TETHERED (Unpublished)

Asphalt, blood, murmuring voices, sirens, and searing pain are the only things occupying Marcus’s senses as consciousness slips through his fingers. Marcus  makes a final attempt to reach for Stephanie’s hand across the pavement, warm with blood and September sun. Their hands touch. He clutches her cocoa   butter   smooth palm, methodically caressing its familiar contrast to his life-worn paws.  There’s wetness from a canyon-sized gash in her hand accompanied by a shard of glass that pricks his finger as he blindly attempts to examine it. The sun beats down, baking the smeared blood across his face that  cracks like dry paint as he rubs it clear from his eyes. Tired of fighting, he gives in and blacks out.

Darkness envelopes him. Just the blurring of lights and faces then utter blackness. Childhood images and memories flash through his mind like a highlight reel. Then nothing. Just a silk-like pitch-black existence at the core of this suffocating and stifling helplessness. He floats amongst the empt y , numb to everything other than a growing burn  in his chest. Suddenly, a blast from what sounds like muffled trumpets blare  in his ears accompanied by a booming voice ,  shouting at him. Inaudible words make the ground tremble and his ears feel as if on the verge of bursting. He clutches his head and tightly shuts his eyes, trying to hold it together until suddenly H e springs upright, finding himself in his bed.

Wide-eyed and startled, he attempts to consume all the oxygen from  his cramped flat . With a sigh of relief, he wipes the sweat from his face and swings himself over to the side of the bed, s kootching  himself upright. He slowly stands, feeling the soreness of his back as he leans forward and pushes off his knees, then tumbles on his half-awake legs to the bathroom. The world swims around, feeling almost as if it’s passing him by a half-inch each second he’s on his feet. He sips on water from the sink and washes  the crusted blood  from his nose  he assumes is from a nosebleed. A sudden shudder of realization hits as pain shoots through his legs and fires off in his brain. He grips his thighs but doesn’t feel them respond. The question bounces around his skull as he slowly collapses.

The shock of hitting the ground jolts him awake. Stiff hospital bed sheets, a heart monitor, stale and sterile air, and tubes crisscrossing his body have overtaken his senses as he catches a glimpse of the nubby remnant s  of his right leg. In shock, he covers it up with the sheet.

“This isn’t happening,” he whispers, almost whimpering. “I’m still dreaming man. I just gotta wake up.”

He shakes his head and smacks his face. “Wake up, wake up, wake up .” H e keeps repeating,  as he pinches himself ,  bites his tongue, trying anything to break out of this nightmare. He takes a deep breath in, trying to calm his shaky hands, and as he exhales ,  he slowly pulls the sheet away. His body shudders. He wad ’ s the sheet into a tight ball as his anger builds. On the verge of exploding, he releases, chucking the waded sheet  across the room. Tears stream down his face. He tries to scream, but no sound escapes.

“It happened. It’s all real .”   H e whispers through his strained voice.

Amid his sobbing, he hears what sounds like a voice whisper his name. H e darts his eyes around the room,  dimly lit by the  moonlight trickling in through the break between the curtains. He hears the voice again  and shooting glances at each corner, hoping for a hint of where she is. He tries to speak her name through the breathy, haggard croaks of his voice. He notices the vacant bed next to him. Pillows and bed sheets in a neat  and  tidy pile of false hope. The tears roll as he thinks of life with her gone. “It’s all my fault ”  he sob . “She’s gone and it’s all my fault.”