Scarce

My fingernails were digging deep into the cold white tiles of the floor. I’m breathing, but just barely. The air had a bitter coldness to it, that my hair had grown immune to. Frost collected at the bottoms of the strands and weighed down, battling with gravity. With my bare thighs pressed against the silvery expanse of the room, I sat. And sat. And sat. It seemed as though the world had stopped, and ceased to exist, as I continued to do nothing but waste away and stare at the empty wall in front of me. It was an unwavering trance that I continued to drift into, until a small, barely audible voice echoed inside of me.

“Tilly… w… where… you…”

I felt my throat close up and my fingertips go numb. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry. The heaviness did not falter.

“…g… contact… he said…”

His voice slipped in and out of my senses, falling into the pattern of my heartbeat. In and out, in and out. It was loud at first – he was excited about something. But then his voice goes soft, and for a moment, my mind was blank again.

“Tilly!” he suddenly shouted, and in the nooks of my mind, I could hear his laughter bouncing in amusement, as if he’d caught me not paying attention.

“I heard you,” I replied, before repeating it again, just for good measures. “I heard you.”