I can feel the pain starting in my legs. Feeling returning from a cold nothingness. How did I get here? Where is here? Those thoughts, along with thousands of others, juggle through my mind. A sharp, searing pain shoots up my leg, attacking my brain with an electrical hammer. Hammering the neurons that make me tick, and those, in turn, screaming at me, “your leg, check your damn leg.” Yes, well, thank you very much, I am aware. Can you shut up now? It is like an annoying child screaming that it wants something again and again.

The numbness is thawing now, a deadness returning to life. I can feel pain all over my body. Whatever has me trapped in this paralysis is loosening its grip, a rope starting to unwind, a spring uncoiling. With the unravelling comes more pain, the burning agony of pain leaping from one cell to the next en-route to my head. Then darkness engulfs me, taking hold. My body rejecting the light of the room, the light of life and switching itself off, a brain and body that says “no more.”

Life is hard, and life is tough. Life is Rocky Balboa, you knock it down, and it just gets back up. You hammer it as hard as you can, and it just laughs and says, “is that the best you’ve got?” When you are ready to give in, life won’t let you. It kicks back and stands on its feet, staring you down.

My eyes open once more. The pain is still there, drilling away. My brain has compartmentalised it. Hiding the worse at the back of a mental cupboard in the deepest darkest recesses of the mind. A ticking bomb that will explode, but for now, I have time. I reach forward, trying to pull myself up to my feet. I hear, hear rather than feel at first, the scraping of my leg on the ground. The pain starts to flow as I look down at my leg. It is tolerable, just. A pain that before today I would have thought unimaginable, but now, not the worse I have experienced. Adrenaline? Brainpower? I don’t care what is holding it back. I just do not want it to stop.

My leg! Jesus fucking Christ, what have I done to my leg! I can see the bone sticking through, the bone on my leg! Fuck, fuck. Fucking hell, it was my bone, my bone scraping, that is what I heard! Shit, what… I notice two things, two things at once. The first seems unimportant now. My leg has a tourniquet on it. Someone has wrapped and tied what looks like a shirt sleeve around the top of my leg. It is the second thing that concerns me. It is the second thing that makes my mind wander to places I do not want. I saw movement.

The corner of my eye, that is where I saw it first. Too large to be a rat or a mouse, much larger than any domestic animal. This is a human watching over me, a guardian angel? The one whose tourniquet may have saved my leg. I think about calling out, screaming “help me,” but something stops me. An inkling in my mind, the warning centre in my brain flashing red. What if… What if this is the guy that put me here? What if they are not here to help? What if they mean me harm?

They move slightly, and now I can see! It is not a man. It is a woman! They must be here to help. How could a woman have done this? Then she steps forward into the light, coming from out of the shadows. This is not a woman, nor is it a man. This is something else, something unnatural. Her teeth are sharpened to a point, and I see them as she smiles. A view from the very corner of my eye. My head stays lying against the cold stone floor. A grin that is as strangely alluring as it is disconcerting. I feel she can sense this, and a part of my brain wants to submit to her. The other part screams for escape. It cries for a way out from this.

Red dolly shoes walk over, the two-inch heels clipping and clopping on the ground. I am trying to concentrate on anything but the face. That enticing, alluring, but wicked face, I can feel it watching me squirm. Feel? No, that is the wrong word. Do I have a seventh sense kicking in? I can sense her looking and watching, enjoying my struggle. Her piercing eyes breaking through my skull and peeking into my brain, decoding the electrical signal and telling her my deepest thoughts. Drilling through my cranium and feeding on my feelings, gorging on my emotions. One red shoe lifts from the ground, out of sight.

I have to look, I have to know. I just can’t help myself. I lift and turn my head. It sticks to the floor at first. The coolness of the stone holding my skin tight. Pain rakes down my spine and then races back again. Curiosity didn’t kill the man. No, curiosity broke the man’s nose. First, my nose when the shoe made contact, and then my head as it hit the ground. Nose shattering into a thousand pieces, each trying to break the skin and jump loose. My head smashed into the floor with the force of a boxers punch. I should have been out cold, I should have been back dreaming away the pain, but I withstood it. My body refusing to do what I willed it. The brain is willing, the body not so much. I wanted to go; my mind was made up. My time had come.

Quick as a flash, faster than any human, she is atop of me. Spinning and then pinning me down, my face is pushed back against the floor. Nose, blood, gristle and stone becoming one. She grabs at my arms, wrenching them backwards, pulling them as she does so. Pain heaves through every molecule of my being. There is no fight for life left in me. I want this to be over. I want this to end now. This is a fight for death. A longing for the end. A tie-wrap, I feel it as she slips it over my hands and pulls it tight when it reaches my wrists. I am a modern version of hogtied. I can only await the apple in my mouth, the finishing touches…

I feel as the teeth plunge into my neck. It is painless. Unexpectedly painless. Comfort floods my veins and sadness throughout my mind. I am dying. I know that I am dying, but there is an effortless relief. I have to do nothing. I just lie here and let her take what she needs. I can feel the blood of life being drained, but I do not mind; if anything, it is rather pleasant.

I think I shall sleep now. Finally, my brain and body are working as one. I just want to fade away out of it all and sleep.