already dead, this is just a formality.

With my eyes closed to the world I sink into the purest oblivion while my paper world burns down. If you looked at me right now, an angel peeking down from Heaven, I could have just been sleeping, dreaming of an unreality that could never exist. Only in story books, right Mother?

''Hush now, child, you'll feel better when you wake up.''

Author's Note

This is the first piece of writing I've produced in a very long time so I tried to keep it as short as possible. My style of writing tends to be short extracts of developed emotion rather than actual story, so bare in mind that action wasn't what I was aiming for. My aim was to capture the emotion.

Reviews

[CitrtgoW8P]

This was really amazing. The way you conveyed the emotions in this piece was very effective, and very evoking. I love this type of writing where emotion presides over storyline.

[...]

I really enjoyed this story, amazing detail and imagery.
So very nicely done, hope to read more writes from you.

[TWISTED NIGHTMARE]

i enjoyed this piece...i could tell you put a lot of emotion into it...i could feel the pain and the wickedness behind it but i could also picture it ...it flowed wonderfully and was really captivating...beautiful piece keep writing