Rendering Flames

I didn’t remember how I began running, I just was suddenly. I woke up like this. I only felt fear and the mud of the wooded ground slipping through my toes as they scraped me along. I didn’t turn back because I could feel the heat of being sought after. I dodged and weaved through the thin and this trees and low laying branches. I felt something wet on my face and I reached up, wiping it from the brow of my lip to see blood run down my finger. A bloody nose but I hadn’t harmed it but it bled like I had.

I had endless breath as I kept sprinting, feeling like they would get me. And if I were to be caught, I wouldn’t be let go again. I could hear them calling my name, telling me to stop running. I didn’t want to go back, I couldn’t go back. I’d rather die right here, right in this spot of the backbone of some wooded area then face the torture again. I could practically feel the poison oozing and burning its white hot tip through my veins and the precious memories I had to call my own. The ones that I earned.

I turned my head for a spit second, seeing the dark figure tracking after me under the dark hues of a morning sky. I turned my head back and screamed, almost barreling into someone very familiar but also someone who I knew to be very dead. I wiped my tears away as I ran faster, to get away from his bloodied and disjointed figure.

“Run, Dahlia. Run or they’ll do to you what they did to me.” I saw him again, moving alongside me.

“Marcus.” My voice whispered in a hiccup of disbelief, it couldn't be real.

“Run.” His voice was in my ears now, “run!”

The shout startled me, my hands covering my ears as I stopped paying attention to where my feet were going and only to where my head was taking me. It took only a minute to get tripped up, to skid to a stop and scrap my knees up. It also took a second for the figure to grab me, lifting me up in a strong hold.

“Let go!” I screamed, kicking my feet out wildly in front of me. “You can’t take me back!”

“Dahlia, stop it!” The voice sounded familiar but I kept struggling against them. “Calm down!”

I bit down on their hand, breaking free as they jerked away. My legs shook violently as I tried to stand up straight. My head was dizzy and I looked up to the figure who had been hunting behind me. My gaze moved behind them and I saw Marcus in the distance and in a hair of clarity, I realized Marcus was as about as real as the danger I was in. I fell into the trunk of a tree, holding myself up right as I wiped the blood from around my mouth and cheeks.

“Dahlia?” The voice captured my attention and I only saw Orson, out of break and looked alarmed as hell.

“Orson,” my voice shattered into a sob. “You should leave me alone, please. I can’t go back.”

“Dahlia, you have to.” He seemed confused, reaching out to me but I backed away.

“My head can’t handle it. I’ll kill myself before I’m strapped in that goddamn chair again, Orson! You can’t do this to me!” My voice turned defensive and irrational and my head continued to spin.

“Wha—the camp, Dahlia. Please, you’re scaring the shit out of me. Let me help you.” He slowly knelt in front of me, taking the sleeve of his shirt and carefully wiping the blood from my knees.

“The camp?” I croaked as I gathered my barring, “the camp.”

“Let me help you up?” He looked afraid to do anything that would spook me again but I finally saw what had happened, what I had done. I had done specifically what I’ve been trying to keep from Orson for the last two years. I had hallucination, one that influence a nightmare.

I let him help me up, brushing his hands away as he thought I couldn’t walk stably. “I’m okay. It’s okay, now.”

I swallowed hard, nodding to myself as I started to walk ahead of him. He was quick to question what that was all about though. “What was that, Dahlia?”

“It was a nightmare, nothing more.” I didn’t want him to know about where I had come from. What would he think of me? Surely his opinion of me wouldn’t change but I didn’t want him having this leverage that could be used against himself and me.

“It isn’t hard to tell sometimes that you’re hiding something from me. I see the scratches on your arms and how your eyes are sometimes bloodshot in the morning. I know it’s sometimes. I know you and Millie both aren’t sharing something and it’s been fine, it’s your secret. But this—this can’t be swept under the rug, Dahlia.” His voice was low but pleading, “Do you not trust me? Is that why you aren’t telling whatever this is?”

I stopped and turned, wiping the slow leak of blood away from my nose again. “I trust you, Orson. It’s hard to explain though, there’s a lot that is attached with it. I just am scared of the repercussions of you finding out about this. I don’t want to lie to you either.”

“Then just tell me,” his hands rested on my shoulders, “we’ll fix it.”

I looked away from his positive smile on his face. “There is no fixing it. It is what it is.”

He then frowned, “are you sick?”

“No, that’s not it.” I looked to the ground, deciding that I just had to tell him. “Long before we ever met, I was on my own. It was a good 3-31/2 years ago maybe? I’m not sure but I was born into Kruger’s territory. I was born into that atmosphere and those beliefs that I followed for years before I realized I could think for myself. I know that I hated it and when I rebelled for my cousin, I was tortured. My memories were erased, I didn’t have any self-identity. This all started for me when I woke up alone in the middle of the woods, a black slate. Eventually I ran into Millie and the people I eventually grew to know as a family. I want to be very clear though that I am not in any part attached to the fact that I was born into that lifestyle.”

Orson had back away a few steps as I explained more and more of this to him. I told him the bigger details: the cave, the traveling, the Hanger, remembering things, and the hallucinations. I told him what I hallucinated and how those came to be. I didn’t reveal any details about Millie’s back story or who Jaden was. I wouldn’t ever tell him that if I could help it, at least not without Millie’s permission. I felt like I talked forever before I stopped to take a breather.

“I thought I was okay. I haven’t hallucinated for a long time now, I thought maybe that is how whatever that injection works. It reaches inside you and mixes every up about you and then just creeps in the corner of you head, jumping out to remind you what it can do to you as soon as you forget.”

“So that place you were talking about, that place where you didn’t want to go back? It was Kruger’s territory? Being tortured again?” I saw the same shade of pity and sympathy color his face that I had seen before enough to not provide any comfort for me anymore.

“Yes, being electrocuted again I guess. Maybe talking about all of that talking yesterday about the Sarin chemical and Kruger, it switched something on for me. I know exactly how that guy feels, I know I have to. What he was shot up with, Sarin can’t be too different on the table of what I was shot up with. I can imagine the pain he goes through and then I imagine all the others I knew he went through their pain and death because of Kruger. It became real to me again I think, it boiled over.”

“Are you okay with continuing on still? Is it going to be too familiar for you?” Orson only showed concerned at my well-being rather than my past. I knew then none of it phased his vision of me.

“God no, I wouldn’t leave you with Richie. I’ll be okay but I just hope you don’t have to see that again. I know I can get violent, usually just with myself though.”

We started walking in a silence. I didn’t say anything for a while so Orson could process this a little more. It wasn’t until we were about half way back to the camp that he said something.

“Are you telling me everything? Because I don’t want to run into something like that again without knowing what is going on.” He stopped me, a hand gripping my wrist tightly like I might run.

“Everything that is my own. It’s safe for you to know now that Millie and I both carry a lot of baggage but for now, you know everything that you can.” I slipped my hand out of his grasp and continued walking.

“I’m not okay with that.” I slowed, ready to explain again why he couldn’t know. “But I’m going to have to be. We all have our secrets.”

“Yeah.” I responded slowly, wondering then if Orson was hiding something from me that I didn’t know about. But I shook the thought off, thinking whatever it was he would tell me when it was time, just like I had told him.