Grief 7.18

  (this is from Greg's fucked up mental perspective)

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  nothing.

  then—

  everything.

  something breaking. inside, not outside. a crack, a split, a wrongness buried deep in the meat of his skull. behind his eye. inside his brain. a firework punched into his head and then lit—not sparks, not light, just the flash of something splintering apart, burning too hot to hold itself together.

  pain.

  blinding. crushing. everything wrong.

  heat. thick and pulsing, running down his face, into his mouth, his nose. hot metal flooding his tongue, suffocating, searing the back of his throat. breathing around it, through it, made something rattle in his ribs, like his whole body was shaking apart from the inside.

  his limbs—his limbs—too heavy, slow, sluggish in a way that made no sense. thick syrup clogging his muscles, tendons misfiring, signals scattering and looping back on themselves. too much. not enough. his fingers curled in against his palm, but they didn't feel like his fingers.

  dripping. warm. wrong.

  up.

  something was touching him.

  no.

  grabbing.

  no no no no no.

  voices.

  wrong.

  garbled, shredded, pitch bending up, down, sideways, warping too much, shifting between too high, too low, twisting around itself like a radio signal flickering between stations. sharp bursts, low hums, static. a chorus of not-quite-words, screaming inside his skull, bouncing off the raw edges of something that wasn't supposed to be touched.

  pressure.

  hands.

  no.

  forced down, pushed, weight sinking into his shoulders, his back.

  trapped.

  no no no no no.

  something in his chest clawed its way up his throat, the raw scrape of a snarl that never made it past his teeth. his tongue felt thick, foreign, too much blood and too much metal rolling over the taste of something deep and burnt.

  drowning.

  movement.

  his.

  not his.

  his body jerked, the motion all wrong, angles too sharp, weight shifting where it shouldn't. instincts firing off the wrong way, like his own muscles were fighting him. but he was strong. still strong. even through the static, the dragging slowness, the scrambled weight of his own limbs—he had strength.

  enough.

  enough to move.

  enough to rip free.

  the weight against him buckled.

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  figures.

  two.

  blurred, shifting, their edges bleeding into the red-black haze flooding his vision.

  one rounder, solid, wrapped in something soft, colors warping, twisting. the other lean, dark, lines too sharp beneath black fabric, angles wrong.

  they—

  their mouths moved. fast. too fast. lips pulling back, teeth flashing, words spilling too quick, crashing together, falling apart before they reached him.

  not words.

  not speaking.

  just noise.

  he blinked.

  warmth ran down his face, thick and wet, slipping over his lips, coating his tongue.

  copper. salt. wrong. wrong.

  his vision swam, the world smeared sideways, shapes dragging like someone had taken a brush and painted the light too far. lines stretched, bent, twisting where they shouldn't.

  hands.

  on him.

  too much. too close.

  run.

  he shoved.

  his arms weren't moving right—too slow, too stiff, like he was dragging them through mud. but he was strong. still strong. the pressure ripped away, weight flying off of him, bodies staggering back.

  gone. gone. gone.

  he lurched forward, legs locking, unlocking, balance half-there, half-vanishing, the world tilting on an axis he couldn't feel.

  the door—

  open. gone.

  cold slapped against him, sharp and wet in the night air, sticking to the blood slicked across his face.

  an orange sky.

  run.

  his body moved, even if his brain hadn't caught up. instincts yanked the strings, something deeper than thought, louder than pain, louder than the static screaming in his skull.

  find it. hunt it. kill it.

  something had hurt him.

  and it wasn't finished.

  his feet hit the pavement harder than they should, the force rolling up his legs, locking his spine, hammering through his bones. muscles fired wrong, steps jerky, unnatural, but even like this, he was fast.

  air howled past his ears, the world tearing at the edges, concrete splintering beneath every step. his balance lurched, tilted too hard to the right, but stopping wasn't an option.

  stopping meant dying.

  his head snapped up, something in his chest surging, instincts locking, locking, there—

  above.

  high.

  dark blue and black, barely distinct against the skyline, perched.

  watching.

  not far enough.

  a gun.

  pointed at him.

  wide eyes.

  his lips curled, breath clawing its way up his throat, sharp and ragged, too big for his lungs, too small for the hunger curdling in his ribs.

  mine.

  he moved.

  the ground shattered.