Chapter 1A Chapter by SyntheticDivine There was a sense of spinning, of
disorientation, of falling. Kaitlyn, or Kat to her friends, knew that she
wasn't really falling, yet there was a sinking feeling in the pit of her
stomach and a distorted sense of gravity. It was like the feeling you might get
in a quickly moving elevator. Her feet were steady on the ground, yet it still
felt like the world around her was falling away, and she was plummeting with
it. She couldn't think, she couldn't breathe, all she could do was ride out the
feeling and hope she landed somewhere safe. It all came to a halt quite suddenly, with
a jolt that rocked her on her heels. She was momentarily confused. She didn't
know where she was or how she got there. It took her several seconds even to
realize her eyes were closed and, quickly opening them, she found herself in a
rocky cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites jutted from the floor and ceiling
around her, almost as if she were in some kind of cave, but the walls were
spaced far enough away from each other to form a chamber of sorts. At the
middle of it, just in front of her, was a pool. A very strange pool. The water
emitted a strange light, a sort of radiance in a shifting rainbow of hues. It
was what lit the cavern enough for her to see. There was a faint hum in the distance, but
she couldn't make out what it was. Her nose was assailed by the scent of
antiseptic, the sort of chemical cleanliness one might smell in a hospital, the
lingering hints of a constantly fought battle to ward off infection. How had
she gotten to this place, and where was it? "It's going to be confusing at
first," a soft voice whispered into her ear. From where, Kaitlyn had no
idea, there was no one else in the cavern she stood in. "Some of your
memories will be fuzzy, others will be absent altogether. But you will remember
my voice. Let it guide you." "Who are you? Where are you?" Kat
demanded, her head turning this way and that as she sought the source of the
whisper. It was so soft it had to be close by, and yet the cavern around her
remained empty. "The world around you isn't
real," the voice whispered, blithely ignoring her questions. "You're
within Matthew's mind. What you're seeing and perceiving is all inside his
head. Remember why you're there." Matthew... It struck Kat then, hard and
fast. He was in a coma, the boy she loved, laying in a hospital bed in a sleep
so deep that he wouldn't open his eyes, not even for her. The doctors had said
that even though there was no lasting brain damage, the prognosis wasn't good.
He'd been in the coma more than a month, and the odds of him ever fully
recovering were getting lower by the day. But there'd been someone, someone who
said they could help. Kaitlyn tried her hardest but she couldn't remember who
it was, the name and the face evaded her, seeming just out of reach at the edge
of her memory, and the harder she tried to remember the more it faded. But
they'd told her they could give her a way in, a way into Matthew's mind. A
chance to find him, talk to him, bring him back. "Where are you? Why aren't you here
with me, helping me?" Kat demanded of the voice. It belonged to the person
who'd sent her here, she was sure of that now, but she couldn't even make out
if it was male or female. "Only one of us can go," the
voice whispered, but even though it was answering her question, the tone didn't
sound as if it was even aware that she'd asked it. "Forming and holding
the bridge between your mind and his requires focus, concentration. If I go in
myself, I can't hold the bridge for you from the inside. Either I go in, or you
do, but we can't both go. Which is it gonna be?" Before Kat could open her mouth, she heard
her own voice respond faintly in the distance. "I'll go. I love him, he
knows me. I'm the only one who can reach him," she heard herself say. And
only then did she remember saying it. This had been her choice. If only one
person could go in, she'd known it had to be her. "Matthew?" she asked softly,
staring at the walls of the cave around her, wondering if he could hear her. "You're going to have to probe into
the deepest recesses of his mind," the androgynous voice whispered in her
ear. "You're going to have to go through him, layer by layer, piece by
piece. His awareness is splintered, and he's lost inside himself, trapped in
places that seem all too real. You have to help him, to heal him. You've got to
reach the core of him and get him to focus, make him understand the truth. He
has to realize where he is, and try with everything he has to wake up. Only
then will his sleep end." "What do I do?" Kat asked, though
she got the feeling no one heard her. The voice she was hearing was a memory,
she knew. Something she'd brought with her. The person had spoken to her
before... Before she'd come here. She was remembering bits and pieces of that
conversation. "There will be a path," the voice
explained. "It could look like most anything. You have to find it. I can
only get you into the outer edges of his consciousness. Only the path can take
you deeper, into the flow of his mind, through the cores of his conscious and
subconscious. That is where he is. Once you're there, wherever his mind takes
him, you will follow." Alright, a path, she needed to find a path.
Looking around the cavern though, she quickly ran out of possibilities. There
were no openings in the walls surrounding her. Nowhere she could have entered
the chamber from, nowhere she could leave. For a second she wondered if maybe
there were hidden catches in the rock that could be pressed or manipulated to
reveal a hidden opening, but the stone looked pretty solid to her. And then the
light playing over the walls drew her eyes to it. The pool in front of her, the
one radiating the cavern's light. The bright colors it was casting off kept her
from seeing very deep beneath the surface, but from what she could see there
was no bottom to be glimpsed. At the very least the pool was four or five feet
deep, and at most... Who knew, it could go down for miles. There was no other
way out, perhaps the pool itself was the path she needed to find. She wasn't wearing anything on her feet, so
hesitantly she crept to the edge of the pool and dipped one foot a few inches
in. A pale blue color played over her skin as it submerged in the water, and
the shock of ice shot through her system. The liquid was cold, very cold. She
could literally feel it leaching the heat out through her pores. Jerking her
foot back, it came away faintly tinted, as if there'd been some kind of paint
in the water that had been dying her skin. The feeling of cold was gone,
replaced by a strong tingling sensation, as if blood circulation had been cut
off long enough to numb her foot and had only just been restored. As she
watched though, the bluish tint faded from her skin, and with it went the
tingling. For a moment Kat just stood there and
stared at the water. Was she really in Matt's mind? It all felt so real. And
why was the water so cold? Could it really be the path? A hundred worries were
cropping up in her thoughts, but before she could be overwhelmed by them the
whispering voice cut through them all, with crystal clarity. It was one
question, that seemed to focus all of her thoughts in an instant. "How
much do you love him?" Without hesitation, without a single
thought to let her worries intrude again, Kat jumped into the pool. The cold
consumed her at a frightening speed, closing over her ankles as her feet
penetrated the surface and then racing up her body as more and more of her
slipped under. There was no splash, not even a ripple. All that her eyes could
detect before they too dropped beneath the surface was the light suddenly
intensifying. And then she was completely submerged. Within a matter of seconds
the cold faded into a tingling throughout her body so intense she found herself
shaking helplessly. It wasn't water around her, not anymore. She wasn't sure
what it was, but she couldn't swim in it, or really control her movement at
all. She was falling again, faster and faster with every second that passed.
For a split second the light around her flared almost blindingly bright, and
then... Kat found herself floating. The tingling
was gone, in fact she couldn't feel much of anything at all. The light around
her had dimmed to more soother, calming hues. She could still faintly make out
the hum she'd heard in the cavern, like a cat's purr only barely close enough
for the ears to perceive. There was a faint pull on her, she was drifting
towards something, but she had no idea what. A sense of peace settled on her, a
feeling that so long as she drifted, nothing could hurt her. Images began to flash before her eyes,
images that seemed to be carried by the light, but she couldn't quite make
sense of them. A rose, it's petals dying and falling off. A bright sky seen by
someone laying on the ground and looking up, the clouds twisting into funny
shapes. A bright field where a pretty cat was being chased around by a fox. A
boy standing at the edge of a cliff, staring out into the space beyond. It was
hard for Kat to think, hard not to just relax and give into the peaceful
feeling, hard not to simply watch the images as the light carried her where it
wanted forever. But one word was fixed in her thoughts, a name her brain couldn't
let go of. "Matthew." In a way it was like the name floated out
of her and into the light that surrounded her. Like it was carried by the
peaceful feeling out into the surrounding world, where it echoed into every
corner and every cranny. And something responded, she could feel it. It was a
sense of suddenly being watched, as if she could literally feel a pair of eyes
turning towards her. "?" she felt. It wasn't a word,
it wasn't spoken. She didn't hear it with her ears. She sensed it. It was
curiosity incarnated in a single feeling, washing over her. It came from the
presence watching her, the thing out there somewhere in the light.
"?" the feeling surged at her again. A question without an asking. An
instinctual wondering. Who are you, why are you here, all said without words,
but instead simply felt. She didn't know how to respond, how to even
form an answer. "Matthew," the thought seemed to float from her
again, even without her realizing it. But it seemed answer enough. The presence
caught the feeling, touched and tasted and saw and heard it all at the time.
And it responded to it. Kat felt a gentle warmth surrounding her entire body, a
caress that ran from the tip of her toes to the end of every strand of her
hair. More images began flowing before her eyes,
moving within the light, getting closer and closer. But these were more
familiar. It was like a slide show running at high speed, her at thirteen
sitting on her bed talking to a thirteen year old boy who was listening attentively.
Her at fourteen at a fairgrounds as the same boy wiped a trace of ice cream
from the tip of her nose, a teasing grin on his face. Her at fifteen crying in
the boy's arms after her first serious long-term boyfriend had broken up with
her, the boy's eyes angry yet comforting, protective but somehow kind all at
the same time. Her at seventeen, doing homework with the boy glancing over her
shoulder at the paper, pointing out a mistake and then just laughing when she
playfully threw her book at him. There were so many images moving so fast that
she couldn't keep up with them, just pick out a few here and there as they all
rushed past. Yet they kept moving closer and closer to her, swelling in her
vision, until suddenly there was nothing else, there was no light, there was
only the image. ----- Kat was twenty and at a college party with
her best friend Matt. They'd only been friends since they were thirteen, but
sometimes it seemed like forever. She was closer to him than she'd ever been
with any of her girlfriends. He understood her in a way they never had. He knew
her so well he could even finish her sentences sometimes. They had the same
tastes, liked the same music, books, movies. If one of them liked something, it
had become only natural for them to immediately share it with the other, as it
was a near certainty they would like it just as much. In fact, though they'd
went to school together for years, they'd never really talked until they ran
into each other in the same isle of a bookstore, looking for the same book. It
had sparked a conversation that had led them to becoming fast friends. Their
senses of humor were nearly identical. They could always trust in there being
at least one person who'd enjoy their jokes. She couldn't imagine there being
anything that she couldn't talk to him about, and she knew he'd always listen,
never judging her or rejecting her no matter what she told him. She literally
felt like she could go out and kill someone and then tell Matt about it and
he'd simply accept it and offer to help her dispose of the body so she wouldn't
get caught. Not that she could ever bring herself to kill anyone, but their
friendship was that strong. She knew he'd help her through anything, and
nothing she could do could shake that. Several of their friends had openly
wondered why they'd didn't go out, but it had never been like that between
them. Kat had a thing for bad boys, and Matt... Well, Matt was the kind of nice
guy who tended to feel almost like a little brother of sorts. He was definitely
cute, but not in the smoking hot kind of way that made you want to jump him or
melt on the spot. But rather the kind of cute you got from stuffed animals that
you found adorable. The kind of cute that made you "awww" and want to
cuddle something. Not that he looked like a stuffed animal. He was fit, but not
muscley. It's just there was an innocence about him, a sweetness to his light
brown hair and warm grey eyes that made it hard to imagine him hurting a fly.
The kind of boy who was so far from causing trouble that you felt you'd be
shocked to see him sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar. Even his personality
and mannerisms were cute. Enough so that there'd been a few times over the
course of their friendship that she'd made him play the role of her stuffed
animal for a day. He'd been a good sport about it, letting her poke and prod
and pet and snuggle him to her heart's content without saying a peep. Secretly
she thought he kinda liked it, and she had to admit she got a little thrill out
of the sense that she could do most anything to him that she liked and he'd
probably let her. In terms of attraction though he'd never
been her type, and she'd just never really thought of him that way. He was a
great guy, the kind of guy she was sure would make some girl really happy some
day, which she often told him. She'd tried to be his wingwoman of sorts, set
him up a few times, tried to help him find some nice girl to settle down with
and make deliriously happy, but it hadn't done much good. He'd only had a few
real girlfriends over the course of their friendship, and she had no idea why.
He was really good looking in his own way, and she was sure no one would make a
sweeter boyfriend, he just never seemed to find the right girl to connect with.
There were even times she'd told him she wished she could meet a guy like him.
Most of the guys she dated wound up being a******s in the end. In fact, she'd
broken up with the last one just a few days before when she'd found out he was
cheating on her. That's why she'd dragged Matt with her to this party. She
wanted to drown away her sorrows, to have some fun and forget the fact that she
couldn't meet a decent guy to save her life. At the moment, Kat was a little drunk.
Alright, she was downright plastered. She just didn't get it. She was pretty,
she could be downright hot if she wanted to be. And it wasn't like she wasn't
willing to be adventurous in the bedroom. What in the hell had made her last
couple boyfriends feel like they needed to mess around with other girls? What
did they want that she hadn't been perfectly willing to provide? And that was when she spotted Matt leaning
against a wall, being flirted with by some sorority girl who was in a couple of
Kat's classes. She wasn't quite sure what happened to her at that moment. She
just knew that Matt was supposed to be with a nice girl, a girl who'd treat him
right and treasure his sweetness, a girl like... Like her. Not some big
breasted blonde blue-eyed bimbo who looked nothing like Kat's slim dark haired
dark eyed and more moderate breasted figure. He'd be miserable with some ditsy
sorority chick who wouldn't get the gentle wit behind his jokes, who wouldn't
see how intelligent and insightful he could be. Some big titted s**t who'd bang
him a few times and then get bored and leave him broken hearted, without ever
appreciating how caring he could be. He deserved better. Just the sight of the girl, so opposite
from herself, flirting with Matt was like nails on a chalkboard for her. She
felt something she'd never felt towards him before. Wildly and insanely
possessive. Jealous to an extreme. She didn't know if it was the alcohol or
what, but at the moment she wasn't thinking and didn't care. She stalked clear
across the room, ignoring the noise of surprise and frustration the blonde made
when she cut her off and pushed past her. Then, with the blonde watching
dumbfounded and Matt looking confused, she went up on her tiptoes and kissed
him. She could feel his shock as her lips met his, could feel the tension in
his body as she pressed against him. She didn't know what she was doing, didn't
think about what it might do to their friendship, she was acting on pure
instinct. His lips were soft and warm against hers as her hands slid around his
neck and up through the hair along the back of his head, her fingers brushing
gently through it as she held her lips gently but firmly against his. Several
seconds passed that way before she finally pulled her head away with a soft
smooching sound as their lips parted. As she found her eyes locked on his, his
gaze somehow confused and wondrous at the same time, all she could find herself
thinking was... 'Why not me? Why can't I be the one he makes happy? Why can't
it be me?'. Maybe there wasn't some magnetic pull between them, but he was the
most amazing guy she'd ever known. She couldn't imagine herself being as close
to someone else as she was to him. She didn't want him flirting and being sweet
to some other girl while she was stuck with guys who treated her like s**t. She
wanted... The kind of relationship she'd always managed some other girl would
have with him. She wanted it for herself. Yet as she leaned in to kiss him a second
time, she found his hands on her shoulders stopping her, holding her back.
"Kat," he whispered, a mix of emotions racing through his expression
so fast she couldn't read them all. "You're drunk. I'm not... I'm not, I'm
not some rebound. You don't want this, not really. Let's just... Let's get you
home," he muttered, the annoyed blonde nearby forgotten as he wrapped one
arm around her shoulder and guided her towards the door. Kat didn't know how to feel. She was too
numb to feel rejected, too humiliated to feel hurt. Did he not want her? Was
that girl inside really what he wanted? Had she just ruined everything?
Suddenly she felt dizzy, and it seemed like the alcohol was starting to make
her feel sick. Matt didn't say anything else, he just carefully guided her to
his car and then drove her home in silence. --- Kat walked into the door of Matt's
apartment the next afternoon, luckily hangover free. It was a small place, but
cozy. She had a key, she'd always had one, ever since the day he moved in.
They'd never thought twice about her being able to walk right in whenever she
wanted. She'd been thinking all morning. She'd been unable to do anything else
but think, in fact. She'd made up her mind about something, and though she felt
more scared than perhaps she'd ever been before in her life, she was also
determined. As she quietly closed the door behind her,
she made out the gentle strains of music drifting from the bedroom. Matt played
guitar. He was an amazing player, though he'd never joined any sort of band.
She knew of at least four different offers he'd gotten from local groups
looking for a guitarist, but he'd never once accepted. He didn't play for the
music, he'd always told her. Then he'd always point to an artist they both
really enjoyed the songs of. Buckethead. 'It's not about fame or recognition,'
he'd tell her. 'It's not even about playing for the music itself. It's about
taking raw emotion and turning it into sound, sound you can recognize, sound
you can in turn feel. How can you listen to songs like Whitewash, or Machete,
or Broken Mirror, or Soothsayer, and not feel something? I've got so much
emotion locked up inside, Kat. Sometimes I just need to play, because I just
need to take all that emotion and turn it into sound, so I can finally let go
instead of keeping it bottled up.' He wasn't wrong. She always felt something
when he played. He didn't have any specific songs. He never played the same
thing twice. He said he'd just lose himself in his feelings, and the music
would come to him, all he had to do was play it. There were no lyrics, just
notes of joy or pain, sadness or hope. It was haunting, the way he played, but
you were always left wanting more. Stepping into the bedroom doorway, she saw
him seated cross-legged on his bed, the guitar on his lap, his eyes closed as
his fingers moved deftly and artfully over the strings. Closing her eyes as
well, Kat just listened for awhile, wanting to feel what he felt. Above
everything else, what the music stirred in her was desire, but beneath that,
fear. Like the anticipation of loss looming on the horizon. She was only
brought to herself when the music suddenly faltered to a halt, and she opened
her eyes to find Matt staring at her. It was an awkward moment, but Matt got past
it first, gently clearing his throat before speaking. "If this is about
last night, it's ok. You were drunk, and after what Zack did to you... I mean,
I understand. It's no big deal." She could read his expression clearly. He
was giving her an out. If she'd made a mistake, one drunken mistake in the heat
of the moment, she could make it disappear, pretend it never happened.
Everything could go back to the way it had been. She could safely slot him once
more back into the role of friend, and he'd accept it without a word. If that
was what she wanted. Stepping to the side of his bed, Kat didn't
say a thing, she just leaned over and kissed him. And this time he kissed her
back. Their lips moved softly together, the warmth of it sending tingles racing
through her body. And somehow, in that moment, it felt right, the way nothing
ever had before. The kind of right that made the rest of the world fade away,
that made her lose herself in the sensation of his lips against hers, that left
her absolutely certain that this was how it was supposed to be. This time when she pulled away, there was
no confusion in his expression. There was fear, but longing as well. Longing
more intense than anything she'd ever seen in him. He reached out to lay the
guitar down beside the bed, and then she didn't know if she was pushing him
down onto the covers, or he was pulling her down on top of him, but their lips
were together again and nothing else mattered. --- Kat basked in the memory of that day. From
knowing him as a nice guy for so long, she'd almost expected him to be capable
of nothing but making love. But he'd surprised her that first time with a
naughty, kinky side, and a passion as intense and fiery as her own. The sex had
been amazing, as had been the first time he truly made love to her, but that
had come later. She'd been friends with him for so long, yet there'd still been
so many pleasant surprises in him left for her to find. Which is part of what
it had made it so difficult that... The presence in the light seemed to follow
her train of thoughts. The flow of images before her eyes accelerated, racing
through time towards their conclusion. And then they both saw and sensed it
coming, the pain. And suddenly the images vanished, she could feel the presence
pulling away from her. "Matthew," the thought
instinctively floated out of her towards it. She felt like she was trying to
reach out to him. But the presence fled from her, and the lights around her
began to darken. The faint hum in the distance was beginning to turn into a
rumble, and Kaitlyn felt herself being drawn toward something, faster and
faster. It was where the presence had gone, as if its movement had created a
vacuum that was drawing everything in after it, and she was being pulled along
by its wake. She saw something in the distance, but she
couldn't quite make out what it was, it seemed like another image but there was
something different about it. She was flying towards it at high speed, helpless
to resist the current dragging her along. Just when it seemed like she would
crash headlong into it, the lights around her suddenly vanished, and Kat once
more felt herself falling. © 2012 SyntheticDivineFeatured Review
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