Untitled Novel – Part 10

Please read parts 1-9 first 🙂

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

She woke with a start. Another nightmare. The doctors must surely be told today…She had dreamt that she had been kidnapped, the voices had come back (the ones from long ago). Bringing back memories of scary trees, knives, and…a mixture of something else too that was somewhat soothing.

She closed her eyes tightly, wishing it would all go away. She had a feeling in her chest (in school, she had learned it was called “fear”) that wouldn’t go away. To her knowledge, the others did not “feel” things, and she was afraid of being different. No – “afraid” was the wrong word… what had she learned in school again? Concerned. That was it. And being concerned was a negative attribute because that meant things might not be orderly – might not be perfect as The Collective ought to be.

It was still dark, and the moonlight was streaming in through the only window in her dorm. She had been assigned a solitary dorm a few weeks ago when the medication had stopped working.

Medication! She had forgotten all about the new pills the doctor had given her today. Was that today? She couldn’t remember anymore…she couldn’t remember how she had gotten back to her dorm either. The last thing she recalled was leaving the doctor’s office and walking along the water – then things went dark and now she was here.

Sighing, she shifted her weight and turned on to her side to avoid looking directly at the moon. It was making a pattern on the dorm floor as it shone through the bars on the window. Something on her neck tingled and she froze. Slowly, as if in slow motion, she moved her fingers up to her neck and gasped. There was something fastened around it. Something she knew hadn’t – no, couldn’t have – been there before. Hastily, she grabbed it and pulled it off her neck. She felt the pressure of a string snap on the back of her neck as she pulled it into the light where she could examine it.

She wrinkled her forehead. It was unlike anything she had learned about in school. Just a single pearl attached to a leather string. Someone had placed it around her neck…probably while she was sleeping.

“Perhaps…” She whispered. “the dream was real?” Fear stabbed her heart as her head started pounding with searing pain.

“NO!” The Voice shouted. “DO NOT listen to the other voices!” There were other voices? What voices? She asked The Voice in her head. “There is ONLY The Collective!” She tried to accept The Voice, to fully give in, but something deep in the back of her mind prevented it and the headache intensified to the point where she started screaming.

“Make it stop!” She sobbed, clutching her ears. She felt something sticky, pulled her hand back into the light, and realized her ears were bleeding.

“DESTROY the pearl!” The Voice demanded. The girl shrieked in pain again and started searching through hazed and heated vision for the pearl, which she had dropped on the ground somewhere when the headache started. “FIND IT NOW!” The Voice screamed over and over – every time sending a new and more severe sense of pain into her brain and down her spine.

Finally, she gave up, curled up in a ball on her dorm floor, screaming at the top of her lungs. All sense of time was lost, but eventually, she blacked out.

Sunlight was streaming through the branches of the tree Katrina was perched in. She wished Jason got up early enough to watch the sun rise with her – even at least once. Particularly, she enjoyed watching the colors mix and dance, seemingly better each and every day, as the sun arrived to welcome a new day. It was her quiet time, her time of peace.

Absentmindedly, she fiddled with the necklace around her neck. A single pearl fastened to a leather string. Jason had given that to her as a present the day they had been sworn in as partners. She had given him a necklace with a small agate instead of a pearl on the same day. It was part of the ceremony.

She sighed. Honestly, if there weren’t chores to attend to soon, she would have stayed up there all day. It was looking to be a promisingly good day.

Suddenly, her head started to hurt slightly, and she frowned. What was wrong? The world was starting to go dark around her and fear started to creep in.

With a shriek, a young girl in her dorm was kneeling in the dirt, staring at a shattered pearl. Her head instantly stopped pounding.

“Excellent work.” The Voice soothingly cooed. Exhausted, the girl sank to the floor and passed out.

Until Next Time,
Hope Frances

Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash