she dreams of wings
Slipping tumbling falling down a myocardial infarction (cardiac arrest) a death-curve disaster-curve, XXX lands feet up and lies, insect-wise, limbs crossed over chest in a mummy's-curse deathpose. She dreams of wings: butterfly wings, dove wings, hound-dog baying at them as they cross the deadeye white of a congealed moon. Up, then, up and up and up like a kitten batting at a string, a cat clawing at a doorknob in let me out, LET ME OUT LEMME OUT LEMMEOUT! panic.
It takes one big deep mental breath to make the black-water terror go away, to bat away the death-shroud and come up for life gasping. Another layer and another of tule-fog ghost-gauze breath-of-the-dead parts before her questing paws and she tumbles (up?) into herself with a shudder and lurch of a broken-winged heart finding its pulse again.
This time she is not the one to panic. Sharp, sharp sting of pain--returned doublefold as she strikes her assailants, throws their rag-doll bodies into walls far less giving than flesh.
A blur of blood and noise, copper-edged human-stink, scrambling off a table and shaking men until they are still and quiet. Not quite awake, not quite alive (yet) she lurches from there out into the hall, jaws lolling around a red-painted tongue. Mouth hurts, leg hurts, but not the mindless numbing ache of the disease gnawing its way through bone, skin, marrow. Mind hurts, nerves hurt, a dull throbbing pulse in the shape of wings, fitting around impossibility like a tongue around the suckerhole of a lost tooth.
i am alive, alive, alive
Restarted heart and all (she takes a left, right, left, left at the next four hallways, following the scent of open air, grass), she is alive, the bone-muscle machine a bit rusty but still good. Ears grown a little cold and scaberous twitch as they always have since she was a cub (all awkward tail and paws the size of dinnerplates and clumsiness), picking up the thudding of footsteps beneath her pulse.
These are the men who killed her. These (not directly, never, no, nothing the men ever do is direct) are the ones who watched her die, who
you should've seen the looks on their faces!
sat there, numb as the dead while she slipped into the dreams of dying. These faceless they (should've seen, should've seen) with their needles and injections, charts, predictions, rejections--her curdled blood boils at the thought. (She shoves her nose against the seam of one wall, rousting dead nerves back into some semblance of life as she snuffles along. Where are they coming from? How many? Cordite and steel, they are carrying guns.) She should repay them the favor--revision--she should get out, and take as many down as get in her way.
she dreams of
She jerks her head away from the wall, picks a direction, dogtrots obstinately down it. Now those ears go to points, soldiers at attention, pricked forward once more to the muted throb of human tread. Rhyme and rhythm are the last casualties to pick themselves up off the floor, putting meaning back into her thoughts. They made her to think, to reason, brains just wasted on the dead.
But she wasn't dead. The thought makes the corners of her mangled mouth turn up in a sick smile. But she wasn't dead, and if one thing couldn't kill her, who's to say if another could.
She picks up her pace to a gallop, a skitter of unclipped claws on cold floors, racing down the hall toward that sound of footsteps and freedom.
wings
Slipping tumbling falling down a myocardial infarction (cardiac arrest) a death-curve disaster-curve, XXX lands feet up and lies, insect-wise, limbs crossed over chest in a mummy's-curse deathpose. She dreams of wings: butterfly wings, dove wings, hound-dog baying at them as they cross the deadeye white of a congealed moon. Up, then, up and up and up like a kitten batting at a string, a cat clawing at a doorknob in let me out, LET ME OUT LEMME OUT LEMMEOUT! panic.
It takes one big deep mental breath to make the black-water terror go away, to bat away the death-shroud and come up for life gasping. Another layer and another of tule-fog ghost-gauze breath-of-the-dead parts before her questing paws and she tumbles (up?) into herself with a shudder and lurch of a broken-winged heart finding its pulse again.
This time she is not the one to panic. Sharp, sharp sting of pain--returned doublefold as she strikes her assailants, throws their rag-doll bodies into walls far less giving than flesh.
A blur of blood and noise, copper-edged human-stink, scrambling off a table and shaking men until they are still and quiet. Not quite awake, not quite alive (yet) she lurches from there out into the hall, jaws lolling around a red-painted tongue. Mouth hurts, leg hurts, but not the mindless numbing ache of the disease gnawing its way through bone, skin, marrow. Mind hurts, nerves hurt, a dull throbbing pulse in the shape of wings, fitting around impossibility like a tongue around the suckerhole of a lost tooth.
i am alive, alive, alive
Restarted heart and all (she takes a left, right, left, left at the next four hallways, following the scent of open air, grass), she is alive, the bone-muscle machine a bit rusty but still good. Ears grown a little cold and scaberous twitch as they always have since she was a cub (all awkward tail and paws the size of dinnerplates and clumsiness), picking up the thudding of footsteps beneath her pulse.
These are the men who killed her. These (not directly, never, no, nothing the men ever do is direct) are the ones who watched her die, who
you should've seen the looks on their faces!
sat there, numb as the dead while she slipped into the dreams of dying. These faceless they (should've seen, should've seen) with their needles and injections, charts, predictions, rejections--her curdled blood boils at the thought. (She shoves her nose against the seam of one wall, rousting dead nerves back into some semblance of life as she snuffles along. Where are they coming from? How many? Cordite and steel, they are carrying guns.) She should repay them the favor--revision--she should get out, and take as many down as get in her way.
she dreams of
She jerks her head away from the wall, picks a direction, dogtrots obstinately down it. Now those ears go to points, soldiers at attention, pricked forward once more to the muted throb of human tread. Rhyme and rhythm are the last casualties to pick themselves up off the floor, putting meaning back into her thoughts. They made her to think, to reason, brains just wasted on the dead.
But she wasn't dead. The thought makes the corners of her mangled mouth turn up in a sick smile. But she wasn't dead, and if one thing couldn't kill her, who's to say if another could.
She picks up her pace to a gallop, a skitter of unclipped claws on cold floors, racing down the hall toward that sound of footsteps and freedom.
wings
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