Embrace

I gazed at the field I stood in as the wind whipped my hair out of my face, my heart resonating through me. I closed my eyes for a moment as a memory filled me.

His smile was gentle as he gazed at me, his eyes soft with love that was meant for only my eyes to see. I lightly touched his smooth olive cheek with the back of my hand and smiled back at him.

“You’re perfect,” I whispered, hearing love spill out of those two words.

As I stared at him, his smile became placid and my heart began to pound hard.

“No,” I whispered to myself. “Please, not now.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” he looked down at me with pitch black pleading eyes. The same eyes that have haunted me these last couple of months. “I just want it to end.”

He got up with haste and as he walked, the scene before me transformed into a dark cold laboratory. I shivered, not sure if it was because I was cold or because the butterflies I once felt were now knives in the pit of my stomach.

“Marcus, what are you doing?” I asked as I got up after him.

He turned to me, his once green eyes gazing at me. “I’m setting myself free. I never should have done this. I never should have dragged you down into this hell with me. I’m sorry.”

And with that last word, he pulled open the large fire pit across the room and went in, never looking back.

I screamed and scrambled across the room, trying hopelessly to stop him. But it was too late. I knew that, even as I pushed a hand in, trying to catch some part of him to pull out. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand the flame that was trying to devour my skin, each lick making my skin bubble and sink into itself.

I pulled my hand out and clutched it to my chest and began to scream.

I didn’t know if I was screaming because I was in pain or to drown out his screams. But I screamed and screamed until finally my throat was raw with the sound. And I heard nothing else but my own realization that I felt something.

So I ran.

I opened my eyes and found that I was clutching my gloved left hand to my chest, just like I once did; just like the memory.

I looked around the field again, realizing that this was the last happy thing I did with Marcus. The thought made a lump in my throat but I swallowed it back with indignation. They would be here soon to kill me, he would be here soon. I wanted to savor the last good memory I had before I die.

But it didn’t last long. Not when I heard his laughter behind me.

“Oh, I know this memory.” He said in a taunting voice, “how sweet that you choose this as your final resting place.”

I whirled around seeing him and a group of Black Soldiers behind him.
“You’re scared,” I said with a bit of a shock and wonder laced in my voice. “General Orran, are you scared of a little girl?”

He grunted in annoyance, “Why would I be scared of something as weak as you? Your emotions are your fault. You should have stayed. We could have developed a better drug for you. Ah, well, no matter now. You will no longer be a thorn to my plans for much longer.”

I knew what was coming, I knew it even as the world around me slowed and General Orran raised a hand with something dark clutched in it.

For once in my life, I welcomed the inevitable. I welcomed it because I was tired, because a life with emotions was a hard one to live.

I thrust my arms open as if I were expecting someone to fill the air between them, and let the world around me speed up again. But as I closed my eyes I thought of something Marcus had said to me after he took the drug, “Sometimes, I want to know what it’d feel to have emotions again. I’d give up my life just for a minute of something other than nothing.”

An ear-piercing noise exploded around me and as I was knocked on my back by a force much stronger than anything I’ve felt, and I realized I was wrong to not want to feel anything.

But the darkness swallowed me before I had a chance to fight back. The last thing I heard was the laughter of someone who deemed himself victorious.