The Cave

She lay stunned, bruised, shuddering in pain. The silence consumed her head, ringing like air in a vast cavern. She opened her eyes and could see the final beams of light escaping the discarded body beside her. They radiated in shades of sunlight yellow, and orange fire.

Forcing her body to move towards him, the pain exploding throughout with each agonizing movement. She reached his immobile body, planting her fingers on the wrist to see if a pulse came through. All she could feel was her own racing heart. In panic and fear, she forced her broken body to move upward towards his face, maybe there was breath there, maybe some sign of life. Tears streaked down her face uncontrollably, though she doesn’t remember sobbing.

He wasn’t moving, no breath, no pulse, no sign of life. The light had faded from his form and she was alone in the dark cavernous space. Alone. Not just there and then, but in all things. There’s nowhere TO go, she thought. No one to go to. She readjusted to sit on the stony rock-littered ground, each movement echoing off the expansive darkness around her.

“Well, guess I fucked up on that one.” Her voice croaked out, the sound bouncing off the rocks.

She stood, her body was still riddled with pain, each movement was agonizing, but it meant she was alive. Alive in a world of death. A world she had chosen over the light and life of normality, and this is where she ended, failing in the one deed she deemed more worthy than living. Perhaps life is the penance for failure in not valuing it at all, she thought with a grunt. She was empty and she deserved that.

A sharp shriek echoed into the cave. She had forgotten about fear, or the fear of pain or death as she used to understand them. Now, after abandoning everything and everyone else, she had only one option, to follow further towards the sounds, towards the pain.