Take Me Back

He was selfish, she thought. Purely selfish as she clung to his leg and buried her face against him. He was perfectly still; head tilted back, arms raised to the heavens. She had clung to his torso earlier, and he didn’t move. Eventually her sobs over took her and she slunk to the ground, still clinging to what she could.

“Don’t leave,” she whispered. Desperate.

He didn’t respond, just stare blankly at the sky with an odd smile gracing his lips. She didn’t know the euphoria that coursed through him, in complete contrast to her misery. She didn’t know harp string voices tickled his ears and whispered lovingly to him. She couldn’t feel the warmth he felt, the tug at his chest and pull at his wings.

“Take me back,” he shouted.

“No! Don’t leave me!” She screamed.

But he didn’t hear her. He couldn’t hear her. All he could hear were those voices, whispering, “Yes, yes come to us.”

“No,” she whimpered, clinging tighter as he started to lift off the ground. “No!”
She clung to him as securely as she could, standing when he lifted higher and higher. Eyes darted up to him frantically as she started to lose her grip, as he lifted from her. Soon they were inches apart, and she was reaching up, grabbing at the empty space just beneath his foot. “No!”

He lifted into the sky, arms lowering to his sides as he propelled upward. He didn’t see her sink to the ground. He couldn’t hear her sobs, her calls to him, her pleas for him to stay with her. All there was was that feeling. That joyful bliss that called him forward. It was all he wanted, that bliss. To kiss the heavens with dry lips and a whole heart, to cry no more. To grieve no more. To have… her.
He came to himself quickly, realizing the beam that had seemed to surround him and pull him upward were really hands and arms, grabbing and pulling, trapping him in a unnatural fleshed prison. “Wait!”

He cried, looking for her, searching for her. But he was so far from her. His heart fell the moment he saw her, hunched over, and curled into herself as if for protection. He could barely see how badly she trembled, but now. Now he could hear her cry. It tore at him. “Please,” he whispered against the arms that continued to tug him upward, since he couldn’t fly any more.

The voices sang to him, laughed at him, and taunted him. His eyes widened when he saw fingers poke through the ground around her, grabbing at air. More and more hands, arms, like those that pulled at him, only the arms that surrounded her were overshadowed. They were thin and bony. He heard her scream, and screamed in return, lurching forward against the arms that held him fast. “No! Leave her go!”

His cries sent her gaze upward. Tear stained and raw with emotion she stared, feeling hands tug at her, feeling the ground give way. “Oh… oh no,” she whispered. Eyes whitened and her head lulled back. She fell into those arms, the cruel looking appendages cradling her like a child, tugging her downward.

Soon she was out of sight, and he fought harder against the unnaturally strong arms around him.
It was then he realized something. He fought hard against the exhaustion that started to overwhelm him. He fought to remember. He walled his realization to block it from the voices in his head, they cried in anger and pounded at his mental barriers. This was how they got to him before. This was how he let them take over him. He wouldn’t let them have this, because as long as he had this one thing, he could get her back.