Fanon:Spectral: Part Two: Difference between revisions

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Embry!”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">My eyes open lazily. I blink but someone’s jabbing me in the side.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Wake up!”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">Adrienne’s voice. My vision focuses. I force my mind to concentrate and not drift back into unconsciousness.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">I push myself up. I feel dampness between my fingers and recoil from the ground and shake my arm, which is soaked. I look around frantically. I can hardly see her, only the blazing beam from her cell phone.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“What the hell!” I exclaim, standing upright. Adrienne gazes at me, eyes wide.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“What happened?”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“I don’t know! Where the hell are we?!”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">Adrienne locks her fingers behind her head, weaving them through her knotted hair. She exhales slowly. “Gilded Hills,”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">It’s the first time I’ve heard her call it by its actual name. She turns and we stare at each other. Even ''her'' eyes are afraid.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">It is pitch black out. Crickets drone in the distance, and the scent of moss and woodsmoke is heavy in the air.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Dri…”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“I – we – let’s go.”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">I nod.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">Shivering and rubbing my elbows, I follow the light of her phone illuminating headstones and the worn, overgrown paths. We’re far beyond the pretty face for tourists. This is the hidden boneyard.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">That’s a bit of an overstatement. Adrienne says she woke up lying across a flat gravestone, while I had been sprawled over a grave. We walk silently through the quiet lot.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“The grass was black all around you,” She shudders. “Like it was charred. Before I saw you, I thought I was dreaming. I was literally clutching the tombstone, my fingernails digging into the ground around it.”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">She looks sickly. Her pallor is practically transparent, her face hollow and her dark eyes sunken. I realize this is one of few moments where I have seen Adrienne completely terrified, the first being the fire…

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“I…thought you were dead, Bry. You looked so pale, I can’t…I wouldn’t have seen you if it weren’t for this distant light I saw…You were nearly fifty feet away from me…I had to drag you off the burnt grass…”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">Suddenly, I’m overcome with a sense of emptiness. Adrienne screams and I feel my body strike the ground.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“A…dri…enne…” I hear, as though over some great distance, my own voice.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">Bright white light burns my eyes: and then, powerful darkness.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">In the dim light, I make out stone arches stretching dozens of feet over my head. Candlelight flickers in a single corner, where I see a young woman’s back turned to me.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">She turns around, grinning at me over her shoulder. Long blond hair cascades down her back, contrasting against her dark skin. She holds a matchbook.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Embry. I thought I might see you.”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Ophelia.” I say, staring into her green eyes.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“I would run, Alder.”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“BRY!”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">I snap awake. My head spins and thoughts and sights and sounds can’t connect in my mind for a few moments. Adrienne is hysterical. I hear her voice, sobbing in my ear. Bright red, like flames, spatters over my vision, and my confusion blasts through my head, like a numb headache.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Dri…” I mumble, blinking over and over, trying to see, but something is stinging my eyes and I squeeze them shut, trying to expel the dryness. My arms aches, my shoulder being pulled at. My body is being drug across the damp grass.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">I taste smoke.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Bry! Bry!” Adrienne is coughing and gasping, shaking me profusely. “Help!” I hear her scream. “Gilded Hills Cemetery! Fire! Hurry!”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">A cell phone beeps as someone disconnects a call.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Bry!”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">My eyes roll back.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">Flames.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">“Bry! We have to run!”

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">Flames are dancing across my eyelids.

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<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in"><span style="font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"">A single earth-shattering, bone crushing ''CRACK! ''explodes throughout the universe. Bits of sand brush my eyelashes.

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