The Darkness

"Ash. Can you hear me?"

Well of course I could hear him. He was right there, and I wasn't deaf. It was just... just... well my hearing was okay but it didn't seem as if my eyes and voice were doing so well. I tried to focus on him but my eyes seemed to keep sliding away and when I tried to tell him that I could hear him and could he please help me up because it was getting bloody uncomfortable on the floor, all that came out was a kind of strangled croak.

"It's alright, Ash. Just lie still for a moment. Help is on its way. We've called your parents."

Bloody hell. I got a bit scared then; not because of what had happened or the fact that there was definitely pain in my – well all over really – by now. No. It was those dreaded words. 'We've called your parents'. That was never good. That meant that in one way or another I was in deep shit and I couldn't for the life of me work out why. What had I done?

Someone was holding my hand and I was pretty damned sure that it wasn't the headmaster. "Jay?" My voice worked that time but it was very soft and I didn't think he would have heard, but he had.

"I'm here. I'm here, Ash. Oh God. Oh God why did this happen? Why you? Why you and not me? Oh God, I love you, Ash. Please, please be okay.

I wondered vaguely whether maybe he shouldn't be saying those things; here where people would hear, but hey – if he was cool with it then so was I.

I meant to say. 'I love you too. Don't worry I'm fine, it'll be okay.' But it came out as "Love... love you... okay." And I was surprised that it seemed to make Jay even more upset. I squeezed his hand and tried to smile but by then the darkness, which was still no more than an irritation, was coming in fast and the world contracted to Jay's face and then winked out.

I roused briefly to hear my mother's voice shouting at someone; clearly very upset and I obviously assumed that she must have been upset with me. I managed to mumble "Sorry." But then the anger turned soft and she leaned close, trying to smile. I tried to smile back but I was really just raising my head above the surface and almost immediately sank again.

After that there were brief impressions of voices and movement, which was really waking up the pain, before I let myself sink completely into the darkness which, at that time seemed like a friend.

The next time I was really aware of anything I was lying on something hard; curled on my side with cool cotton under my cheek; the smell of plastic, and the taste of vomit in my mouth. Someone was stroking my hair. At first it felt really nice and I just wanted to lie there and float in the sensation of the stroking. The darkness was still lurking at the corners of my mind but I really didn't care. It was soft and I wasn't afraid of it at all.

Someone was calling me. It seemed like they were a long way away, distorted somehow. "Ashton. Ashton sweetheart, can you hear me?" I didn't recognise the voice so I ignored it. "Come on sweetheart, open your eyes for me." I sighed and started to slide back towards sleep.

Someone took my hand and a shadow fell across my face. "Ash. Please wake up. I'm scared. Please." That voice, I did recognise although there was a strange note in it that bothered me. Jay was upset. Why was he upset?

With considerable effort I managed to open my eyes to be presented with a world of blurred shapes and colours.

"Ash; oh God Ash; I thought you were dead. Are you alright?"

"Easy now." The first voice said again, gently. "Let's give him a chance to come round a bit."

"I'm sorry. It's just..."

"I know honey, I know."

The hand started stroking my head again very gently. "There we go," the voice said softly. "Take it easy now. Just try to take some nice deep breaths until things settle down a bit."

I tried to do as she said but it was not a pleasant experience. For one thing it sent a stab of pain shooting through my chest and side which was not unbearable but still made me gasp. For another I realised that there was something covering my face and I panicked.

I tried to raise my hand to free myself but it wasn't happening. It took enormous effort to raise it a couple of inches. Instead I decided to turn my head to dislodge whatever it was that had made me feel so claustrophobic. I had a bit of a problem with that generally and in my confused state it was really notching up the panic by the moment.

"Ssh. It's alright sweetheart. I know it hurts but it'll be alright. Lie still now."

"No." I whispered and shook my head, my panic making me pant which hurt my chest, blurred my eyes and made me feel even more claustrophobic. I heard the voices speak again but I didn't know what they were saying because I was too focussed on the panic and the pain. And then suddenly I was free and Jay's face was right in front of me.

"Steady, Ash. Chill. Listen to me. Listen." Okay, I thought. Seems okay now. No more suffocation, No more... well okay, the pain was still there; in fact the pain was really bad but I could handle it. I could handle anything if Jay was there. I felt a cool hand on my face, the thumb stroking my cheek. I closed my eyes and smiled, turning my head slightly into the touch.

"Ash?" He sounded scared; so scared. I opened my eyes again, wondering what could have made someone as strong as Jay so scared. It must have been something bad. Was it hurting him? Is that what was hurting me?

"Jay?" When I looked at him he was smiling and that made me really confused. Was he scared or not? He looked scared still but he was smiling.

"It's okay, Ash. You scared me; that's all." I scared him? What did I do? "Ash babe, you need to listen to me. You're in hospital. It was that bastard Tommy Ray and his sick mates. They hijacked you – cowards! They hurt you, Ash – a lot; and I've been so scared for you."

Well that explains a lot. So maybe I wasn't in trouble after all. "You're going to be alright but you have some broken ribs." And that explains the pain. "You can't breathe properly right now because of your ribs. You can't breathe in all the way because it hurts too much, so you have to have oxygen to help you. I know you don't like it but you have to wear the mask, okay."

Hmm. Pretty much everything was explained now, but there are still a few things I needed to get straight. "No.... Talk...." Hell; that was weird. Speaking whole sentences but having only a few words actually come out was seriously strange. My mouth, I realised was really dry; my tongue practically sticking to the roof and feeling about five times too big. I tried to moisten it but all that happened was that it made me gag.

"Is your mouth dry sweetheart?" The nurse; at least by then I was assuming it was a nurse; said. "Hold on I'll just go and get you a sip of water."

I wasn't going to let a dry mouth hold me back though. "Why?" It was practically just a twitch of the lips but Jay understood. He shook his head.

"I don't know. You couldn't have done anything to them. Not that you would have. We were right behind you but by the time we got there it was pretty much all over. It looks like they came from behind you and slammed your head into the wall. When you fell down they kicked the hell out of you."

I frowned. Tommy Ray was one of Michael's friends. Had Michael done something and they were taking it out on me? Suddenly, I had a stab of fear. Michael; had they hurt him too?

"Michael."

Again Jay knew exactly what I meant. "It's okay, Ash. Michael's okay. I don't know why they came after you but Michael's fine. He was here but he's gone home now."

I nodded and smiled, relieved. "M... Mum... I... upset."

I never realised Jay had mindreading powers until then. "You didn't upset your mother, Ash. She's upset because you were hurt. At first you were right out of it and we didn't know... we didn't know if you were going to be okay."

"Oh."

"She's fine now we know you're going to be alright. She's just gone for a walk. We've been here for ages. They're waiting to take you for some x rays and scans and then you'll get a proper bed and you can rest."

"Rest?" What the hell else had I been doing? I nodded anyway. Then I groaned because the pain in my side seemed to be spreading to my stomach.

"Are you in pain?"

That had to be in the running for the stupidest question in the universe. I nodded and he leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.

"Better now?"

I shook my head and he looked alarmed for a moment but then he saw my smile and lit up. He kissed me again, on the nose.

"How about now?"

I shook my head again and then he kissed me properly. By this time I was able to raise my hand to stroke his face and hair. He raised his head and looked at me. I was starting to feel a bit strange. My chest was burning and there was a strange, metallic taste in my mouth. I was getting quite hard to breathe so I figured it was time to put the mask on.

"Hard... to... breathe." I managed to gasp out and Jay smiled.

"Well, if you hadn't been so stubborn about wearing the mask in the first place you wouldn't be suffering for it now would you?"

At first the oxygen helped but it didn't take away the weird pressure in my stomach and chest. At first it had only been on one side but by then it was all over and felt like someone was squeezing me from the inside. I was definitely feeling weird and the pressure was getting very uncomfortable. The more difficult it got to breathe; the more my chest heaved and the more the pressure and pain grew.

"Here you are sweetheart." The pleasant voice said close by. But then the tone changed. "Ash? Are you alright? Ash?"

"What's wrong?" Jay asked, sounding alarmed.

"How long has he been like this?"

"Like what?"

"Ash, are you with us sweetheart?"

I can't honestly say that I was at that point. I tried to say something but there was a really weird feeling in my chest and throat and it made me cough. Boy did that hurt. Everything was starting to feel as if it was rushing backwards; the whole world disappearing into the distance.

I heard the nurse calling me but it was far away. I coughed again and was shocked when my mouth filled with water. Where did that come from? Had the nurse given me a drink after all? I didn't like it; not at all because it made me start to choke and that made me panic.

"No. Ash don't. Pease don't. Don't die. Please Ash don't die."

Was I dying? It didn't make sense. Why? How? It's strange, the thoughts that go through your mind when you're dying; and I think, now, that at that point I was. It certainly wasn't the case that my whole life flashed in front of my eyes. All I could think of was that I'd never get to have proper sex with Jay. What can I say? I was a teenager with his first boyfriend and years of hormones suddenly kicking in. To say I had a one tracked mind would have been an understatement.

Much later I found out that what had happened was that one of my broken ribs had actually splintered. It hadn't shown up on the preliminary X-rays because it had splintered inwards. When I did my panicking freak out I'd managed to drive the rib into my lung which had proceeded to fill with blood. That's what caused the pressure in my chest. It was blood I'd coughed up before I passed out.

Apparently it was quite dramatic when the face mask filled with blood. And then I coughed again and it went all over Jay when he got too close as the nurse took the mask off. I was told he fainted but he vehemently denies it.

Oh and I forgot to mention that the whole situation was made a whole lot worse by the fact that I'd been bleeding into my abdomen the whole time. Yep, I think that at that point I was pretty much dead and the only thing I could think of was screwing Jay. I think the thoughts must have carried on after I passed out because I had some pretty vivid dreams.

And then the dreams faded and there was only the darkness; but this time it was scary. It seemed to push in on me from every direction and there were flashes of red everywhere. No matter which way I turned there was only darkness and those red flashes which kept coming at me like lightening bolts.

There was nothing I could do to avoid them; nowhere to run, nothing to hide behind; no escape. They came rushing at me; pulsing, blinding, screaming silently into my mind. They hurt me too. In a place where I had no body they hurt my soul. I was terrified; more scared than I have ever been.

I have no idea how long I cowered in the dark but gradually I became aware of something. There was a light ahead that hadn't been there before. At first it was dim, just a lightening of the darkness which was still not ready to let me go. But now I had a goal; something to work towards.

I can't say that it wasn't tempting to stay where I was. At least I knew I was safe there... kind of. I had no idea what I would find when I reached the light but I didn't care. I could have stayed there huddled in the darkness too scared to move. I could have waited until the darkness consumed me; and trust me it was trying. Fortunately, I was too curious and too stubborn. I had to move; had to do something and no matter what I found at the source of the light it couldn't be worse than the darkness.

As I walked towards the light I began to hear sounds far away in the distance. They seemed to be coming from the same direction as the light. That was the first time it occurred to me that I might be dead. Walk into the light? Fuck that. I'd walk towards it until I knew what it was but there was no fucking way that I was going to go anywhere unless it was back to Jay. No way I was giving up on that; on him.

So I trudged warily through the lightening dark. The red flashes seemed to be fading out: I was leaving them behind in the darkness as it faded into the light. As I grew nearer to the source of the light the sounds got louder. Some of them resolved into voices; strange ones that I didn't recognise, speaking a language I didn't understand.

And then; just when I thought I would find out what the light was all about, I fell. 'Oh shit' I thought as I plummeted downwards with a body that didn't exist, through space and time that wasn't there. I was pretty sure that I was dead and being sucked... somewhere. If I had had a voice I would have been screaming but it wasn't with fear. I was angry as hell.

And then – a moment of extreme disorientation and the light was there again except that this time it was coming from behind closed eyelids and I had a body again; my body. There were sounds all around me; voices talking in quiet tones, some I recognised, some I didn't; the sounds of footsteps, breathing, crying; strange mechanical clicking, whirring and beeping and over it all a deep rhythmic pulsing that I didn't recognise at all.

As I became aware of the sounds I also became aware of my body again. I was lying on my back with my head raised. I was hurting all over but not too badly. It was mainly a dull ache that made me well aware of its presence, but didn't make me want to scream. This was just as well because I wouldn't have been able to scream if I had wanted to on account of the great lump of plastic in my mouth that I was in danger of chipping my clenched teeth on.

I had a fleeting and somewhat ludicrous daydream that one day that piece of plastic and I were going to have a battle with my teeth as my army, and I was going to chew the thing to bits and spit it out. It wasn't that I particularly hated it, it was just... strange and I couldn't work out what it was and why it was there.

In fact I was generally confused and it took me a while to realise that the chunk of plastic wasn't just in my mouth making my jaw ache and teeth itch; but it went all the way down my throat. For a blinding moment there was complete and utter panic; but I was getting clearer and managed to drag myself away from the edge of the chasm. I knew where I was; I knew what was happening and I knew that if I was going to choke on the plastic I would have done so by now.

I was okay. I kept repeating that and focussed on the hiss and click of machinery that synchronised with the rise and fall of my chest. My throat relaxed around the tube and I stopped wanting to cough and choke. I was quite proud of myself when I managed to get calm and reasonably comfortable and I declared a temporary truce with the plastic.

That being resolved I extended my awareness to other parts of my body. I was fairly comfortable although it was quite hot even thought I was only covered by a thin sheet. I had a flash of embarrassment when I realised that I was naked underneath but that was ridiculous so I pushed it aside.

Someone was holding my hand, presumably my mother or Jay. I was slightly startled when my other hand seemed to rise from the bed of its own accord and something pressed against my wrist. Stupid. I was going to have to stop freaking out at everything. It was just a nurse taking my pulse. It would be a lot easier if I could see her.

I paused to take stock. Okay... I was obviously in hospital and just as obviously in deep shit. I noticed a sound that had been in the background for a while; soft crying and I realised that someone was upset because of me. That decided me that it was probably a good time to let everyone know that I was back. It was then that I made the scariest discovery of all – I couldn't move. Although I could hear and think quite clearly and I could feel ever ytouch, I couldn't move.

I started to panic in earnest. I was screaming inside and the darkness laughed at me. I heard someone speak, their voice urgent. The words 'in distress' were the only ones that filtered through. I heard Jay call my name and I tried; I really tried to answer him but I couldn't, goddamit; I couldn't. The strange throbbing intensified and the shocking realisation came to me that it was my own heartbeat.

And then the darkness came for me. This time I fought it. I was terrified of the dark place; the lonely place; the nothing place. Here, at least I had Jay. What if I didn't come back? What if I had to stay there alone in the darkness? Had all this just been to say goodbye? No way. No way was I going to say goodbye. I was going to get back to Jay no matter what. I was... I was...

It didn't matter how hard I fought; the darkness was relentless. It didn't fight back, it just gently but irresistibly took me away and then I was alone again. I raged and cried and begged but there was no one there; no one to hear.

Sometimes I heard voices. They seemed to be close; but not close enough to make out what they said. I always ran towards them but they always faded away in the end. Sometimes I felt I was too tired; too demoralised to run but as long as there was a chance they would lead me back to Jay I always followed.

And then; suddenly the light was there and I embraced it totally, throwing myself at it and falling as before.

This time there was no preliminary getting used to things slowly; I was totally and completely 'there' and the first thing I was aware of was someone crying; no sobbing. Jay? I wanted to reach out, just touch his hand to let him know that I was okay; to make some contact, in some small way, but he was as distant as the moon. The panic at not being able to move was muted this time; overlaid with frustration.

"Sweetheart, I know you're upset but this really isn't doing either you or Ash any good." My mother. She was there. That was good.

"I know. I just..." Not Jay then, I realised with surprise; Michael. "I did this Mam. I was just... shocked. I never meant... I never... I didn't know that this was going to happen. I swear it. I don't care, Mam; I don't care what he is. He's my brother and I love him; I really do. I love him and I... Oh God Mam, it's so fucked up. I am so sorry. I didn't mean... It's my fault: it's all my fault. I killed Ash."