Delirium
an excerpt

The Ending

The secret to life is simple. Find what you love and let it kill you. It is what makes living the monotonous daily frivolities bearable. Embracing a passion which can consume sight and make a heart race. To welcome a sensation which is kith and kin to the delicious touch of a nubile lover, only not. Maybe it fills up the lungs with smokey curls of opium zen. Maybe it slides silkily down the throat to where it brings with it the fuzzy numbness of a plush cocoon. Maybe it exhilarates the blood as it pounds endlessly within its drums, sealing one off from the ruckus outsiders. Whatever a person loves, it allows them to forget they are stuck in this world where lowly people smug their way into existence, contaminating senses and breathing your air.

Love brought her to that chair.

Bounded by cords about her wrists and ankles, she awoken to discover herself in a very odd room. Not odd because of its shape but of the contents it reverently held. Carefully lit were a circle of candles. A rather large circle, indeed, for she quickly caught on she was in the center of this sphere of light. And she was not alone.

Beyond the flickers of the amber flames, shadows donning cloaks could be outlined. The way the flames danced and bounced off the figures, gave one the impression these cloaked witnesses were trance dancing at an underground rave. All they were missing were the requisite glow sticks.

The bound woman blinked hard to get her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room. Craning her long neck, she attempted to get an identity of anyone. All she needed was one face to mentally clamp on to. Unfortunately, the candles did a disservice. The glare they cast made it extremely difficult to see who was all surrounding her....chanting at her.

Wait.

They were chanting?

Yes. Chanting in a rather monotone, droning manner. And the language was old. Words she was unfamiliar with reached the ears of the restrained woman. Damning her luck for not having taken any language courses during her University days in London, she could not discern if it was Latin or Sumerian or Klingon for that matter. What she was positive of was it was not English. Cloaked figures chanting an ancient language around a circle of lighted candles? Oh dear, this does not bode well.

The woman yanked at her restraints and the more she attempted to break her bonds, the more the pace quickened with the chanting. And now swaying of the figures. Lovely. She had seen enough vampire slayer episodes to know these folks were raising energy and getting to their magickal climax. “No way in hell am I going to be a bloody sacrifice to these freaks,” thought the woman.

So determined to remove herself from this ceremony of the damned, she neglected to realize something even worse was occurring. A pain of a thousand prickly thorns welled up between her eyes and effortlessly spread to around her head and down her swan like neck. It shot down to her heart and burned it open like her first shot of Irish whiskey. The shock ripped the air out of her lungs as her torso flew forward and then, as if pulled like a puppet on strings, jerked immediately back. The prickly pain continued its way down to the base of her spine and then expanded out as if inhaling.

Tears were streaking down her face as she kept the scream, which was very eager to express itself, clamped behind her pale rose lips. Her chest protruded forward again and then slammed back against the chair. Forward and then back. The momentum would have snapped her neck, but somehow someone was looking over her. Or damning her, she thought. As falling to the floor with her head in an awkward, backward glance would have finally eased her suffering.

No. There was no mercy here. She was being split apart on every level of her being because they wanted her too.

As if the pain could not get any worse, the Law of Murphy stepped in and kicked it up a thousand notches. Without being able to contain it any longer, the scream escaped in momentous glee and ricocheted off the walls and filled up the room like quicksilver -- capturing every bit of space it could consume.

“Look. Blood. We are almost there,” a voice announced.

The woman, half blinded by pain, wondered where on her body she was bleeding. Were the prickle stabs between her eyes and down her torso just her imaginings, or was she truly being sliced and diced by ceremonial blades? She looked down and merely saw the clothes she walked the beach in earlier that day. She could still see some of the sand on her knees where she had knelt down to pick up a sand dollar.

Nothing looked different. All she was aware of was her tears of pain. A wet face which suddenly did not feel slick wet, but gooey wet. One trail of tear had molassed its way down by the corner of her mouth. With deft skill, she flicked her tongue to catch the traveling bead for a quick taste test. The realization made her stomach curl and her throat wretch. Salt did not meet her tongue, but the rustic taste of an old penny. Blessed Holy Mother, she was crying blood tears.

The cloaked capturers raised their arms in unison and the air surrounding the lost woman had begun crackling and zapping the air. She saw flashes of purple and vibrant blue as the webs of energy wrapped themselves about her. A zot of blue struck her center with cold heat, she screamed once more.

“I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM!!,” she roared. Gathering strength she reopened her eyes to discover a bright light opening up above her. A light which did not feel welcoming. Not warm and fuzzy at all. It beckoned to her. It reached out and clamped down around her heart. The force of its pull was not like anything she had ever experienced before. It could easily suck her skin out of those bonds. Tightening her grip on the chair, the woman refused to be taken. On no uncertain terms was she going when she did not want to go.

“I am not who you think I am, “ she whispered. “I am not who you think I am. I am not who you think I am. I am not who you think I am.” The light grew with intensity until it engulfed the entire room: the cloaked figures, the circle of candles, the trapped woman, everything.

And when it devoured everything, all that was left was silence.