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Scarlett

E verything is hazy, a swirl of white and distant murmurs that pull at the edges of my consciousness.

I try to swim up through the fog, but it’s like moving through quicksand. My body is too heavy, and the world around me is too unyielding.

My eyelids flutter open, and the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital room stabs at my eyes, making me wince. I’m here, but I’m not really here, my body is a prisoner to the drugs coursing through my veins.

I turn my head slightly and the movement sends a wave of nausea rolling through me.

Yet, through the drug-induced haze, I see them; Vincent and Alex. Standing at the foot of my bed, their voices low, their words a tangled web of conspiracy that I can’t quite grasp.

Vincent’s voice is tense, a sharp contrast to the casual indifference he usually wears like a second skin. “…we need to be smarter this time. Much smarter. We almost lost everything. It was pure luck and nothing more that saved our arses...”

His words don’t make sense to me, but they trigger a sense of dread that coils in my stomach.

What did we almost lose? I want to ask, but my tongue feels too big for my mouth, my throat constricted by the weight of my confusion.

As I listen, I try to move. It feels like I’ve been here, in this bed so long that I’m stuck to the mattress.

But the instant I attempt to shift my weight, a searing pain shoots up my leg, and a cry escapes my lips before I can stop it. The sound is foreign to my ears, a desperate, animalistic noise that seems to echo in the sterile room.

Instantly, Alex is at my side, his face a mask of concern. “Scarlett, my love, you mustn’t move.”

His voice is soft, soothing, but there’s a tightness around his eyes that betrays his worry. He takes my hand in his, his thumb stroking my skin in what I suppose is meant to be a comforting gesture.

I look up at him, my mind awhirl with questions.

Why am I here?

What happened to me?

But when I try to speak, the words dissolve into nothingness. My throat is dry, and my tongue feels heavy, like it’s been coated in cotton, lathered in some thick substance that won’t ever come off.

“Wwwater.” I manage to gasp.

He’s quick to grab me a cup, lifting it to my lips, allowing me to slowly drink. I never thought such a thing would taste that incredible, and I gulp it down so greedily that it drips over my lips and down my chin.

Alex dries it off with his sleeve, replacing the beaker before he once more takes my hand. “Thank god you’re awake.” He says like he didn’t believe I’d ever wake up.

“What, what happened?” I don’t remember anything. I don’t know how I got here. Where even am I? What hospital is this?

Alex leans in closer, his gaze piercing through the fog that shrouds my thoughts. “You were in an accident, love. You’re in the hospital. You have a broken leg, and there’s...there’s been some damage to your brain. You hit your head really hard.”

His words are like a puzzle, each piece falling into place with a sense of finality that chills me to the bone.

An accident? Brain damage?

The concepts are alien, detached from the reality I’m struggling to piece together.

I stare at him, searching for some recognition, some thread of truth that I can hold onto, but there’s nothing. Just the unsettling feeling that I’m adrift in a vast, empty sea, being thrown from wave to god awful wave.

“Memory loss,” Alex continues, his voice barely above a whisper. “The doctors say it might be temporary, but for now, you might find things...confusing.”

Confusing is a fucking understatement.

My mind is a canvas wiped clean. The colours and shapes of my past have been reduced to indistinct blurs that all merge into one chaotic mess.

I want to remember, to claw my way back to the person I was before this moment, but every time I reach for a memory, it slips through my fingers like smoke.

I glance over at Vincent, who’s watching our exchange with an unreadable expression. His presence here is a puzzle in itself. Why would Vincent be in my hospital room, discussing plans and strategies with my husband?

Has something happened with their business too? Or does he have a more sinister reason for being at my bedside?

Maybe the drugs are playing tricks on me, because none of it feels right.

There’s a dissonance to the scene unfolding around me, a sense that I’m missing crucial pieces of the puzzle. But every time I try to focus, to grasp at the threads of clarity, the pain in my leg flares up, a stark reminder of my current state.

Alex sits beside me, his hand never leaving mine.

He talks to me in gentle tones, telling me that everything will be okay, that he’s here for me, that we’ll get through this together.

But his words are just background noise, a distant hum that fails to penetrate the wall of confusion and fear that envelops me.

I close my eyes, trying to shut out the world, trying to find some semblance of peace in the chaos that has become my life. But even with my eyes closed, the darkness is not a refuge.

It is a void, a chasm that threatens to swallow me whole.

It’s a lie.

All of it.

I wake with a jerk, with such force it feels like every piece of me has chosen violence.

My eyes can’t seem to focus. My head feels like I’ve smashed it repeatedly into a wall.

I can see his face, my father’s face. How it’s morphed into something awful, something horrific.

“Daddy.” I scream the word, the name. I’m not meant to say it. Not meant to speak it. That was part of the agreement, part of the deal. He’s dead. He’s gone. That is what the world thinks, that is what the world believes.

And I am trapped here, locked away, waiting until they kill me.

But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to…

I spring from the bed like a thing possessed.

Help me, daddy. Help me.

Only, he can’t help me. No one can. I came here, I agreed to this… no. I’m not even meant to think of it. To acknowledge it to myself. This was the plan. This was what we agreed. It is necessary. Necessary.

But I can’t do it. I can’t do this. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be here. To let him and his father do what they’re doing. To pretend that I’m this docile, stupid, idiot. I don’t want to. I don’t…

My body feels like it weighs a ton, and yet is as light as a feather all at the same time. I have a pounding headache that makes it hard to even think, but that quickly dissipates into such a feeling of weightlessness that nothing seems to matter.

The air that felt so stale suddenly tastes fresh. The dull light feels like it’s full of crystals, all sparkling and spinning.

My feet move. My body moves with them.

I open doors, I spring from one staircase to another with no care for where I end up. How I don’t break my neck I don’t know, but I’m also not feeling fear. It’s like that emotion has been torn from my consciousness.

And then I’m outside. Gravel bites into my feet. That stormy wind swirls around me and I dance with it, I entwine myself with it. I become it.

Laughter fills my ears. I don’t know if it’s my own or someone else’s, but it’s there like a song, beckoning me onwards.

I’m running, racing, chasing after the sound that’s echoing in my head.

Everything feels light, dreamlike, as if gravity has loosened its hold.

My feet barely seem to touch the ground as I twirl along the cliff-top edge, arms outstretched. The rough stones beneath my bare feet register as distant sensations, like echoes from another world that I no longer have to care about.

The waves crash far below, their roar mixing with my laughter.

I’m flying, soaring, untethered.

The setting sun paints everything in an orangey hue, and the sea mist seems to dance with me, swirling in patterns I’ve never seen before.

My skin tingles with electricity, every nerve ending feeling truly alive for the first time in forever.

I pirouette precariously close to the edge, but the drop below might as well be a soft pillow, the sharp rocks jutting from the beach could be flower petals. Nothing can hurt me in this ethereal state.

Salt spray catches my face as I twirl faster, my dress billowing around me like wings. The world spins in a kaleidoscope of colours - midnight blue sky bleeding into starlight, dark waters merging with clouds. I can’t tell where the sea ends, and the heavens begin anymore.

Time has lost all meaning. I could have been dancing for minutes, or for hours. Each moment stretches into infinity, then collapses into a heartbeat.

My blood feels like stardust in my veins, my bones hollow like a bird’s.

I swear I can see to forever, that before my eyes is the entire galaxy laid out.

The rational part of my mind is a distant whisper, drowned out by the symphony of sensations. There’s only the wind, the stars, the edge, and this glorious weightlessness carrying me through the night.

Something catches my eye - perhaps a shooting star, or maybe just a trick of my kaleidoscope mind. I chase it, feet skipping over jagged stones that should hurt but don’t. Each step sends little earthquakes of pleasure up my legs, like walking on clouds made of lightning.

The cliff edge beckons me closer, a lover’s whisper in the howling wind. I can taste the colours now - the navy darkness tastes of blackberries, the sunlight of orange mint.

My fingertips trace patterns in the air, leaving trails of ghostly light that linger for seconds or centuries.

A seabird’s cry pierces the mist, and I answer it with my own wild call. We’re kindred spirits now, the bird and I, both creatures of wind and sky. I imagine spreading my arms wider and rising up to join it, soaring over the obsidian waters below.

The thought makes me giggle, and the sound is carried away by the gusting wind.

My dress is soaked by the sea spray. It clings to my skin like a second soul.

Each heartbeat pulses through me in waves of golden warmth, spreading from my centre to my tingling extremities.

The ground beneath me feels less and less substantial.

The edge is my dance partner, and we waltz together in perfect, dangerous harmony.

Perhaps if I die here, if I die today then this at least would spare me more pain.

No, I don’t want to die. I don’t want…

But I don’t want to live either. Not like this. Not like this.

My feet stumble again. A loose rock makes me tilt forward and those waves come dangerously close to crashing down on me.

I’m not close to the edge now. I’m on it. Teetering. Caught between life and death.

One wrong step would mean falling, but falling feels like it would be just another kind of flying tonight.