SquidgeWorld Archive

"ADRIFT"
A "Harsh Realm" Song-fic
Written by Alison M. DOBELL
 

"ONE" (song by Metallica)
I Can't Remember Anything
Can't tell if this is True or Dream
Deep Down Inside I feel the Scream...

He hurt on so many levels. Lost in some dark fathomless pit from which there was no escape, like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Trying to remember who he was. What had happened. Why he was here. Where, in fact, here was. He surfaced slowly, reluctantly enduring consciousness because he could not escape it. Awareness of identity leaked through to him slowly, like life being drip fed back into him when all he wanted was to die. For it to end. He could not reach the controls. Life support somehow laughed back at him like a cruel oxymoron. For all the agony of the flesh the mental pain hurt most of all.

It was slick and sticky at the same time, an odd contradiction that described it perfectly. The information meant nothing to him. He was not sure whether his thinking had paused or whether he had forgotten what was passing through that damaged portal where his brain had once ruled supreme. So much of his life was now blind confusion, images of a life that was no longer his with occasional flashes of knowing and awareness taking the dull edge away so he could feel the full force of suffering. Pain prodded his fragmented universe into some kind of cohesive order torturing him with lost purpose. Something he would have clung to if he could only make sense of it. Bright pain shot through him, a laser of light piercing his darkness and forcing him to rise up from the cool dark depths where he preferred to hide. Where he was safe. Something was summoning him, dragging him reluctantly back towards the light. The source of all pain. Memories brightened into focus. Love. Companionship. Need. Loneliness. Compassion. As he recognised
them anger flared, burned and scarred him anew. Bitterness. Sorrow. Fury. Then his emotions popped like a balloon with nothing to sustain them like the tears he could not cry. A dull ache in the pit of his soul. An echo to his madness.

Silence pressed down on him as if it held all the answers but was sworn to secrecy. It was as complex as it was empty. In a rare moment of lucidity he broke the surface of his personal hell, the nightmare of being defining the walls of his prison.

This Terrible Silence Stops Me
Now That The War is Through With Me

Gradually he became aware of his flesh. Confining him. Defining him. Yet no closer to who he was. He was not frightened. He was puzzled. Light now filtered slowly through his left eye leaving his body blind. Tempting him with the promise of discovering something useful. Something that God willing would not be another lie. He began to remember and his confusion turned to anger.

I'm Waking up I Can Not See
That There is Not Much Left of Me

Something hovered on the brink of his consciousness. It took forever for it to penetrate that he was hearing a human voice. A low oddly melodic and sorrowful sound that had nothing whatever to do with emotion. Female. Confident yet cautious. There was something stealthy about it as if the sounds had been stolen from someone else and to increase the volume would spell detection. No thief wanted to be caught. He tried to frown but the expression was beyond his imprisoned flesh, frozen as he was at the moment of his greatest agony. The moment when life had defeated him. A name surfaced. Inga. It was Inga. Why had she woken him? What new torment had she devised? He had loved her once. That was funny only it hurt too much to laugh, the humour beyond him. The memory returned to him now, bright images dazzling him with the sharpness of betrayal. She had used him and he had been a willing accomplice to the altar of her ambitions, not realising that he would be the ultimate sacrifice. Blood on stone. Fire on Ice. He should have known that any hope of love would be doomed from the start, strangled at its' inception. It hurt so much because he had bought into the Dream she held before him, a tantalising image of everything his heart and soul had ever wanted. A vision so perfect it had blinded him. The whole fairytale disgusted him now. A trick. A massive sleight of hand exposing his weaknesses to her so she could exploit him. Turning the knife in his heart as she kissed him, opening the door to his destruction as they made love. A passionless bitch with a flare for deceit. Her allure was fatal. He gasped involuntarily.

Nothing is Real but Pain Now

Had she spoken? Had he? Feeling flooded into him like a tidal wave, washing pain through his system and flushing his arteries and veins with a rush of dark emotions. Traps for the heart and mind strewn upon its' waters to tempt the unwary. His thick flesh felt only the ghost of sensations tricking him for a moment into believing himself whole until realisation reflected the living horror back at him. No one could help him now but God. The Architect of the Universe. If He truly existed let him wake, please God, in any world but this one.

Hold My Breath as I Wish For Death
Oh Please God, Help Me

Something alien touched him as words stroked his eardrums, raising vibrations that reverberated through both body and mind. Bringing him inexorably into the world of the Damned. But it was not the Hand of God that drew him. It was the Angel of Death. As his eye found its' focus he mentally
recoiled at the image trapped there though his anger was gone. Spent like his strength. It was Inga. He knew it would be. There was no God. Not here. Not ever. Impossibly, or so it seemed, she stroked his face. Touched the seals and ridges where his life had been ruined. He wanted to go back. Desperately. To unmake himself. Return to the womb and become unborn. Yet even the thought of that return was painful.

Back in the Womb is Much Too Real
in Pumps Life That I Must Feel
but Can't Look Forward to Reveal

Why had she returned? Come to review her handiwork? Torture him with her hollow presence? At first he tried to shut out her words. It was easy. The whispers could have been the passing of a dark chill wind not echoes of the past burning through his heart like a firestorm. He watched her check the monitor and adjust the tubes, the wires and the bags that fed him. If only he could reach the controls he could end this. Then his eye met hers and he knew that would never happen. Too easy. Like Colditz no one was meant to escape. Especially him.

Look to the Time When I'll Live
Fed Through the Tube That Sticks in Me
Just Like a Wartime Novelty
Tied to Machines That Make Me Be

Silently he tried to plead with her. As much good as looking for a beating heart in a mountain of stone. But he had to try.

Cut This Shit off from Me

He knew she read his mind by her reaction. A flicker of psuedo pain replaced by disgust and something else. Guilt? No, not that surely.

Hold My Breath as I Wish for Death
Oh Please God, wake Me

He felt cold and impossibly frightened. Something was slipping away from him, through fingers that he could not feel. It was a sensation that he did not understand but somehow it terrified him. Isolated him from everything even his own body. Ruined or not, it was all he had. Loneliness anchored him to this moment, cut him off from the release of dying. If there was a God he needed Him now. Begged for Him to appear, just this once to take this wandering prodigal home. It was all crowding in on him, blurring his vision and what limited sense he could make of it all.

Now the World is Gone, I'm Just One
Oh God, Help Me
Hold My Breath as I Wish for Death
Oh Please God, Help Me!

A dark cloud descended and for a moment the light faltered. Something cold brushed his flesh as Inga kissed him. He did not realise what she had done until she straightened a little, her pale face hovering like the cold Moon it was above him. "I'm sorry, Michael." She whispered. "I had to see you. Reassure myself you were alright."

The words made no sense to him neither did her tears. She should have been a crocodile. Somehow the thought of a crocodile on stage made him want to laugh but the pain prevented him. He had difficulty getting his breath and he was damned if he would tell her. But somehow she knew. Inga always knew. A frown puckered up the centre of her mask briefly then she turned to the monitor and fiddled expertly with the controls, returning a kind of normalacy to his prison. His breathing evened out and he felt cheated. Bitter at her seeming kindness, another form of torture to prolong the agony of life. The semblance of caring. He was so bloody tired yet she would not
leave him. Not just yet. Why did she stay when he had nothing else to give? He closed his eye. Damage limitation was the best he could do. If he could not see her, he could pretend she was not there. Gloating or caring, it did not matter. It was too late and they both knew it.

Darkness...
Imprisoning Me
All That I See
Absolute Horror

If he could let go why couldn't she?

I Cannot Live
I Cannot Die
Trapped in Myself
Body My Holding Cell

Landmine...
Has Taken My Sight
Taken My Speech
Taken My Hearing

He knew he was drifting. He welcomed the darkness closing in above his head and sucking him down. Even though he wanted to escape her something made him open his eye one last time. She still stood there, her face marred by tears that looked as if some Michael-Angelo had painted them there. They looked so perfect, so precise against the white chalk of her emotionless face. The mask cracked slightly, the lips parted. A fleeting sorrow skated like an intruder across her eyes before it was chased away. Emotion had no place in this hollow shell. Neither did love. Yet on some level he knew she did care for him. Was it the same kind of caring the entomologist felt when he pinned his latest capture to the board? Another notch on the stock of the assassin's gun. Another kill painted on the plane after the last battle. He wondered vaguely if she had ever loved him but the darkness was seducing him with the promise of oblivion. She touched his face one last time as his eye closed, her tears kissing a cheek that could no longer feel.

Taken My Arms
Taken My Legs
Taken My Soul
Left me with Life in Hell

As his soul came adrift from his body in that no man's land in which his life hung suspended, he gave thanks to God. There was one after all. Just one. But then One was all he needed.....
    

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