A Pathway to Your Soul (8)

Letter #8 – Hell in a Freezer

By Hailie Andersen

 

Tuesday, March 4^th, 2054, Town of Johba, Ankhor Territories

 

Dear Seth,

I had a bizarre, uncomfortable dream last night. Or was it a dream? It felt so real.

Those tubes prickled all over me, the never-ending, stinging sensation of cold steel needles penetrating my skin. It was unbearable. When I caught a glimpse of myself in this place, it all felt so real. One second, I was asleep in my B&B lodgings, the next, I could feel the cold plastic frame of a breathing mask pressuring the tender skin on my face, forcing air inside my lungs, urging air down my pipes mechanically. If it really was a dream, how did it get to feel so real?

Nightmares never feel that real, there is always something unmistakably screaming ‘Hint, hint! Yay! You spotted me, you clever you. I am here. I should not be. Hehe! This place thought it could trick you there, but you are right to want to wake up. Shake it off a little longer, and you will. You know this isn’t real, sister’.

I did not get that pinch, kicking me away from crazy town, this snap back to reality. It was not like that. It did not feel like a nightmare at all. It felt so real, and that made this all the more hair-raising, bloodcurdling.

It is like my mind parted from my body, and did so with frightful ease. I saw myself motionless, scarred, lying down on a hospital bed covered up with a glass lid. Whether I lay there protected from the exterior world, or sheltering the world from my presence, I could not tell. If I were to guess I would say probably a little bit of both. The expression borne on my lifeless face was grave, ghostly. I looked like a dead shell, empty as an old exoskeleton, left behind as a gruesome ragged stack of cells, reminiscent only in shape of what I used to be.

My face did not look calm and serene, like you would expect that of peaceful departed to appear. You could read pain, and fight, and struggle on there, as if engraved in clear captions onto an otherwise pearly white, blank page.

This nightmare lasted only a few seconds, and then I woke up from it. It has been hours now, and still I can’t shake off the impression it left on me. My life hanging on threads, literally tied to those hollow plastic strings, loading the ruby-colored fluid in my veins with all sorts of translucent liquids embed with obscure properties. Whether this whole medical apparatus was keeping me alive or maintaining me in this state of unconsciousness to prevent me from rising up, that, I could not tell.

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself, sitting at a desk in the lobby of the B&B I had checked in last night. I looked up at the mirrored wall in front of me. My face was imprinted with the shape of the pen and notepad I had been using to write to you. I looked down on the pad to read, and could only make out the words “Dear Seth”. The rest was unintelligible scrawl.

How did I end up on this desk anyway? The last thing I remembered was lying down on the bed in my room and shortly falling asleep.

I moved to the desk to ask the concierge how long I had been there. He reluctantly let his eyes part from the newspaper in his hands, which was opened at the sports section. He was unable to answer. He apologized rudely about having to cut our lovely talk short, and as I turned to move away and back to my room, he mumbled something about it not being his responsibility to keep track of the random sleeping patterns of his customers.

On my way to my room, I walk through the entrance hall. It is warm in here, probably about 24°C if I believe the height of the column of mercury in the glass thermometer sitting on the wooden mantelpiece. I can’t explain why I can’t shake off those chills… I am positively freezing. It might be because I am tired and exhausted.

There are so many unanswered questions crowding my mind, preventing me to properly assess the situation and figure out my next move. There are so many things I cannot explain and keep pondering over. What did the men in dark suits want with me? Where did they take professor Jehr? What should I do? Get back to work, stay here, keep moving?

How did I get from the bed in the room I am renting to this desk? What about those chills I have been getting lately. They started long before the dream. I first noticed them a few months after you disappeared, and ever since Jehr showed up at the teashop, they have been getting stronger. Am I sick? I am so pale and I do look and feel unwell right now.

Most of all why am so shaken by that awful nightmare I just had? Dreams used to make up for funny tales to share with you. This one feels different. It makes me fell concerned. I think I read somewhere that dreams are born from your subconscious mind sorting out everything it has seen through the day. Where did that nightmarish place come from? I am certain I have never seen anything like it. If I had I would most certainly remember it. Why does it feel somehow familiar then?

I share this with you, because I wish your warm hands could be wrapped around me to warm up my shivering body. I wish your rational mind could be there beside me to help me sort this all out.

I feel so lost and alone. You are gone. The professor, my only hope to be reunited with you, is gone too. Maybe I am simply losing my mind.

Maybe those tubes were a representation of my inner self, in need of sheer assistance to get back up on my feet.

Maybe those men in suits were agents of the government looking for me, because the CDC has to investigate all goat flu cases. Someone at work could easily have reported me to them. That would make sense.

I am so confused my love. My mind jumps from one thing to the other uncontrollably. Only you ever managed to soothe my mind, when I am that upset.

I miss you so much… I wish I could hear back from you.

I will not give up. I will keep writing to you.

I will continue reading those letters out loud thinking of you with all my might.

You have taken hold of my heart ever since I met you. You are the only steady element in my life, even so long after you departed from it.

Still. I need you. So much. Always.

 

Yours forever,

Tasha.

 

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To read the rest of this story, click here.

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10.000 words in 30 days #Wattpad challenge.

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Read it on Wattpad – Hailie Andersen’s A Pathway to Your Soul