User blog:CeceTheSailor/The Barrier

A shudder rolled through my body as I listened to another roar of pain from the man somewhere near me. I didn’t know him, he was a perfect stranger to me, but his pain became mine as I listened to him scream. My own throat felt like it would rip open with the force of it.



My eyes remained closed as I willed myself to wake up. It wasn’t real, eventually it would stop and I would open my eyes to the familiar view of my room.



The screaming subsided to quiet whimpers, a sound even more crushing than before. I steeled myself to open my eyes.



Met with an image of a broken looking man, wrapped in a strait jacket so tightly it could have been the only thing holding his very limbs together, I gasped and took a step towards him. He looked up at me, and upon seeing my face the noises he was emitting changed to a desperate attempt at speech, his eyes wild in his attempt to communicate. He struggled towards me as much as his bound body would allow him.



There was something I recognised about him, but what, I couldn’t have placed it. His hair was long, wild about his face, which was bloodied and smeared with dirt, perhaps marring his humanity past recognition. His once-white strait jacket was now in a similar condition, He continued to gargle nonsensically at me as he slowly edged closer. It was only when he was mere inches from me that I realised there would always be a gap between us.



An invisible force held us inches apart, a force I could place my hand flat against and feel, but see through as though it were not real.



Just then, a door opened from somewhere behind the man, and a figure slowly stepped into the pristine room. She walked towards him directly and placed her hand on his shoulder, facing away from me. I couldn’t see her face, just the back of her head and her flowing hair. He shuddered and turned towards her, the noises he was still making became once again louder and more desperate, but the woman simply looked at him. She held his gaze for what seemed like eternity, before she gasped out one single word.



“Michael?"



<p class="MsoNormal">He continued to stare at her blankly, and the tears fell from her face.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">"Why don’t you remember me? We spend 35 years together. We have 2 children, we were a team...” By now, the woman’s shoulders were shaking with the effort of holding her emotions in. She turned away from him, now facing me, but not seeing me.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">“I can’t believe I lost you.”

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">I felt my knees buckle underneath me as I watched my wife of 35 years walk out of the door.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t know how long I’ve been on the other side of this shield, outside of humanity. I don’t know what I am. I toyed briefly with the thought of being the soul of the man on the other side of the barrier, but it isn’t so. I am the sanity lost by him, his societal life in mental form. Love, morals, understanding - everything. I feel his physical pain as he feels my sorrow.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">I am trapped here just as he is, his other half.

<p class="MsoNormal">

<p class="MsoNormal">Only a complete soul can ascend from reality.