Thread: Coffee and Contemplation | tempted halo

Joyce Byers sobbed endlessly as she cradled her son. No-no-no... She moaned out, barely breathing as her panic consumed every ounce of her. No-no-no... She moaned again, dragging on her words as she took another deep, sulking breath in. You can't do this to me, Will . She took another huffing breath. She nearly drowned in all of her tears, the very fear of Will dying in her arms merely unbearable. Stay with me, baby. Her voice just a stutter as she tried to console the child, just short of 12 years old, who continued to convulse in her arms. Jonathan, the rhyme and reason to every scenario, attempted to contain his emotions, and upkeep his composure. His eyes were wide, glossed over with the need to cry but the strength to not shed a single tear. His chest was tight, him too, struggling to breath as he floored it down the empty streets of Hawkins. With virtually no one on the dark roads, there was that reckless liberty to surpass double the speed limit. With the dead of morning and few resources in such a small town, the Byers knew an ambulance was not an option. If they wanted Will to survive, they had to take the law into their own hands and race through the puddle-ridden roads. He's going to live. He's going to be OK. Jonathan tried to reassure his mother, but the ultimate truth was uncertain. Although his calm voice seemed to always be the motion against calamity, the older Byer son was feeding her white lies. Glancing briefly over to his baby brother, the reality of the situation was setting in. He was deteriorating by the minute. Now foaming from the mouth, Will's eyes were rolled in the back of his skull, and he had clenched so hard on his own tongue, that blood seeped from the corner of his lips. We're almost there! With the hospital nearly 20 miles out, it was a race against the clock. Within minutes, the Byers family would see the inside of an empty emergency room. As Jonathan burst through the doors, Joyce began immediately crying out for help. Help me, please! HELP MY SON! The commotion lead to a domino effect of medical urgency. Several workers gathered around, one nurse instantly rolling out a stretcher to lay Will in. By this point on, Will's violent convulsions had ceased, but his muscles remained tense his body completely rigid like a immobile action figure. A doctor the only one working the night shift - came running in. The nurse, quick to debrief him as they tended to the emergency, was in a professional panic as her and her other colleagues set Will up with oxygen, and an IV. The missing Byers boy. 12 years old. Unresponsive. Suspected grand mal seizure. The doctor looked to the machine. Within a minute of his arrival, he was already hooked up to all necessary equipment. The nurse could see the concern on the doctor's face. Vitals are dropping. Heart rate 51... 45... 33... We're losing him! There was a loud, continuous beep. The sound was unmistakable. It was the sound of death. With the heart ceasing to beat, the doctor delivered a traumatic blow to Will's chest with his fist. Joyce nearly collapsed, virtually melting into the arms of her eldest. With Johnathan no longer capable of holding back his tears, the two wept as they watched their beloved Will slip back in the hands of death. Astronomical twilight , defined by the position of the Sun being between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon. Nautical twilight , defined by the position of the Sun being between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon. Civil twilight , defined by the position of the Sun being between 0 and 6 degrees below the horizon. Sunrise, defined by the position of the Sun being over the horizon. 623AM . That is when the sun would rise in on this muddy day of May in Hawkins, Indiana. It is the time where the sun, in its full, shinning glory, would reach the peak of the sky to end the darkness. It is the mark of a new day, and the end of another. The sun, bright and rejuvenated, breathing life into the morning. But in the dark of this morning, only civil twilight would struggle to begin amid a raging thunder storm. From dusk till dawn, there was still darkness. My head rolled back into the fold of your arm. I opened my needy eyes to look up at the foggy sky. Heat radiated off my body my insides broiling internally as the entirety of me was launched into a painful physical transition. Although the rain severed to cool my sizzling skin, it simply paled in comparison to the frigid weather of Upside Down. In a dimension virtually void of all sunlight, the dark universe was hollow and cold. Like an ice pack removed from the confines of its freezer, I was melting. My skin sweating like the condensation of an cold bottle on a hot summer day. In order to survive, I had to swelter. My body had to seep the toxins of Upside Down out of my pores. Just like the bile that spilled from my esophagus, I needed to cleanse. I was cleansing, one bead of sweat at a time. Even as you hauled me into your strong arms, the expulsion had left me weak and limp. I hung in your arms like dead weight, with barely enough energy to even hold my head up as you carried me. Despite my physical maturation, I weighed little, even for a woman of small stature. At just barely 5 feet tall, my slender body weighed no more than 95 pounds. Considering I had stemmed from a land of desolation, perhaps it was even a miracle that I was alive, let alone that I was capable of growing. Yet, somehow, I had. Although I had not gained much in height, nor that much in weight, my body had transformed even without standard nutrition. Amid all the slime that covered my body, the black tar I vomited, and the portal I had somehow managed to escape, my body had become lost in a sea of rain, a mass of wet hair, and your supporting frame. I felt my overheating body lay to rest on something soft. I embraced the material, confusing it for a cloud as I sunk in. Despite wanting to curl into a ball and drift away, my mind could only focus on recovering. My thoughts ran in my head at a million miles per second mashing into one another barely capable of forming a sentence. Pure instinct consumed me, and in an effort to cool myself down, I sacrificed the dignity I didn't even know I should have. I was sprawled on the couch, several levels below what anyone would consider graceful. Rather than curling into fetal position as you lay me down, instead, I stretched my legs out on the couch. One arm lay dangling off the side, while the other was stationed over the backrest. My head, probably the most telling of my current struggle, was flopped over the edge of the arm rest. I looked strikingly similar to a drunk the type of person who could only sleep in the comfort of a couch with the tune of blaring television to lull he or she to sleep. All I was missing was a bottle of scotch or wine dangling from my fingers... and of course, an actual functioning TV. I felt as though the retro material of the 3-seater would swallow me whole. Like an animal in heat, my hormones were raging, my adrenaline was high, and I was panting. My exposed chest rose and collapsed, over and over again in slow, but rough, steady motion. I was taking deep breaths, trying to control my panic as my mind spiralled into vertigo. With my head spinning, my respiration was heavy so much so that the deep pants resulted in a sort of vocal yet breathless moan. The inhaling alone was enough of a sound to fill the house. I was in limbo a state of conscious where my body was mostly unresponsive, but still capable of functioning without intervention. My lungs were still breathing, and my heart was still beating. But aside from those two things, I was dazed. My eyes were wide open now, as if I had seen the horrors of Hell. I stared up at the ceiling like it was a portal to death, without so much as a single word to respond to your sentences. In fact, they weren't sentences at all. Just sounds noises that coined in my ringing ears. I was blinking rapidly my vision fuzzing in and out of blurriness as my body adjusted to the drastic change in environment. I looked similar to a fish out of water still glistening as it stares blankly into nothingness, trying to find the strength to breath in an air so foreign. Though, there was a difference here. I wasn't dying slowly, much like that of a goldfish who's jumped out of its bowl, but rather I was trying to come to life. I wasn't a fish, but a bird, resurrecting from the ashes like a Phoenix having travelled from one dimension to the next. I was alive. And I was changed. Forcing my head to look at you, my eyes locked on the shadow of a large figure. As another clash of lightning illuminated the room, the sudden flash of light radiated over my form . The quick illumination of white light reflected off the smooth, fresh gloss of my drenched skin. I swallowed hard, actively trying to correct my pattern of breathing to that of a normal human being. My tongue ran over my rain-kissed lips, immediately absorbing the water on my tongue as I did so. Although I tried to breathe normally through my nose, my breaths were still too heavy to cease oral inhalation. I parted my lips again, sighing deeply as I compelled my neck to support my head. I did not want to collapse, not again. I had to fight through the pain fight through the bodily shock. If I could survive Upside Down, I could certainly survive this. Though my vision had quickly adjusted, my mind was still in a haze. I wondered if this was truly real, if I was here or if this was all an elaborate dream. Upside Down was a cruel place, and it had played many tricks on me before. Had it infiltrated my brain again? Was this all a product of my imagination? I refused to believe it refused to believe that all of this tangible memory was just a false illusion. But at the same time, as I watched you disappear into another room, I also could not believe this was real... that I was... Home . My head bobbed to the side, searching for anything that could disprove the reality any shred at all of the presence of Upside Down. A strange flower a speck of black mould, but my eyes found nothing. Were they betraying me, or was there really nothing to see here but a run down motor home in the outskirts of a run down town like Hawkins? I tried to move tried to get up off the couch. I so desperately wanted my body to reflect the utter chaos in my mind the panic as my eyes frantically shifted to find an error in this horrendously accurate deception. But my body could not frantically move. I was too weak perhaps the first symptom of the true reality. Extending my arm out, I grabbed the coffee table and pulled hard. I served only to drag the piece of furniture closer to me, rather than use it as an anchor to lift myself up. Though, as I shifted it over, my eyes caught a glimpse of something colourful. It was a rainbow, something I had long forgotten in the darkness of desolation. It was a strange thing filled with more colours than my eyes had seen in years. In my stertorous huffs, I gulped down, narrowing my eyes to focus my attention on the structure. Weakly raising my hand in the air, I used what strength I could muster to lift the object with my mind. The multicoloured object slipped from the cubicle it was stored in, telekinetically floating toward me. My legs felt like noodles, even as I managed to shift them off the couch to touch the ground. My feet grasped the mud-stained carpet below me, but my eyes stayed focused on the hexahedron shape that approached me. I stopped its expedition just inches from my face. Looking closer at it, my pupils restricted as my eyes fell upon small writing Rubik's CUBE , it read. Now sitting up right, I tilted my head slightly to the side. It spun slowly in the air before me as I guided the shape with my powers. As I looked curiously at it, the sides of the square began to shift . My fascination with this inter-changing device caused my surroundings to melt behind me. With that last flash of lightning and the last clap of thunder, the storm had concluded. The sound of torrential downpour beating against the windows slowly began to quiet. The dark clouds were passing, and it seemed the more I concentrated, the better the weather became. As the intensity of the storm passed, it took only moments for the home to come to life again. With only a few stuttered flashes, electricity in the home returned. Although power was now restored, the home was still shielded by darkness. Only one small room brought light to the area, and that was the bathroom. Flicking back on, the bathroom cast an infectious light into the living room. My figure remained slightly hunched over, my wet hair sticking my skin like a disease. Still, I remained half in the shadows, only the slenderness of my leg and thinness of my tiny waist graced by the light. Despite the sudden change, my eyes remained fixated on the cube. Not even the sound of approaching footsteps would falter my interest. It would take only a minute of examining the mathematical concept for me to understand it. As your presence loomed closer, I opened the palms of my hands beneath the cubic puzzle. The Rubik's Cube dropped instantaneously from the air, landing perfectly into both of my hands. The second the toy hit my hands, I immediately began to decipher it. Stringing my fingers up and around like a pianist on a piano, I moved at astounding speed flipping and twirling the unit. Piece by piece, color by color, the cube began to come together. June 5, 1982. The Rubik's Cube world record is defeated by Minh Thai, a Vietnamese student from Los Angeles, with a time of 22.95 seconds. White . Green . Yellow . Orange . Blue . And Red . Click, clack, cluck, and clock . Clock time 16.66 seconds. Minh Thai wouldn't stand a chance.