This story belongs to and is (C) DragonLady of Avalon.

See You in Time

By

DragonLady of Avalon

When eyes burn red in the dark and there is the sound of massive beating wings, tread carefully, for the Mothman is nearby…

It’s comfortable here. Like a huge, black pillow, warm and safe, enveloping me in its security. Peaceful. Soft. Dark. Quiet. I could stay here forever and ever, sinking into the deep, welcoming blackness…

Wait. This isn’t right. Something’s very, very wrong. I feel heavy…there is…pressure on me. I’m not…breathing. I need to breathe.

I inhale, the choke and sputter, trying to spit the burning fluid out of my lungs. It’s water! I’m…drowning? Confusion wracks my brain as I sluggishly try to recall how I managed to get into this…pool in the first place. I don’t remember.

I’m…stuck. I can’t…think. What’s wrong with me? I feel…I need to get out of the water. I need to breathe.

Slowly, I kick my legs, but…they pull…as if…it hurts…and there’s…water? It’s not right. It’s…wrong. Something is very wrong. My tail…it hurts!

My thoughts are clearing. I feel…better. I can move now…I need to get out of the water!

If I can’t kick with my legs, maybe…my hands! My hands, too! I can’t open my eyes, my mouth! What is happening? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I…have I been drugged?

Shockwaves of pain tear up the inside of my legs, the inside of my arms, and the underside of my tail. I can’t move them apart. I can’t open my eyes or my mouth. My eyelids and lips hurt, too.

Panic begins to grip my heart, choking me worse than the water around me, pressing down on my throat and squeezing. I have already inhaled water and spit most of it out, but I swallowed some and I need to breathe! How long have I been underwater? How much time until I asphyxiate? Is the burning in my lungs from the water or…

I have to get out of here!

I kick my legs as hard as I can. It hurts! It burns, spreading along my legs and tail! I thrash my arms, my…wings.

Where are my wings?!

I thrash and wiggle, wracked with pain. With my thoughts clearer, there is nothing to dull the pain in my body, the fright…

I don’t want to die…

I kick and I wiggle, thrashing as hard as I can, trying to feel the bottom beneath me…or the sky above. I strain and struggle, ripples of pain tracing up and down my body. I wiggle and squirm, kicking up bubbles. I can feel them brushing up against my skin and antennae, but…I CAN’T OPEN MY EYES!

I don’t want to die, not here. Not underwater, frightened and confused and not knowing where I am. I don’t want to drown, to feel the burning, painful weight of water in my lungs, never knowing if I am inches away from the surface, from air…

I feel so heavy now. I feel…nauseas. The drug? Lack of oxygen? Fear? Anxiety? I don’t want to know. I have to keep kicking…

If I had my wings, I would be out by now, in the air, breathing, my wings drying in the suns…

My foot sinks into soft mud. My left foot. I wiggle backwards, where the mud climbs higher, fighting through the sticky mess, trying to get to the surface…please, please, please…I don’t want to die here.

I keep wiggling, panicking, my hearts racing, beating against the protective shield of my ribs. If I lose my balance, if I fall over, into the mud, in this much pain, barely able to move, I may not get up. I may drown, inches from the surface. I can’t let that happen now! Not when I feel the ground beneath my bare feet!

I sense light above! I feel dryness against my antennae! I feel the floating ends of my hair strike the surface, tickling my antennae, and dancing in the air! It is right above my head!

My stomach and hearts lurch. I feel myself falling, sinking deep into the mud. My lungs burn, my hearts are pumping as fast as they can, but they are pumping useless wastes and might as well not be beating at all. In one terrible, crucial moment, I lose my balance and slip, landing on my burning back.

In shock, I lay on the mucky bottom of the pool, more frightened and bewildered than ever, my limbs growing heavy from lack of oxygen and the place where my wings are supposed to be burning like fire. I can imagine the light playing on the surface above, playing across my face and highlighting my skin. The surface is so close I could touch it…

It would be so easy to give up here. To lay down and die right now. I could give up and go to sleep, ease my weariness and forget about the tightness in my chest, the burning, searing pain that runs up and down my body. I could forget it all and rest my head in the blissful, comfortable, dark arms of death. It would be peaceful and easy, a lot easier and more peaceful than struggling for a battle I may not win…

But I can’t. Not now. Not like this. Not knowing where I am or how I got here. Not knowing who…I must get to the surface!

I don’t want to die here!

I wiggle backwards, kicking at the sand with my toes, squirming and fighting, desperate and thirsty for a breath of air. I don’t stop to rest for there is no rest for my muscles. There are no more useful gases in my lungs and my hearts are pumping dead, dry blood. But if I stop now, I will never get up again, and I will stay here, inches below the surface of the water.

I kick, I fight, I struggle, every movement nothing but excruciating agony. My teeth chatter, my throat gags, but the last thing I need to do right now is vomit, so I swallow as much as I can, but the rest pushes painfully through my tightly shut lips. My hearts pound harder than ever, my muscles aflame with liquid fire, my brain going dark…

My head breaks the surface, I take a breath, instinctively trying to gasp it in through my mouth, but my lips tear audibly in my ears. I bite back a scream and inhale deeply through my nose, relishing the feel of cool, dry air in my lungs. I cough, I hack, trying to run the water from my lungs out of my lips.

It hurts! It burns! It stings! My whole body, wracked with pain, up my arms, down my legs and tail…my wings…my wings…

With fresh air in my lungs, I squirm farther out of the water, hoping beyond hope that I am at the edge of the water and not on a sandbar. If I were to fall back into the water again…

I feel the ground drying, from tightly packed, wet, water-beaten sand to soft, dry earth, plants growing in tangled snarls. I can imagine the plants, short, green, crawling with bugs. It feels good, better than anything in all history could. Better than air in my lungs, light on my face.

I roll on my belly, getting my burning, stinging, prickling back out of the dirt and water and into the dry air. I wiggle back and forth, my legs pulling and stinging and burning, my whole body throbbing. I crawl, digging my elbows into the ground and thrusting my knees as one, trying to keep a mantra going as I do so, trying to remember to move all five limbs as a unit.

Front…back…front…back…front…back…

My instinct is to move one limb at a time, but it hurts, like knives tearing through my flesh. I hurry as fast as I can, eager to get my toes out of the water, but I have to be slow and careful. Tears sting my eyelids from the pain, adding to it.

When my toes touch the dry, plant-strewn ground, I heave onto the ground, panting and whimpering. I tremble, I shake, my throat gags. Bile and vomit pushes its way into my mouth, but there is no exit there, just through my nose.

I shake my head from side to side like an animal, trying to free the clogs, the remnants of my last meal…when was that?

When I have caught my breath, I fight my way into a sitting position. My fingers…they burn, they sting, the left one won’t move without the right. They…it can’t be…it can’t be…no…

Both of my arms, one completely unable to move without the other, reach to my legs, the sides of my claws feeling the threads that run up my inner legs. Tough, rough, like leather, going through muscle and sinew, piercing my tail, and entering the other leg. I try to wiggle my fingers just a little bit apart, just enough to free the claw so it can cut the threads in my legs. I manage to move my right index finger out of the way of the left, just enough…just enough…

It seems like hours. Hours of throbbing pain. Hours since I dragged my sore, bleeding, battered body out of the water. But I feel it, I hear it, the first of the thread’s snap as my claw slices through it, severing it. I have to bite back a cry of joy, but the tears burn as they fall.

Unable to move any higher, I move down, repeating the process. Over and over again, as far as I can reach, snapping the leather laces as far as I can. How many? I lose count, but it is a lot.

I can’t reach the next thread, but I know there are more. I feel them, straining against my inner ankles, the lower end of my tail… How am I to get free? How can I get loose? How…

The thought makes tears come to my eyes, but I have to. If I want to get my arms free…I don’t have a choice.

But…if I scream again, if I even try to open my mouth once more, the threads in them might tear completely through. It will have to be my mouth, first. I bring my arms up to my lips, clumsy, cumbersome, and uncomfortable, but slowly my one claw begins gnawing away at the threads. It burns and stings, just like my legs. My teeth chatter.

I can reach all of these and I let my cry come out full force when the last one snaps free, opening my mouth wide and shrieking with absolute delight! It burns, I can taste blood on my tongue, but I can open my mouth again!

I let my tongue search my lips, keeping the green, slimy blood from running down my face, just for a few minutes, to catch my breath. I feel dizzy, my breath is shallow. The drug or the pain?

Without warning, my stomach twists in my belly. I roll over and heave, spitting up more bile and vomit, its rancid, sour taste burning the fresh, open cuts in my mouth. When I am finished and my eyes are throbbing against their threads and my stomach is empty, I lay panting on the ground, feeling the cool plants under my cheek, pinned under my ear. An insect crawls across my antennae and it tickles. I imagine the insect to be red with black spots as I prepare to free my legs and tail completely.

I bury my face in the ground, biting a mouthful of soil and plants and insect life. Then, as fast and hard as I can, trying not to flinch or slow down, I spread my legs and tail in three separate directions, jerking threads and bits of flesh, skin, fabric, and blood out of my legs and flinging them feet away. I scream in pain, the burning, stinging pain crawling up my legs and tail and coming out my mouth in a torrent of shrieking, lacerating mortal agony.

I bite the ground again, trying to swallow the dirt and plants, trying to drown the pain and feeling of blood seeping through my pants. I dry-heave, I shiver, my teeth chatter, and I whimper in pain, small sounds echoing out of my mouth because I have no more energy left to waste on screaming. My tears sting my eyelids, the torn skin with the laces rubbing my eyes raw on the inside.

I don’t know how long I lay here, panting and whimpering, my legs and tail throbbing, my wings, or the place where they should be, mercifully going numb. It could be mere minutes, it could be hours. I don’t know. I think I may finally have blacked out.

When I can move again, when I can feel my stitched-together fingers and blood-soaked toes, I find myself on my back, eyes shut, staring at the laced-up inside of my eyelids, panting. I am frightened. I am confused. I am haunted by thoughts that I do not yet want to think about until I get free.

I don’t know what I was doing in the water. I don’t know how my arms and legs and eyes and mouth got this way. I don’t know why I am here or…

I swallow hard. I need to finish getting free. I need to unstitch my arms and hands so that I can unstitch my eyes. Then, maybe then…I can find some answers. And I can go to sleep, real sleep, which will give strength to my weary bones and sinews, and have comfortable, blissful dreams.

Yes.

My tongue runs over my eyeteeth, feeling the slightly unfamiliar sharpness of my fangs. I feel as if I know these teeth, this tongue, as if I have felt them every day of my life, yet…it feels as if I am feeling them for the first time.

These teeth are sharp enough. I can scrabble at what I can’t reach with them with my feet, gnawing and clawing loose the threads that hold my hands together. Then I will unsew my eyes. Yes.

I force myself seated again, raising my arms in front of me. The stitches only run to my elbows, almost as far as they can go without spanning my chest. I can reach most of the inner ones with my teeth, I think, and then get the outer ones with my toes.

I shiver, my teeth still chattering from the pain and fear. I do not look forward at having to pull the stitches out of my flesh. Still, I have no choice.

I whimper softly and lower my blind head to my arms, feeling for the grove between them with my tongue and the rough, leathery threads. When I find a thread, I bite on it, using my canines to saw it through. I can feel it fraying in my mouth. It snaps and I move on to the next one, and the next one, as far as I can reach, twisting my hands around to reach the reads, wincing and whimpering when the threads pull.

When I bite more flesh than thread, I cry out and bring up one of my legs, moaning at the soreness and the cracking black-green scabs, thankful that only the inside of my legs were sewn together and not the individual toes, like my hands.

Carefully, I lift up my inner toe, biting back more tears and cries, and begin slicing at the threads holding the outside of my arms together. I scratch myself more than once, but I manage to cut them free.

I smile, but now comes the hard part: separating my arms.

The threads are cut, but still embedded in my flesh, untied, but still connecting my arms together. I have to do the same with them as I did my legs and tail, and it will hurt. A lot.

I take a breath, unable to take a mouthful of sand again. My tongue runs the stray pieces of grit around in my mouth and I gag, but I have nothing left to heave. I hold my breath and…PULL!

I scream again, shivering as I feel each thread come loose, the stray, bloody ends flapping against my bare arms. The sound echoes and reverberates, but I am oblivious to it, consumed by the searing, tearing pain, slicing its way up my arms.

I find myself on my numb back, stray throbs of heartbeat pumping to missing wings. I am shivering, shaking from head to toe, my teeth chattering and nausea filling my stomach and sinuses.

But I am free. I can move my arms and legs and tail independently. I am out of the water. And I can breathe.

Now I have to use my bloody, torn, and bruised fingers to oh so carefully slice through the threads in my eyelids and remove them, one by one, before they can do any more damage to my eyes. I can feel them scratching, itching, and crushing, nothing more than an insect walking up my arm in comparison to the throbbing of my back and bleeding legs, arms and tail.

But it is still going to hurt. And I might be blind, still, before my eyes heal. Assuming I’m not already…

Trembling, shaking, I take a few deep breaths, trying to steady my hands. It doesn’t work. But I still don’t have a choice. Feeling sick and using my right hand wrapped around my finger, trying to still it, I use my left index finger, prodding gently at the string, scratching at it.

I don’t know if this will work. If I claw too hard, I might damage my eyes even further. If I don’t claw hard enough, the strings may not come loose at all. Either way, I have to try.

I scratch a little harder, dropping my right arm. I feel the thread giving way under my sharp claw. I just have to pay attention for it to finally break free completely. And it does! So I move on to the next one, and the next one, mindful that my left eyelid now wants to open, and it’s watering and the laces are scratching at it worse than ever.

Finally, after what seems like years, I am working on the last known stitch in my body. I feel it come loose and, giddy with adrenaline, endorphins, and joy, I bring my hands up to my face and start threading the laces out of my eyelids, wincing when they scratch my eyes. I keep my right eye finished when the strings fall free, because I don’t want my left eye to accidentally open.

And then my left is free, too! And I can open my eyes once more! I laugh, a happy sound in my ears, so pleased that I am free and no long stitched together like a rag doll, that I forget my pain and my fear and my bewilderment. I am free! Free at last!

I open my eyes. For a moment I see…greenery, but the light! The light is so bright it sears my already-burning eyes. It sears across the multiple facets of my eyes, burning painfully right down to the optic nerves and muscles. Surprised, startled, and scared, I shut my eyes tightly and cover my face with my burning, bleeding, sore arms, whimpering and shaking, rocking back and forth.

So bright! So bright! Too painful! This is…this isn’t right. It shouldn’t be this way. It should be so bright!

The light burns my eyes as soon as I can see. I know nothing of how I got here or why, yet I awaken to find myself stitched together, arm to arm, leg to leg and tail. No one seems to be around to help, so I had to drag myself out of the water and then cut myself loose.

Is this some sort of cosmic joke!?

I shudder, I shiver, crying and weeping, not caring if it burns where the tears touch the open wounds that go all the way through me. I am frightened, a deep, penetrating fear like nothing I have ever known, I think, the bores deep inside me, eating away at my insides like a parasite. Every inch of my hurts, my mouth, my eyes, my arms and legs. I feel sick to my stomach, but there isn’t anything left in it to throw up. And I can’t see because the light is too bright.

I weep, a scream, I cry, drowning once again, but this time in my own misery. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what I am doing here. I don’t know…

Terror grips my hearts like a white-hot vice. I draw my arms and legs up to me, snuggling them close and wrapping my bloody tail around my waist, feeling the blood soak into new patches on my clothes.

It could be hours or years more that I lay here, shaking and crying, before my tears dry up. I sniffle, my lungs heaving, exhausted. I don’t know if I should stay here or go. With no wings, I can’t fly, but it won’t do any good until the sun goes down either way, because I can’t see.

But I do have my antennae. And I think they are dry enough now to work again. Bracing myself for more unexpected pain, I push the throbbing and burning in the rest of my extremities away and try to lift my antennae.

They lift! I can smell with them again!

I smell plants and animals. I smell insects and the water. I smell rain coming on the horizon, hidden by the bright sun!

I push myself seated again, supporting myself with my right arm. Tentatively, I reach my left back to feel my wings…or lack thereof. I feel jagged pieces of shorn wing material, sheared right off at the growth strips. I jump when I touch the exposed nerve endings.

Since the growth strip is left, they might grow back…I hope. Until then, I need to find food and shelter. I need to find medicine and bandages, soap and disinfectants to clean my wounds. I need to find answers!

Tentatively, timidly, I roll onto my hands and knees, lifting my antennae higher and spreading out the hair-like fibers to catch more information. I will have to rely on them, my ears, and my nose. I push myself onto my feet, stumbling slightly, moaning at my bloody sores, my shorn wings, all throbbing, and the sound of cracking scabs.

I turn my head back and forth, reluctant to move too much and aggravate my wounds if I don’t need to. I tune my antennae to temperature, looking for cool, dark spots where I might be able to see better. I find it, directly in front of me, smelling of plants and animals, smelling of life, and I start walking…stumbling.

It hurts to move. My muscles don’t want to function with the gouges torn out of them. Blood flows freely down my legs and arms and tail from reopened sores, half scabbed over. I have to try, though. I can’t stay in the open, not until I heal.

I follow the scents of life, the drop in temperature, my arms wrapped around my chest, hugging myself. I keep walking, blindly following my antennae, hoping to find cool, dark shelter. Shaking, I stumble and almost fall, but I manage to catch my balance.

Then I bump into something hard.

My sore, bloody hands feel its rough surface. It is taller than me, round, and small enough for me to hug and be able to touch my wrists on the other side. It branches out almost eye-level with me, into smaller and smaller branches, like a…

It’s a tree!

I smile, happy to feel the tree. I reach out next to me—wincing, but smiling—and feel the one next to it. It’s a forest! Full of trees! And it will be darker further in, and I can stay the rest of the day in the tree, until night falls and I can find a gathering!

I smile again, putting both throbbing arms in front of me, and keep walking, deeper and deeper until my antennae tell me that it is dark enough for me to open my eyes. I cannot describe to you what I see. Brown, rough-barked trees with thin, green leaves like needles (which I think I have developed a dislike for). There are large trees with leaves shaped like elongated hands, flowers springing up from the leaf-strewn ground! There are small, feathery animals perched in the trees, chirping and singing merrily, and small, furry creatures with long, bushy tails darting back and forth!

I smile at the peaceful seen, the sunlight dappling through the trees in a broken pattern. I watch the animals sing and play, happy to be seeing anything! Then, when my legs start to shake and I feel like they will not hold me anymore from pain and fatigue, I select a good-sized tree with a limb low enough for me to climb into, shaped perfectly, as if it was there waiting for me, in a curve like a seat. I crawl up into it, my bare feet supporting me as I squat, my left arm on the branch and right on the trunk. It’s a painful, uncomfortable position, but I will soon be asleep and won’t notice.

As I begin to drift off again to the welcoming, pillow-blackness, I realize a thought that I hadn’t wanted to think of before, that makes my blood run hot:

I don’t remember who I am. I don’t even remember what I look like!