"Pretty girls like you get lost in these woods all the time, Alexa."
On the night of Sebastián's annual Beginning of Summer Bash, amiable and adventurous Melody Tryniski went missing. What might have appeared as a juvenile escapade - a casual incide...
Mountain View Hospital October 16, 2018 11:49 a.m.
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WHAT'S YOUR FUCKING NAME?
Milo Schäfer. And I'm not my fucking father.
These are voices and words echoing in the vast nothingness of darkness, sentences picked apart by the storm that's brewing in my mind. Everything is tangled and knotted, forming a confused cloud in my memory. My body feels as though it's floating in midair, wandering around a place that's beyond the sky and the entire galaxy --- a place inside me, far from human reach but close to the secret of existence.
As my body shifts to consciousness, I recognize Christopher's deep voice. It's gentle to my ears and an antidote to my body, but I know he spoke those words with hatred in his heart. That hatred is what awakens me from my unconscious. It's what makes me come back to myself.
There's a bitter taste in my mouth, something sour and foul that makes me scrunch my nose. A wet sound is loud in my ears, the constant motion of my tongue separating from my palette as my mouth opens and closes. Practicing this motion seems to put a weight on my lips, their dryness forming little cuts that sting from time to time.
A piercing light burns behind my closed eyelids, a flash of white that doesn't blink in and out of focus. It stays there, brighter by the second. There's a strong smell of disinfectant and chemicals and antiseptics, all combining to produce a scent that's familiar but strange at the same time. Some sort of machine is beeping beside me --- beep, beep, beep --- a slow rumble.
I curl my weak fingers against a rough surface. The pads of my fingers stroke its roughness until the image of sheets comes to mind. My body, although numb and limp, is pressed against the hard surface of a bed --- a bed that's definitely not my own. Air forcefully goes in my nostrils, rather than my willingly inhaling it. My throat is dry, just like my lips. I need water.
"Christopher," I whisper through the fog that's polluting my mind, as if I'm thirsty for him, not water.
Where am I?
My body grows alert, the numbness dissipating to give way to a jolting panic. I try to open my eyes several times, but they close every time the light burns inside of them. When I finally open them, I come face to face with a white ceiling filled with blinding white lights.
As I blink to adjust to it, I notice a pounding ache in my head. Both my hands begin to pat my head, coming in contact with something soft. There's something wrapped around it. My hands travel further down, where they meet a plastic tube that's below my nose and encircles the middle of my face. Another tube is attached to the middle of my arm and connects with the beeping machine. My body is trapped in tight sheets that prevent me from moving.
