Breed and Burn: Faceless

Chapter 12 - I'm Going Home

When Axel opened his eyes, he expected... Well it was hard to judge what he expected but it definitely was not this. His mind was clouded with grey. Tensing up, he tried look around but he couldn't. Even if he was looking around, it wouldn't have mattered because everything was white. It was so white it would made freshly fallen snow look grey. It stretched on forever.

Where was he? He was experiencing something his mind would never be able to erase. Fear damaged his mind. He felt like he was falling even if his body wasn't there.

His mind felt like it was plummeting into less and less of light. A place that was far away from the world he knew. This was driving him insane.

Physically he was there. However, the rest of Axel was somewhere else. There was no pain. There were no feelings. There was no movement. There was nothing.

It was just a space of nothing as white as a moonlit sail. The atmosphere there was filled a nervous type of energy like he was doing something he wasn't supposed to.

Something began to slowly come into focus. Not an image but a feeling. The feeling of miles of water surrounding him. Laying perfectly flat beneath his chin, Axel felt the water ripple and break into a spiderweb when he tensed. He couldn't see it or himself yet he could sense it. The invisible ocean. Only this ocean was thicker yet with the same consistency of water. Or heavier like something was constantly pulling it down. Axel couldn't tell why but it had the same feeling that surrounded a graveyard. Like something had died. Floating in a void, free of gravity, he let go of the air he didn't even realise he had been holding in.

Axel felt at awe but he couldn't tell. Where was he? The question was bouncing of the edge of his brain and between other thoughtless thoughts. It was numbing his brain so that was the only thing he could focus on.

A huge chunk of his felt missing. He could sense how close it was and not being able to reach it drove him slightly mad. Axel felt like himself and the world surrounding him was holding onto a very thin thread. Although it wouldn't make sense to anyone else, it made sense to him. The answer was there, staring back at him.

He was scared to try it but he was also scared not to. Fear was continuously following him, from the moment he woke up, following him like black smoke choking him from the inside out. You'd think you we get used to experiencing fear for days nonstop. You'd think you would become numb but it wasn't. It was too much to cope with. It was too hard to handle and never understood. It had eroded so much of him Axel felt like there was nothing left.

Despite the fear on fear like shadows on waves, Axel had to suck it in and deal with it because he knew what he had to do. He couldn't hold on forever. No one could. Waiting and stalling was only delaying the inevitable. Filled with his own darkness and sudden memory of what had happened to him, Axel felt himself let go. He squeezed his eyes once more. Or at least he thought he did. And darkness enveloped him once more.

The coolness rushed in and he knew that if he was even an inch closer to reality this would have been it. Even with his wall that blocked out his memories, Axel knew he had held his breath underneath water before. This was different. This felt like there was a gun to his head. This felt like his brain was not letting his heart beat. This felt like he had strings attached to his brain and he could not control them.

Seven.

It was always it and Will always be it. At least it had stopped controlling him or had he broken the connection? Gained control? Axel highly doubted it. The connection that was formed between them felt like a metal chain that he was trying to break it with a plastic spoon. Where was his body? Why did Seven want him to close his eyes? His thoughts and actions were conflicting. There were pulling in opposite directions as if his brain's narrator and navigator had entirely different ideas to how the world worked. How did he completely forget about Seven? His name hadn't even floated in the back of his head, the bones of something forgotten.