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 Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:09 pm
"Our own kind is turning against us."
The phrase was still ringing in Riley's head, even as she closed and bolted the door to her dorm room behind her. She heard it in the silence that greeted her. She heard it in the bubbles from the filter on her fishtank in the other room. She felt the phrase in the air. It wasn't going away.
Riley stripped off her top, heading directly to her bathroom to attend to the bandages that littered her body. She'd been working with psionic crystals for weeks now, and every time she made a breakthrough, it was at the expense of her own skin. So far, she'd been cautious. A little here, a little there, nothing more than she could handle - and as soon as she began to lose control, she'd stop before the crystals punctured more than just a few slices on her skin. They were littered all over the floor, crushed underfoot. The psionic crystals were everywhere.
She never bothered to clean up after her mistakes. This was the first sign of something wrong.
Riley ripped the bandages off of her back, exposing the red, angry scratches all along the surface. She did the same with the bandages on her arms, and finally reached down to rip the ones off her legs. All of the cuts along her tentacles, however, had remained unbandaged - every time she'd cut one, she had re-arranged her tentacles to hide the mistake. It was an easy fix.
But as she dropped the rest of her gown, and took a good look at her body, she realized she was starting to look a little ragged. Most of her cuts had healed, but some were fresh and new. These were the most recent, the ones she'd gotten the evening after her meeting with Emily.
She knew she'd gone just a touch too far that night. Now, she regretted not going further.
Riley had graduated to second year. She felt no stronger, no wiser, and certainly no safer. In fact, if anything, her failed test had left her feeling more vulnerable. She spent a small portion of every day since then trying to push the limits of her psionic power. Her mind was supposed to be stronger. It was supposed to be more efficient, more deadly. Why did she feel the same as the day she'd walked into this school?
Why did she feel weaker, as if that were even possible?
She left the bathroom light on as she exited, nude and covered in scratches, to test her own limits once more.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:36 pm
She had been at it for hours. There was a sheen of sweat covering her skin, making her glimmer in the glow of her own lights. All around her, the walls were covered with crystals. They were embedded deep into the walls, leaving little glimmery bits jutting out raggedly. Riley was laying on her bed, trying to catch her breath. But even then, even while resting, there was a perfect line of crystals floating above her. She refused to stop, this time. Even in exhaustion she was pushing herself out of her limits, farther than she'd ever dared before.
Yesterday, she felt she had time to be cautious. Today, she knew she was wrong.
Her mind was controlling the psionic crystals above her head. They were rotating in tandem, turning until they made a perfect line again, and then they followed the movement of her eyes as she flickered her gaze to the wall, and they skewered it like a lance. Even though only the first few crystals had embedded in, the rest of them hung there, as if connected like some kind of stick. They rotated slowly, trying to dig deeper, and deeper..
And then they all fell to the ground.
Riley was tired. So very tired. She felt like she could fall asleep, if she laid here long enough, and there was no time for it. There just wasn't enough time!
She let out an angry growl as she sat up in the bed. Her sheets were covered with little lines of red from where her body had been resting - she hadn't stopped this time around. She looked like she'd been the victim of a sound whipping, but she could hardly feel them anymore. Every ounce of her was focused on one thing, and one thing only.
She needed to get stronger.
Fresh determination filled her, and she pushed herself off the bed, raising her arms up. Thousands upon thousands of little, broken crystals had been littering the floor a moment before, but now they rose at her beckon call, floating and rotating until they created a moving circle around her. She flickered her eyes at her walls, over and over, and each time the crystals dug their sharp edges in.
Each time, she lost a little more control, and a few more crystals took their own path, slicing across her skin. One traced a path across her cheek, making her face turn. The distraction had the delicate structure she'd surrounded herself with waver, before shattering into a million pieces. These did not slice against her skin, as they had before.
Riley's eyes opened wide, for a single moment, before a blinding, all-consuming pain forced her into an immediate unconscious state.
And yet, even there, where she could no longer feel her own body, there was one word floating in her drowning thoughts.
Oops.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:48 pm
Day 1 She heard the sound of knocking, in her dreams. It was the first time she couldn't control her own dreams, and she realized it. But she couldn't do anything about it.
It was pitch black, and the distant pounding began to sound like a bell, tolling in it's tower.
She dreamed of Malodore, and the darkness brought her comfort.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:49 pm
Day 2 The knocking had stopped. Her dreams were filled with the sounds of pincers, as giant bugs ate away at her back.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:56 pm
Day 3
She wasn't dreaming anymore. There was one point, in the middle of the day, when she actually opened her eyes again. They stared at the floor her cheek rested on, and attempted to gain her bearings.
It was a mistake.
The slightest movement made her realize that her entire back was carved open, and she was laying on a rug soaked with her own blood. Her crystals had dug their way through her skin, like scalpels. They had torn through skin, through muscle, and even through bone - at least one rib was broken, by now.
They were not inert, either. The crystals hummed with power, and she could still feel them moving. The movement was agonizingly slow, but it wasn't letting the pain ebb away.
The crystals were digging deeper into her back, one by one, of their own accord.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and she welcomed the darkness this time.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:02 pm
Day 4
She had lost track of time. The floor underneath her was dry and sticky. Her back was still wet and fresh from wounds that continued to be sliced open every time they started to close. She woke up more frequently now, as she started to become familiar with the pain. It felt like hope, if only because she knew as long as she felt something, she was still alive.
She couldn't move an inch from her position, though. She'd tried, once. Just once. The pain had knocked her out faster than before. She knew better, now.
There was a notebook on the floor, just within her reach. She curled her fingers around it, and pulled it close. There was no pen in sight, though.
Her fingers brushed against the carpet, and she used the dried blood to write on the pages. Just one word.
Help.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:24 pm
Day 5
She was hearing the memory Malodore screaming in her dreams tonight. It was laying on that slab again, as Christof and Riley slammed the wings into it over and over, and it cried out for them to stop. It was begging - pleading - screaming in agony.
It woke her up, and she realized that it wasn't Malodore she heard screaming in her dreams. It was herself.
The crystals had reached her spine tonight. They were digging, like drills, embedding themselves deep into the very core of her, until suddenly she felt a snap-
And the pain stopped.
Her skin was still torn and throbbing in pain, but she couldn't feel the rest of her body. Her thoughts repeated themselves as if to explain it all away.
The crystals had reached her spine, tonight.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:39 pm
Day 6
She would come to regret wishing she could feel her body again. Even though she hated the idea that she was crippled, the moment the crystals re-attached her spine and brought her feeling back into her body, she quickly realized that she was better off without it.
Her screams were only in her head, but they were loud, and they were pitiful.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:48 pm
Day 7
Every so often, she caught a faint brush in her mind. She could tell Jericho was trying to reach her, though there was no real reason why he would still assume she was in her room anymore. She wondered idly what Malodore must think. The poor thing must be worried sick.. but it would be even more worried if it could see her now.
At some point during the day, the pain had become bearable. It was then that she had begun to see clearly again, and the jagged pain across her back felt like something dry was stretching uncomfortably. It was no longer open, and wet. It hurt even more, this way - but she bore it without a sound.
Jericho's thoughts reached out for her again. She cringed as she ignored them. She no longer feared for her own life, and that meant she wasn't going to make them see her this way.
She would heal, and then she would deal with the consequences of her silence.
Something ripped across her back, and she felt the drip of fresh blood pouring down her already crusted side. Movement was not an option, not when her wounds were so fresh. She couldn't even turn her head to see how bad it was.. she just had to grin and bear it.
Or just bear it.
So she did.
She heard her cell phone vibrate angrily on the bed behind her one final time, before its battery died.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 8:25 pm
Day 8
The bleeding had stopped.
This was a good thing, and a bad thing. Riley twisted her body, and she could tell the scarring had taken. Her skin did not tear at the touch, either - she had proudly gritted through the agony of moving her arm, and touching one of the tender flakes of skin behind her back.
But as much as she could feel her legs, she couldn't control them. She hadn't been able to move them once, despite gaining the feeling in them. And in one final heave, she realized she couldn't move her upper body, as well.
Or her left arm.
Her right arm, which she'd used to feel her back, was slowly starting to edge down the same path. She held her hand in front of her face, and squeezed her fingers open and closed, over and over. She did this for several hours, until her hand started to numb.
She couldn't stop. If she stopped, she would lose it, too.
Her hand slowed it's rhythm, until only the tips of the fingers bent in, and out.
Then it fell to the rug, useless.
Maybe she shouldn't have ignored Jericho, after all..
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 8:32 pm
Day 9
She wasn't crippled. She wasn't. She felt the sting of unused, atrophied muscles in her legs. She still felt the searing burn of the scars on her back. And she felt the crackle of dried blood on her fingers.
But she couldn't move anything.
She had spent an entire sleepless night trying to prove this fact wrong. Every inch of her attempted to move, but all she seemed to have under her control was her mind, and her eyes. They twisted wildly in their sockets, trying to get a glimpse of anything that could help her. And her mind, though still her own to control, had lost the ability to reach out and touch the minds that had called out to her in the past few days, trying to reach her. She was cut off from everything - including herself.
Against her cheek, something shifted.
Her eyes tried to focus on the object, but it was too close to her face. Nevertheless, by color alone she realized it was a psionic crystal - and it was moving at a slugs pace, slowly creeping up her cheek.
The crystals were taking her over. They wanted control. So much of her FEAR had been poured into them, that they had tasted sentience for a brief, glorious moment.
This was their attempt to gain sentience back. Through her.
The crystal etched up her cheek, as slow as a lover's caress. She thought of Malodore, and fell asleep.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 9:54 pm
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 10:05 pm
Day 11
The loss of sight came as no surprise. Really, she had been expecting it. The next time she opened her eyes, the world was tinted in blue. She was vaguely aware this was a thin layer of crystal, that had crept over her entire cornea. The world looked misty, and finally she closed her eyes to get away from it. The next time they opened, she saw nothing.
None of this even alarmed her. She should have been more worried, but something was hindering her ability to worry about it. In fact, something had already begun to hinder her ability to think.
It was the moment she realized she could not remember the name of the one she loved, that she started to fight back
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 10:16 pm
Day 12
There was a bunny rabbit bouncing across a field.
It was so cute.
Suddenly its head fell off, and bounced separately from the rest of its body. Both moved of their own accord, happily hopping off to find a nice resting spot.
What a delightful creature. Riley murmured, chuckling quietly.
Do you want it? I could catch it for you, if you like.
No, mia cara. I have enough pets. Besides, I don't want you to leave. I want you right here, in my arms.
Am I in your arms?
Riley looked down at the empty space, and then around. There was no one there. She was alone, in this field, with the bouncing bunny. Where was..
Was...
She shook herself awake, screaming before she realized she was doing it, and her blind eyes snapped open. She had screamed. At least, she was pretty sure she had. She furrowed her eyebrows, and tried again. She could hear.. something. It was muffled, but it was there.
And she was done letting some piece of s**t crystal steal her most important memory away.
Her sightless eyes closed once more, and she squinted. She was pressing down so hard, she could feel the cracks when it happened. The crystals covering her eyes were cracking, scratching at the inside of her eyelid. It didn't stop her from squeezing until they shattered completely, and she blinked the dust and blood away.
Her wall greeted her, white and silent as ever.
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 10:28 pm
Day 13
The thin sheen of sweat glistened over Riley's body again. Once she'd gotten control of her mind back, she'd slowly began working on the other, lesser important parts of her body. She hadn't realized that it just required some work on her part, and focus. Once she'd begun to focus, the crystals that had embedded themselves in her spine were under her control, not the other way around.
She was clenching her hand again. She let out a harsh, dry crow of victory. Beside her, the blood splattered piece of paper was still resting, with one word written on it. She reached out with her working hand, crumpled the word help and the paper it was written on, and flicked it away.
She spent the rest of the day getting her body back.
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