The Awakening

The chapters following this prelude will all take place in the weeks leading up to this event. Just wanted to get pen to paper

 Nothing seemed real.  The walls warped in and out as if they weren't made from cement and sweat.  Spots on the floor fell from their station into the abyss below, with no ground to support it.  Chairs and tables hung in the air, some quiet and stationary, while other hurled themselves whichever way they could.  All was quiet, even through the chaos of the transformation of reality as anyone knew it.  As the boy knew it.

    Screams pierced the silence like a harpoon through a still pond.  Nurses burst through a door not far down the hall from the ICU waiting room where the boy was seated.  The taller one ran for the exit at the other end,and as she reached for the handle to the emergency exit, the ground ripped open, and she dissapeared into the silence of whatever awaited her below.  The shorter lady turned towards the waiting room,   and without hesitation, darted blindly past the boy.  She didn't make it five feet past him when the wall to her right curled from it's root to meet it's opposite, forming an impassable gate, trapping her between it and the hole that had swallowed her colleague whole.

    Then there was a voice.  "How is she?" the voice requested in a surprisingly calm manner, as if the very world itself wasn't collapsing around them.  The nurse turned around, confused at first, but then she remembered a small figure she had caught out of the corner of her eye during her attempted escape.  And she remembered her patient, and her patient's son.  She ran back to the waiting room, and kneeled in front of the child and taking his hand.  "Are you okay?  Are you hurt?" She rambled, looking the boy over and trying to assess his health.  That's when she realized that the hand she held was was wet.  She took a moment from her rampant inquiries to look down at the hand she clutched, and her face twisted in horror. 

    A pool a crimson gathered below her feet, slowly dripping from the union of their hands, and she pulled away in shock.  As she released the boy's grip, a torrent of blood fell from his palm.  She looked at the boy, and his face showed no emotion.  No pain, or even a hint of discomfort showed on his complexion, in spite of the severe loss of blood.  She grabbed his hand again, this time with caution and care, gently bending his wrist and pointing the palm upwards, and she let out a sharp gasp.  She was looking for a gash in the skin, some explanation to the boy's injury, but she could find none, because there was no skin.  There was only muscle and blood.  The boy jerked his hand back, and stared back deeply into the nurse's eyes.  "My mother, how is she?"

    The nurse remembered the patient's room that her and her co-worker had fled from.  She was covering the lady's face when the windows had burst from their frame and hung threateningly in the air, and the world outside dissapeared into darkness.  The boy's mother..  "There was nothing we could do, I'm sorry."  The boy's expression did not change.  "But we have to get you out of here!  We have to find an escape!"  The boy gently moved his bloodied hand to her cheek, as if to reassure her that everything would be okay.  As his splayed palm touched her cheek, the wall's heaving and twisting gave way, and the structure around them collapsed.  The ceiling broke away, but did not fall, instead it floated away in bits into the darkness of the sky above.  The walls fell where they stood, and the nurse, with tears in her eyes and fear on her face, started to feel a stinging sensation where the boy had placed his hand.  She pulled back, and paced her own hand to her cheek.  She could feel the blood, but as she touched, the stinging grew worse.  Then she realized the boys hand wasn't bloody, anymore.   The blood on her face was her own.  There was no skin, only tissue and muscle, no longer protected from the outside environment.  She looked at the boy in horror, as he stood up to tower above the kneeling nurse, watching more of her skin roll away and fall lifelessly to what was left of the floor around them.  "Please help me!  Do something!" She begged as her whole body began to burn intensely to the point where she could only lay on the ground, as she was riddled in too much pain to make any kind of movement a possibility.  The boy replied softly before turning to walk away. "There's nothing I can do, I'm sorry."

Author's Note

A rough draft. It might ramble in parts. Hoping for lots of criticism, so let me have it!

Reviews

[Nusquam Esse]

Main advice would be to study up on semi-colons. There are a few typos here and there, but for the most part the word choice is consistent. I recommend proofreading it a few times, and if needed, to get someone to spell-check it. Let me know if you need someone to do so, because I can do a more thorough analysis if you want. Will have to see more chapters before I can comment much on the story itself, although this seems to be a good intro.

[James Reaser]

The spelling is a secondary concern. At some point, I'll go through and clean it up. My punctuation does need work, though. Hoping to put up the first chapter soon. I need to stop procrastinating.