Pain. Excruciating pain unlike any he had ever been able to imagine. It spread through out his body like a fiery torrent of torture that clawed at him from the inside out, devouring him little by little with one desire – to tear him to shreds. He could hear his heart hammering off rhythm, feel the way it thumped too quickly as if threatening to burst from his chest cavity. It wasn't right. None of this felt right and his lungs...God his lungs hurt with every breath he inhaled. Pain. So much pain.
Eyes parted to blurry vision that at first all he could make out were jumbles of shapes and blobs of colors, ones that melted into the others with very little distinction. Everything was tinted in red around the outer edges. His face and every inch of exposed skin felt like it was being assaulted by the sharpest imaginable microscopic daggers, tearing at his flesh as if he were some grand canvas or carving board. But he couldn't move, not even an inch. There was so much pain.
His eyes shut briefly as the world teetered one way and then the other, back again, over and over like some vomit-inducing amusement park ride. He could even taste the bile making its way up his throat, burning at the top of his esophagus before he attempted to swallow it down. None of it made sense. He felt sick. He felt like his body was shattering from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet. He felt like he was dying.
Glass. Shards of glass everywhere. Prying his eyes open once again, he shifted his gaze downward to his lap and found it littering the bloodied material of his denim jeans like a blanket of razor-sharp diamonds. Ruby red diamonds tainted by the slick coating of blood. His blood. The bile rose up his throat a second time, almost choking him, and a tremor racked his body as he sucked in a deep breath.
A howl of agony lodged itself in the middle of his throat and his body became rigid from the pain. He could barely breathe now and yet his lungs pleaded in survival mode for sufficient oxygen. It felt like there was a ton of bricks stacked upon his chest that were weighing him down...like it was the odds stacked against him. This was what dying felt like – a slow, terrifying suffocation as he bled out under a blanket of glass.
Metal. Jagged metal all around him that were remnants of his once pristine prized Mercedes. It was the death trap he was now stuck in. His heart began to beat faster, his mind reeling and overworking just to grasp the outer limits of comprehension. But he couldn't comprehend. He couldn't make sense of any of it. All he knew is that the pain was getting worse with each passing second and the more time that passed, the more he felt himself slipping away.
Sirens announcing the impending approach of an emergency medical crew wailed faintly in the distance. He could barely hear the sound above the whooshing of his heart in his ears, so he couldn't judge which direction they were coming from or how far away they really were. Hell, for all he knew, he could have been imagining the sound. His head hurt so bad, like it was about to explode. Or maybe it was his failing mind's last ditch effort to concoct a scenario of help on the way. He felt beyond help though.
He was dying.
He didn't want to die.
A soft moan pierced the air, preceded by a wet rattling breath. Suddenly it was the only sound he could hear and it nearly made his heart cease from beating further. She was nearby, inches away from him, in fact. Right there in the passenger seat beside him, exactly where she had been before everything had happened. He couldn't see her. He couldn't even reach out and touch her, all because he couldn't muster the strength within to physically do so. But he could hear her. He could hear each labored breath she took and how her breathing became more shallow every time. It wasn't good. None of it was good. She wasn't okay and he knew it.
“Ro'-” he choked out in a voice that barely projected. He swallowed thickly and the taste of blood filtered through his mouth. “Ro', baby, say something-”
For several seconds he couldn't hear her anymore. He couldn't tell if she was still breathing. The terror that flooded his battered body was like no other and he could feel the hot burning tears of his despair welling in the corners of his eyes. He begged his mind to force his right hand to reach for her, but try as he might, his body wouldn't cooperate. This couldn't be happening. Not to them. Not like this.
“A-Alex...” she suddenly whispered. He could barely make out his name passing her lips; it was just short of mumbled. But it was there and for a brief moment, it gave him a fluttering of hope. She moaned again and the sound quickly turned into a weaker whimper. "It...it hurts..."
"Fuck!" He grimaced as he clenched his eyes shut to a blinding shock wave of pain that exploded throughout his body. "I know, baby. I know it hurts. Fuck, I'm sorry. Just hold on, Ro'. We're gonna be okay. Just hold on. Help is coming-"
AJ McLean awoke with a startled gasp for air that had his heart running a marathon in his chest. Everything about the nightmare still taunted him; phantom pains, the desperation, the helplessness. Her. He sat up quickly on the unstable cot, ignoring the way it groaned in protest under his weight, and threw the musty smelling blankets away from him. The movements were too quick though and an avenging pain exploded in his right knee, sending him tumbling off of the cot out of reflex as he cursed sharply.
He hit the cold damp ground with a loud thud that echoed around him and just laid there a moment, his chest rising and falling quickly with each heavy breath he inhaled and exhaled. "Son of a bitch..." he finally muttered and grappled at the ground to push himself upright. Feeling was rapidly rushing back into his sleep numbed body and it took AJ a while to properly regain his bearings.
Sagging against the edge of the cot, he gripped his knee and mentally willed the throbbing pain to subside, but he found no such relief. Not that AJ could particularly recall a time when his knee had been pain free. It had been that long and daily he lived with the crippling after effects of the injury sustained years earlier that caused him to now walk with a noticeable limp - the price to be paid for an unavoidable knee replacement.
AJ grit his teeth together and pushed himself away from the cot, only to scoot blindly through the dark towards the torn and frayed backpack he'd left laying near by. The ground was wetter than normal from a recent rain storm that had washed a higher volume of water through the tunnels. He didn't pay much attention to the fact that the condensation seeped straight through the already dirty denim of his jeans though. He was no stranger to his unsanitary living conditions. His mind was focused on the bottle of unlabeled pain killers buried somewhere in that bag, something strong enough to take the edge off the pain that was now spreading up his thigh and would soon make it almost impossible for him to remain physically mobile.
"Where the fuck is it?" AJ muttered anxiously under his breath as he shoved his hand deep into the back pack and felt around haphazardly, trying to locate the bottle. There was very little AJ kept as possessions, most of which he stowed in the back pack as a precaution to keep it with him at all times in case any of the other tunnel inhabitants came snooping around when he wasn't there. Although, that hadn't happened since the last dweller he'd caught and left in a bloodied heap on the ground just outside the tunnel entrance. Still, AJ trusted no one and he wasn't about to take chances.
Cursing again, AJ reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out the zippo lighter he'd recently acquired. The tiny flame cast an eerie flickering glow around him and provided him just enough light to peer into the cluttered contents of the bag. Shoving clothing that had seen better days to the side, AJ finally located the pill bottle at the very bottom, right beneath a half empty fifth of Jack and he pulled both items out into the open. He was dismayed to see only a few of the pills remaining and he knew it would be a chore in itself to get more, whatever the Hell they were, but that was really the least of his concerns at the moment. AJ just needed the pain to subside and most of all his mind to grow numb to the lasting effects of the nightmare that was still taunting him.
The same nightmare that had been plaguing him every night for the past five years.
AJ grunted as he set the still aflame lighter upright on the sodden ground and managed to twist the cap off the pill bottle. Three little pale blue perfectly circular pills shook out into the palm of his hand and he quickly popped them into his mouth before reaching for the bottle of Jack to wash them down. The liquor was warm and it burned AJ's throat, but he welcomed the feeling and swallowed several more shots before hoisting himself back up onto the cot once again. It would have to do.
His heart finally began to even out in rhythm just as he settled himself and his head came to rest upon the cover-less pillow he'd found for a penny at the thrift shop a few miles down the road. It was a lumpy sorry excuse for a pillow, but it was a Hell of a lot better than laying his head on the stiffness of the cot padding as he had been doing and AJ had learned how not to complain about a lack of luxury. What little he had now, and that was practically nothing, he clung to it.
It didn't take long for the combination of the whiskey and medication to begin to work its way through his system and the pain in AJ's knee subsided into a dull throbbing that he barely noticed. Even the headache attempting to claw its way to the surface of his temples remained dormant and less of an issue. It made everything tolerable enough that AJ was actually able to relax again, although he opted lazily to forgo yanking the blankets over himself.
Somewhere off in the distance, down one of the tunnels not far from his own, AJ could hear the slurred words of a drunken man's yelling. He tried to tune the annoying bastard out as he allowed his eyes to flutter shut, coaxing himself into a lulling alcohol and drug induced daze that would hopefully protect him from his nightmares for a least a couple of more hours until the sun rose over the horizon.
This...this is what AJ's life had become - a worthless waste, homeless with nothing but a drunk man's ranting as his nightly lullaby.
