This Alien Soul

Chapter 50

Amber

It had been clear that my mom and dad wanted to keep an eye on me after the treatment. Despite the late hour, mom pulled up a netflix movie and dad popped some popcorn. Considering what I had just put them through I settled in, pretending to eat despite a stomach that was protesting more and more by the second. .

"I just love this movie." My mom sighed, as the main characters on the screen rowed across a lake to feed swans before getting caught in a down pore.

"I think it's stupid." I was tempted to throw popcorn at the screen as the couple fought for no reason. "They have it so easy. There's nothing really keeping them apart but family drama."

My parents shared a worried look over their popcorn bowl.

Still I ranted on. "I mean, it's not like they're of two different species. Or that one of them, lets say, has a fated mate they are destined to be with." Though none of that really applied to Alek and I anymore, did it?

"Amber are you okay?" My mom hesitantly asked.

"I'm fine." I huffed, throwing the piece of popcorn I couldn't force myself to eat back into the bowl. Just then the couple on screen decided to make up and there was a very steamy bedroom scene that was just plain awkward to watch with your mom and dad. "I'm just tired, I'm going to hit the sack."

"Oh, are you sure?" Mom paused the movie. Freezing the screen on a very unfortunate picture of the male characters naked ass. "Do you want me to walk you up?"

"I'll be fine." I waved away their concern, not willing to admit that as I stood, black spots popped up in my vision and my head pounded harder than it ever had before.

Just wanting to collapse in my bed, I convinced myself of the power of one foot in front of the other mentality. One step at a time I made it to the main stairway. Then halfway up, before I had to stop due to the room spinning before me.

"Just breathe Amber." I coached myself out loud. "This will pass, it always does."

Only this time it didn't. The room spun around me. When I closed my eyes tight I felt myself tilting to the side and had to grab desperately at the railing to avoid falling.

Opening my eyes again I waited for the world to come into focus. Only it didn't. Everything remained black.

"Umm...Dad." I called out. I didn't want to worry them. But this had never happened before. This wasn't normal. "Dad!"

"Everything ok?" He asked from the base of the stairs. "Amber?"

"Dad, I can't see." I desperately reached forward, hoping for a hand hold to better stabilize myself and finding none. "I can't see."

"Just stay where you are. I'm coming to get you?" But he was already too late. My body stiffened, seizures wracking my brain and making my eyes roll into the back of my head.

"What's going on?" My mom's voice joined his at the bottom to the stairs, followed by. "Oh my God Tim, catch her?" As they watched my rigid body falling head first down the stairs, my mind blanking out to the pain that followed.

I thought I knew pain.  From the stabbing, radiating pain to the kind that produced a dull throb  that refused to go away. I had faced it all and lived through it.  Excelled even.

I thought I knew pain, but I was wrong.

This was a new level of  pain. A pain that was eating me up from the inside, setting every cell  on fire. I had already accepted that I  wouldn't be living through this.