Loving Ashlynn (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 45 - Creando Stateram (Samson Conrad POV) Pt.1

QUESTION: Do you think Cynthia set Lydia up to fail?

A/n: Some may have read my spoiler incorrectly. I was not confirming Faith being one of the six.

Chapter 45 – Creando Stateram (Samson Conrad POV) Pt.1

There's a hum, a low buzz that confuses me. Four drums beat around me though. The sound makes the discountenance in my mind grow. In the darkness, the nights sky is filled with smoke, a roaring fire clawing at the trees in the distance.

I run.

Leap.

Fly.

The brush around me all obstacles I overcome to get to my destination, but I feel as though the journey never ends. The distance between where I am and where I want to be never declines.

It is never in arms reach.

Soon. All too soon, I'm surrounded, enveloped by a group of strong barriers. Bodies holding me back.

They hold me back.

They're wrong. Silas is alive!

Keep me in place.

I have to get to Silas!

Ignore my struggle and pleas.

The image in my mind's eye stays, but slows.

This is not real, a part of me thinks rationally. It's nothing more than a memory. Yet another part of me that pays attention to my senses is reluctant to agree. The arms holding me feel real. The sounds I hear, they too are real. My mouth fills with saliva and the urge to vomit is not imagined either.

The crying around me intensifies, but slowly, darkness between the trees filling with smoke blend with another image. A classroom, the walls white, brick on the far left side; a trick of the mind I realize.

This is real I acknowledge.

With that as a motivating source, the trees and smoke disappear altogether, leaving what is true.

Chaos in another for; Imogen's hair wild and covering her forehead as her red eyes release more tears, her body shaking. Lennon, in no better shape than Imogen herself, but she appears to be frozen her lips just slightly parted though it doesn't look as though she's even breathing.

My leg stretches out as I gaze at Lennon an Imogen, and items around me, on me, rattle as they move to the ground. But my focus remains on Lennon, while my mind fights to correct the mirage in my head with what is true. This is now.

Silas is gone.

The thought, having to tell myself this once again, doesn't obliterate my heart, as it would have like before. In the moment my heart races painfully as I make the separation of occurrences. A slight turn and my wildly beating heart stops before taking off, pounding faster, harder, than ever before.

As soon as, my eyes fall on two slumped bodies, that's all the proof I need to remind myself, that this was not the night of Silas' death. Crawling over the rumble in the room, "We tried to leave," I hear Imogen crying, "Lydia locked us in and then we couldn't get to the other door."

Four drums beating?

Four heartbeats in a room with five people, I scream getting to my Fatima and Lydia quicker. I check Fatima first, afraid to touch her, at first. Uncertain, I reach out, pulling my hand back, but getting close enough to distinctly make out just whose heart wasn't beating as it should be.