What have I done?

Her entire being, her whole self, felt as if it was being eviscerated. Piece by piece. Fingers, severed. Tendons, torn. Wrists, wrought until they were broken free. Twisting, gripping, pulling, tearing, biting. All that was left was the pain. All that could be felt was the pain. All that she knew was the pain.

There was no sense to it. No rhyme. No reason. Nothing but the pain.

As if existence was only pain. All she knew was pain. All she was; was pain.

It was a pressing, heavy, massive, heaving weight that pinned her down and held her steady. She tried to think through it but couldn’t. Nothing meant anything. It was only her and the pain and the distance.

A vast distance between her and what there was of her. She felt like a cavern. An oasis of nails and glass and acid.

The pain; where her fingers should be. There was no sense of body.

The pain; where her toes should be. There was no sense of body.

How much time had gone by? She didn’t know. Here, in the darkness with pain ravaging, tearing every inch of her apart she didn’t know anything.

Time must have passed, going forward, she sensed a changed. A growth, a budding awareness. The pain was multi-faceted. It felt different in her toes than in her fingers. It ran in electrifying pulsating waves through what might be her calves and her thighs.

Tearing at her bones as if to break them apart.

The searing agony in what might be her lungs and heart raged, gouging, twisting blades of torment, sucking in a sharpness from the ether. Each effort for her heart to beat shot a new horrifying sense of agony through herself. Pain shot up to the ears. Pain pulsated up to the eyes. Pain radiated up to the mouth.

As if she was being filleted, ripped layer by layer, for some unknown crime she had done. Now with sedatives and scalpels but gaunt fingers and rabid teeth.

What had she done?

She tried to push the awareness of the pain aside but found it rooted in place. It moved on its own as if it was a living thing within her that she could not control.

What had she done?

She had done something, she now remembered.

Trying to remember what she had done was like remembering a faint childhood trauma from the age of one. Flashes, bits, pieces. That fell into a senseless mess. Like scattered photographs in faded grey and black.

Dimly lit. Pain coursed through her.

She was running.

Pain nipped at tinder bits of tortured flesh like digging fingers into a salted gaping wounds.

She was running from someone. What was it?

It was horrifying, it was after her. It caught her then. She remembered. She was consumed by a beast. As if jarring loose her memory had freed her senses she could smell it. Rank, thick and putrid. The smell of sulfur. The smell of molten metal.

The sounds of agony.

She was not alone.

Could she see? She struggled to open her eyes. If she could see maybe it would all make sense. No, she could not.

Her eyes were wrapped in pain. They would not open.

She was not alone, but in agony in good company. “What have I done?” She asked not knowing if she could speak but willing the sounds to come.

There was no answer.

“What have I done?”

No answer.