#deathrunners

Who knows if I'll continue this, but writing something unrelated to my WIP really helped yesterday. I was feeling sick as a dog and totally uninspired, so I decided to pick up a random prompt to help exercise the fingers. Back to Drunken Flame today, though!

My throat was so swollen, I wasn't sure I was even breathing anymore. My house, the party, it was all there moments before, but I stood in a dimly lit, out of focus room. The shapes around me reminded me of my furniture, but the edges were vague and blurred. Everything I tried to touch seemed to move just out of reach. Was I going crazy?

Was I dead?

"I'm so sorry," said a low, sweet voice.

"Hello?" I snapped my head around, looking for anything that seemed real. The place felt like a dream. Or a nightmare.

"You didn't deserve such an untimely end. I couldn't just let you die."

The shapes around me grew even more distorted, wavering like paper cutouts in the breeze. The cold air warmed, its heat intensifying until the atmosphere was sour and stale.

"Who's there? This isn't funny."

"I'm sorry," the voice repeated, its tone so smooth it seemed to calm the rising temperatures. "You don't have to stay with us if you don't want to, but you'll be in danger if you don't."

"Us? Danger? What is going on?" I had no idea what that place was, but I knew I needed out. The heat was almost unbearable. Everything I tried to grab inched just beyond my hand. Every step I took seemed to leave me in the exact same spot. I found myself wishing the fading light would disappear and rid me of the unnerving surroundings.

"I can take you back," lamented the voice, "but it will come for you. It'll never stop now."

"What won't stop?" I still couldn't tell if I was breathing, but the tightness in my throat was uncomfortable either way. I needed out. More than anything, I needed out of that suffocating room.

"You haven't figured it out yet? I know you're smarter than that. Death, my dear. Death comes for you."

"I don't understand." My friends, the party... I was just there. I sunk into the chair. I lit a cigarette. I smelled smoke. I was just there.

I still smelled smoke.

It was acrid and nauseating.

"My... my house. The party."

The tears trickling down my cheeks almost sizzled in the scorching heat around me, their cooling comfort gone in an instant.

Gone. Like my home.

Like me.

"It's okay." The voice was so fluid, like the words wove around each other and right into my brain. "This isn't the end. Just come outside."

Filled with a sudden, rabid hope, I glanced around desperately. The walls were like sheets billowing in the wind. The door. Where's the door?

The glow bathing the room seemed to emanate from a far away corner.

That had to be it. The way out. I took a cautious step, a distant crackling sound itching at the back of my mind. The light seemed even further away the closer I moved.

"Not the light. Stay away from the light," cried the voice in a garbled tone. "Run until you can't see it anymore."

I turned from the light, staring at the expanse it illuminated.

And I ran.

The flimsy walls that loomed mere moments before seemed to fly away, leaving behind nothing but hungry darkness. Voices called from the black void with melodic tones that lured my feet before I noticed myself listening.

"You don't have to worry," said a woman as I walked further from the light, from my smoldering home. I felt a warm hand tuck a strand of sweat drenched hair behind my ear. "If you want, we'll protect you. We'll love you."

"All you have to do is say so," purred the man that guided me earlier. The light was gone. I could hear the people around me, I could even feel their body heat, but my eyes hadn't adjusted well enough to discern anything but the occasional darker shadow. "Death will never find you when you're here with us."

"We can be your family," insisted a child with a giddy voice. I felt a small hand tug on mine. "We love our family."

"You never have to worry about being alone again," said the man with a voice like liquid darkness. "Not if you're family."

He took my hand in his, and my eyes finally focused on the people around me.

My saviors.

My heroes.