Til Death Do Us Part

34

The gentle swish, swish, of something outside of my consciousness brings me around, and warm fluttering heat that seems to be growing over my back, heels, skull, and legs, as my limbs tingle back to life, and I start to cough. Not warm enough to heat my lifeless corpse and the inner block of ice that is my organs.

My body wracks with the sudden c***k of a violent choking fit that fully wakens me because it hurts like hell as though there’s a fire in my lungs. My eyes flutter open, through the hazy fog of a headache that’s awful, to the point I’m nauseous with it, and my body feels like it doesn’t belong to me.

My fingers flinch of their own accord, and the sudden sensation of smooth yet also rough and damp textured balls pull my eyes to where I can feel it. Blinking, fluttering my lashes until my hand comes into focus, and I realize it’s laid on gravel and sand, mixed. Wet, shiny, tiny stones and pebbles smothered in grittiness. My fingertips are dirty as it sticks with clinginess to my wrinkled skin, clogged under my nails. I groan out loud and make to move my head.

I shift my shoulders and roll, coughing once more, bringing up water and phlegm, and the metallic taste of blood that follows makes me gag. I have intense hunger pangs and all-over body aches. My belly is aching and cold with the damp surface I seem to be lying face down on, also bumpy and textured, and yet it helps bring back sensation to the heavy body I couldn’t feel a moment ago.

It takes a minute to come around and get my bearings fully. The dull light of the sun coming up and warming my frozen bones back from death, and yet I can’t move properly at all. My hair tugs as I incline my head. A yank and pull makes me groan feebly, and I sink back to my previous position with no energy to do more. My skull is unbearably sensitive.

I lie here and look around me. Seeing an expanse of more of the same terrain in my line of vision, and although I can’t see it from this position, I can hear the lapping of the water washing up on the shore. The swoosh of the sea behind me is low like a hum and not invasive at all because my hearing is messed up with waterlogged eardrums. It gently tickles my left foot as it comes closer, and I cringe. It’s all I can manage.

I’m not in the water anymore, and it seems to be pushing to dawn as a tide comes in with the threat of washing me away. I’m disoriented, yet my consciousness starts flooding back at speed, remembering everything, and I try again to get up.

Everything hurts. And my lungs are struggling, fighting the weight of my limbs. I manage to drag my knees under me in a bent-over position and feel my way with my fingers into my hair on the back of my head to rip myself free of the branches that are holding me captive. I lose handfuls of hair and hurt my hands in the process. The tree that saved my life is wedged up behind me and seems to have dragged me ashore at some point while I was passed out cold.

If the tide is coming in again after depositing me here, it means it’s been hours since I crashed Jyeon’s car. If memory serves me right from high school, it means I’ve spent at least twelve hours out here, if not more. I slept through an entire cycle of the sea.

That fact hits me right in the face, and I sit up weakly, pushing myself with great effort onto my knees and gaze around in disbelief. I must have hit my head hard to have been able to lie here all that time and not have any awareness about what was happening to me. I don’t know how I’m not dead. I feel like I might be though.

It seems to be a beach of sorts, with a back wall of sparse forest in front of me and no real signs of civilization. It’s a cove in a little arched and shaded area where I can’t see around the curve. Out towards the sea, it’s foggy and conceals anything out there from sight with muggy weather and a threat of rain. All the eye can see is just open water with the possibility of mountains in the mist. I don’t know which direction I came from as the view offers no hints at where my city is; it’s too unclear a day. It feels cut off, like a deserted island, and I’m all alone. My lip trembles with the sudden sense of hopelessness.

I’m too messed up physically to begin to dissect emotions, and the fatigue and grogginess combined are like being drunk. I’m aware I’m not really in my right frame of mind, and my senses are muffled even fully awake. I touch my forehead impulsively and find caked and gritty blood and sand covering most of it, tracing up to a massive lump in my hairline and getting too scared to feel any further. If I have a caved open skull, I’d rather not know about it.

I navigate my limbs with a little success and manage to get to my feet, using the tree as support while wobbling and collapsing twice before I get there. It takes a crazy amount of effort. My skin is so icy cold I have a tint of blue to my tone, and all the cuts, grazes, and bruises from my fight with Claire and this accident litter my entire naked skin like fake Hollywood makeup. I can see them, but nothing hurts noticeably because my whole body aches as one solid entity.

I know I can’t stay here. My throat is parched, and despite the chill and knowing by touch that my body is like ice, I feel suffocatingly hot and feverish. I have waves of dizziness. I drag my feet across the pebbles in the direction of the treeline, knowing that getting away from the water and the sea breeze is the wisest move for now.

I’m stabbed and scratched with every step of bare feet, but I walk mindlessly on, my arms hanging by my side and my head bobbing around as though my neck can’t support it. I have no plan but to go through the motions of instinct to try and find help.

The terrain changes under my soles as I leave the pebble shore to walk through between well-spaced spruces is worse on my skin. Twigs and debris make me stop every few steps from rubbing them off and ‘ssss’ through my teeth at the blood from being stabbed. I wipe it down my already filthy and sodden pale pink camisole dress and keep moving. I don’t feel right, barely holding it together and I might have survived that ordeal, but I could still die of exposure, or maybe being wounded in ways I’m not even aware of. Knowing that I have to find help soon or I won’t last much longer.

I walk in a zombified state for God knows how long, with no sense of time, and I think I zone out repetitively as I suddenly flinch, and my surroundings seem different to a moment ago. It happens at least ten times before I lose count. I wonder if it’s a concussion and have no concept of how long they are lasting; impressed that my legs keep going even if my brain doesn’t. Pushing onwards as the sun climbs higher in the sky and starts to bring some warmth back to parts of me I couldn’t feel before. The trees are not shaded together enough to block it out, and I welcome the slight comfort of its kiss.

It feels like hours, my legs weary, and I stumble so many times, falling, that I hurt my palms and elbows and end up even more cut up than before, but the will to keep going won’t let me stop. All the money and power in the world can’t do a damn thing for me now, and all I have is myself and the strength I know I possess to keep going. I was never a quitter, never someone who would lay down and die.

I don’t know how many miles I walk inland, probably not as many as it seems, although it’s pretty endless when I hear the noise of a truck up ahead, and my head snaps up as I try to focus through the lines of trees ahead of me. Surrounded on all sides by them. My heart lurches in my throat when I spot a large dark blue arctic truck drive horizontally across my line of vision about fifty feet ahead. I squint at it to be sure what I’m seeing is real, pausing in my journey. My pulse races and I get a renewed zap of life at the realization I’m near people. I’m not stuck on some uninhabited minor island god knows where. I just saw an actual truck, and civilization, help may not be far away.

I break into a run, losing all weightiness, and throw caution to the wind. Hurting my feet, legs, and arms as I’m clawed by tiny twigs and branches which try to capture me and rip me back, and crunch over stones and all sorts, but my head is on what I saw. I’m so ecstatic that I stifle a sob as tears blind me. I don’t feel the pain of the new wounds I’m inflicting on myself as only the swelling joy in my heart fuels me.