She is Fatal to Death (Standalone Story)

Chapter 4 (Too Late to Plead)

Renata

          She had no idea where she was. She felt weightless, floating in a sea of dreamy blue. Maybe she was sleeping. That would help clear up the fog in her mind. Her eyes blinked over and over, trying to make out anything past the one singular color encompassing her vision.

          Where am I?

          No one or nothing answered Renata. She was cold. Very cold. Everything was wrong. She wasn't supposed to be there, a place outside of the world. Not heaven. Not earth. Not hell. Nowhere. Everywhere. Where echos ended. Where the end began.

          This couldn't be it.

          A warm feeling began to pull at Renata, starting at the tips of her toes and fingers, spreading upward, sinking into her with searing hooks. She wanted to scream, to make any kind of noise. She wanted to struggle, to run away. She was unable to do anything. There was nothing worse than the state of helplessness, enduring horrible torture through it all.

          As it continued its path through her body, she made out a shape before her. It was a shadow of a man, only the outline. Something about him terrified her worse than the sensation running through her. He became bigger and bigger, taking up the blue, wiping it out, extinguishing it like she had been moments ago.

          Who are you? It wasn't quite like a voice that entered her mind, but simply a message she understood with the kind of ease that was pointless to question.

          I'm no one. Renata wasn't speaking out loud either, but she was able to communicate all the same.

          Then, she was sinking and being elevated simultaneously, pulled apart and being put right back together.

          Stop. Stop!

          We shall see if you are no one, Ms. Jiménez.

          Please, just leave me alone.

          It was too late to plead...

          BOOM!

          Renata came gasping awake. Someone was on top of her, but they jumped just as she did. Once she recognized Diamond's fruity perfume, Renata began to sob, clinging onto her best friend with a fierce grip—not in a quiet, contained manner but without any kind of regard for how she looked or sounded. The cries burst out of her, from relief in being alive and horror at how close she'd come to death, how she touched it and felt the coldness in her still.

          "Please," Renata begged, "don't let me go." It appeared her pleading had only just begun. The real question was how much more of it was there left to do?

          Diamond was crying too, as incoherent as Renata. "How are you here? You were gone, Ren, I swear to God you were gone. We gotta get you some help." She felt as Diamond lifted her torn-up and blood-soaked shirt. "What the fuck. How—It's scarred over—what the fuck is going on?"

          Renata looked around and realized they were in the hallway of her apartment floor, right by the elevator. While she knew she didn't necessarily have the straightest line of thought, the instinct to be within her walls of comfort instead of some numb, unfeeling hospital room was overwhelming. "Get me inside."

          "Fuck that, we're going to a hospital." Diamond couldn't have made her objection anymore clear. Renata couldn't imagine what was going through Diamond's mind, but she would not concede.

          "Please, just get me inside." She was already trying to sit up, in spite of it causing all kind of discomfort. Her efforts to conceal that pain failed, especially when being watched so closely.