Of Cages and Misery

[Byron]

Elena didn't react on Mason's question, just pressing her lips together, not saying anything. Meanwhile, she huddled up next to the bed, and curled up into a ball, quite similar to how a distressed child full of fear would do. With her arms bent, she tried to obscure her rather pinched face that had slowly metamorphosed into an ashen-pale visage. She screwed her eyes up with the utmost strain, as though she panicly tried to avoid to look at something. Her breathing became more rapid and heavy fast, up until she was on the verge of actually hyperventilating. Slowly, she would roll her shivering body over to one side, showing crouched Mason next to her her back.

It seemed to her as though Mason and Kyle had been more and more moved away, as their voices only sounded strange anymore, muffled in her mind. While she had been in the bedroom one moment, the other she suddenly thought to be at a completely different place, far away from her companions. Pictures, one after another, began to flash past her inner eyelid, the mere prelude of a whole movie filled with exasperation, mortal agony and fear that had begun to play for her. She tried to look away, somehow; tried to close her eyes or look the different direction. But no matter where she looked, she saw those horrendous scenes before her, sucking her in as if there was no escape. And the worst of all: those pictures felt real and almost tangible. They were blurred, as though an expressionist had done their job, but so was her mind, and so she could not distinguish between reality and her own imaginations anymore.

She cried for help, but none of her words ever left her mouth. There was seemingly no way out of this death trap, no matter how much she tried to pound against the flitting by pictures that were incarcerating her in an oubliette that felt like hell. The feeling that she was in fact her own jailer incarnate didn't make the situation any better. It only made her grow desperate even more whether she would ever get out of this sudden daydream that was reality to her again. Her body began to respond as well, through the developing sick feeling in her stomach that only reminded her even more of the past events which she had the sketchy pleasure of re-experiencing anew. For hours she had managed to suppress drifting into those kind of flashback moments. Until now.

"Dammit Elena, what is it?" she could hear Mason ask her. Although his voice did sound muffled, she could still hear the concern and sudden stress in it. "Come on, what's wrong?!" But she didn't react. She thought those words to be just a few more to the thousands of snarky comments she could hear through her inner ear and that frightened her a great deal. She was so obsessed with being sucked into the flashback that it had become a minor matter to perceive her actual surroundings.

"I thought you'd explain it to me," she heard Kyle reply. "But we can't stay here for long like that, not with the door open." What she could hear were a few silent steps coming ever closer to her, and instinctively she attempted to flinch away, apprehensive of somebody who wanted to do her harm. But her body didn't move an inch. She was no longer in control over it, she realized. A realization that only drew her more into a panicky state that made it difficult for her to breath. The thought she would be trapped in there forever virtually pinched off her wind-pipe.

It was at this point that she felt a hand seizing her by the shoulder, and heard a couple of words, louder this time. "Voigt? Snap out of it!" it said calmly, yet loudly and with resolution. "We have a job to do."

It apparently managed to pull her back into reality, rousing her from her brusque spell. As though he had thrown a rope for her to climb up again. For a few seconds, she was completely confused and disorientated, for she had been ripped out of a nightmare that had overcome her. Still not sure what of it had been real and what had been not, she was shifty-eyed temporarily, darting about like mad. At the same time, when he touched her shoulder, she recoiled from him with shock. While her chest went up and down as she caught her breath again, completely out of puff, the look on her face took on a puzzled expression as she looked at him. Daze, anxiety, uneasiness, all of those senses were flooding her mind right now, and felt as though they were suffocating her. The pain in her ankle returned soon afterwards, which made her face further tense up in anguish again. Gulpingly, as soon as she had managed to regain her composure - at least to some degree -, she stuttered, rubbing her forehead in the meantime: "Where, where is she? What's with her?" she would say with some fear sounding by; she had evident problems articulating right now. Too much was going on in her head for her to think straight.

Kyle's relieve was writ large in his face as she looked at him, but some rest of concern remained on it as well. "Kiara is still in the bathroom, I guess. She locked herself up when things got... rough." He looked into the corridor briefly, probably to make sure that the door to the bathroom was still closed, before looking back at Elena. When she looked at Mason, she saw him crouching by her other side and eyeing her very carefully. "Yeah, she locked herself up in there," he added to Kyle's explanation. "You should try and get her out though." The look he gave Kyle said more than a thousands words. That he was the one who probably had the best chances at speaking with her and calming her.