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I felt... A sharp pain, I knew exactly what had just happened, I knew what I was risking. I felt horrible for what I did. I wasn’t thinking much. I originally wanted to go back to earth but that would mean seeing my family... And seeing my family would mean I wouldn’t be able to see my friends. Andrias must have known something was up, he was able to wriggle out my every thought over Flipwart. I should have been smarter. I should have seen it coming. I should have known, when he offered a way for me and my friends to stay together, it was a lie.
I tried telling them my thought process. The looks on their face burned into my eyes. I realise now. I should have realised before. All I can hear is ‘Come on Marcy, you’re smarter than this.’ Although maybe that’s not my voice, maybe it’s my family’s that’s been drilled into me. Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore. I just knew I had to try to make it right. Andrias and I had done enough, I had to get them back home. He would have killed Anne if I didn’t. He would have done what he did to me to her. She doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve any of this... I Do. After everything, it feels like life catching back up with me. What I caused. I caused so much pain for everyone else, but for me it caused happiness. Newtopia was a dream, I had friends, a family, people who got me. Or at least, people I thought got me. It was all another stupid lie. The hurt got me all at once… I said what I could. Apologising for what I could and sending Anne home. Fixing what I could straight away before it went dark.
It went dark. And then everything went cold, really cold. No warmth anywhere. Not even from me. I felt surrounded and claustrophobic but at the same time… I felt nothing. I couldn’t move. Then, flashing. Memories or experiencing life, I couldn’t tell anymore. I saw… Newtopia back when I first fell down those stupid stairs. I saw the newts I was trying to get into creatures and caverns. I thought I had just been in a bad dream. And I woke up. And I was just living life again… But that wasn’t true because then I saw something. I’m still not too sure what it was to be clear, and I usually know what most things are. It was orange. Very descriptive Marcy. It was staring right at me. I felt like it was looking directly into my soul, seeing my every memory, hearing my every thought and then... Hot. It was all I could feel. The cold disappeared into thin air. I felt...Fire running through me. It wasn’t anger or rage or fear. It felt like genuine, straight up fire.
Once again everything went dark. Darker than dark. I presumed it was death. Death used to be the one thing I thought I didn’t know much about. Ironically I was very wrong about that. And here I was now. It wasn’t cold anymore. It wasn’t hot either. There was just… Nothing. No memories, no thoughts, no sounds, no movements. It was sort of calming after a while.
Movement wasn’t something I expected to feel again. I wasn’t sure whether it was because someone else was moving me or because I hadn’t moved in a while that I felt stiff and stuck and I heard cracking. It slowly started getting warmer again but I still couldn’t move. I thought about it for a while and realised that I felt disconnected from my body. I couldn’t understand why. I’d been in the same place for a long time, of course, I was still there and I was moving so I definitely wasn’t dead. As it got warmer and warmer, I could start to feel my eyes opening, but once again I wasn’t doing anything.
As my eyes started opening my only thought was Anne and Sasha. Had they stupidly come back for me even after all I’d done? Even though I thought it was stupid I kind of wish they had. It wasn’t them. I wish it was someone I’d feel safe around, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t... anyone. I thought I was alone… but there was this… this voice in my head. I couldn’t hear what it was saying per se… but I felt it and… I guess I thought it too. It’s like it was using me to think. I knew what It wanted, I knew how it felt. And it knew what I felt. It knew what I wanted, It knew everything... How? My eyes had been looking straight forward up until now. I couldn’t move them. But suddenly, they shifted.
My heart started racing. I wasn’t able to move. That was not me moving. I started panicking but I couldn’t hyperventilate. I wasn’t being moved earlier, I was moving me… but it also wasn’t me. It was that thing that was here with me in my head. It was moving me. I had control of myself. I’d lost control of my own body. I felt like a puppet on strings. Being watched by everyone in a performance, being put into a part you didn’t sign up for. The puppet master controls all. And I knew exactly what it wanted.
It was at this moment I decided that I’d rather have been killed back there because whatever was about to come next was not going to be good. I was going to have to watch myself try to kill my friends, and my friends weren’t going to understand, they would probably hold back on themselves because of whose body it was. I was going to feel every ounce of pain inflicted on me and them but I was not going to be able to do anything. I was going to have to sit and watch eyes wide open, unable to look away. I was going to have to hurt my friends… all over again. The best way I could describe it is like a self-driving car. A car that you’re strapped and bolted into, you cannot leave. And you have to watch it try and run over your friends, but no matter how much you try and grab the wheel or rewire the system, you cannot gain back control.
It’s funny isn’t it, one moment you think you have all the control… and the next?
You have none.
And you won’t have any for a . Very. Long. Time.