The One That Comes Before by Livia Llewellyn

Author:Livia Llewellyn [Llewellyn, Livia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: INDEPENDENT LEGIONS PUBLISHING
Published: 2017-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

Tenebrosus

Eventually, the motes of glowing dust that made up those three small words float apart, settle in the corners of the elevator like the bioluminescent afterglow of a low tide. The building shakes steadily, every now and then giving out an extra hard shudder that sends the elevator rocking back and forth. Alex closes her eyes. Her pinned arm and hand are numb, all the nerves long dead. At some point, she hears the clink of the bullets hitting the floor, one after the other, as her body finishes pushing them out. There’s a part of her that feels relief, but it’s a million miles beneath her surface, and quickly fades as the excruciating pain in her right wrist takes over in its place. Her aching body moves back and forth between tortured wakefulness and a deliciously languid landscape of fever dreams. The shimmering words become the high towers of a far-off city trapped in an endless night; and she lies at the edge of a great precipice, unable to travel to her final destination, unable to do anything except watch the city burn and glow with power and life while she can only cower at a great distance, alone and eternally separate. Her hand is stretched out to it, to the place she calls home, the quiet sun-drenched rooms, the soft carpets and couch, the jangle of the chimes brushing the edges of the open windows. She’s reaching out, but there’s so much pain—too much, it’s like her bones are breaking over and over again. Alex cries out, her tears mingle with the sweat drenching her face, and a fear-fueled thought sluggishly surfaces as she realizes what’s happening: her body is repairing itself once again. The clasp is moving through her wrist, the bones and tendons and muscles breaking down and pushing it through, centimeter by centimeter.

A drowsy sensation of victory washes over her. Alex slides down the wall onto the floor, her entire body limp with relief. Ignoring her arm, now furiously alternating between unendurable pain and blood-drained numbness, she feels unconsciousness stealing over her, righteous and deep.

And then, for a wonderful too-short while, there is nothing—no pain, no fear, not even the dark.

She wakes on her back, cradling her left arm across her stomach. The still-trembling elevator is now pitch black: the phosphorous words have died out. All sense of time has left her—whether it is still afternoon or evening, she has no way of knowing. Tentatively, she runs her fingers over her wrist. The flesh is tender and swollen, and she can make out the deep furrows on both sides of the wrist where the metal was extruded. But her fingers detect the semi-soft beginnings of scabs starting to form over the pulpy wounds. She’s still drunk, but her body is healing in its own unfathomable way.

After some rather heated inner debate, Alex rises shakily to her feet, feels her way to a corner of the elevator opposite the metal gate, and urinates. The act thoroughly disgusts her, but she doesn’t have a choice—the man left her no better off than a caged animal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.