The voices were blurred. I could hear them… but their words never reached me. Each sound struck my ears like faint echoes from a world already slipping away. My breaths came in ragged gasps, my chest heavy, my body drenched in sweat. I was suffocating. Fever surged through me like wildfire. My leg trembled violently. And reality… reality cracked apart until it dissolved into nothingness.
Each heartbeat felt like another step closer to the end. Every second stretched into an agonizing eternity. Life could be ripped away at any moment.
Around me, my friends drowned in panic. John gripped my hand so tightly it hurt, as if his strength alone could hold me here. His pulse was a rocket, his face twisted in anguish, his bloodshot eyes barely holding back tears. He was falling apart before my eyes.
Jovany, on the other hand, stood motionless—neutral, almost cold. But his slight trembling betrayed him. The stress in his body radiated like a signal fire. Every breath, every movement carried the crushing weight of every nightmare imaginable.
In that suffocating chaos, each word spoken felt heavier than iron. Each syllable cut deeper than the last. Every mention of a "fatal outcome" was a dagger twisting in their hearts. Their psychological torment rivaled the agony coursing through my broken body.
John: "Does he… does he have a chance?"
Doctor: "I can't say yet. As you can see… his condition is critical."
Jovany: "He's going to make it."
He said it trembling—not to reassure John, but to convince himself. The truth was a venom that threatened to unravel him completely.
But my mind… my mind was already elsewhere. It had slipped into a nightmare—dark, shapeless, suffocating. The scenes changed every second, shifting like shadows in a storm. Everything felt terrifyingly real… and yet utterly meaningless.
Sensations assaulted me—too vivid, too raw. A creeping madness pressed in from all sides.
Voices began to emerge from the void. At first, faint whispers. Then louder. Sharper. There was no logic, no sequence. And yet somehow… I understood every single word.
Voices—high and low, joyful and menacing. Real, but unbearable. Screams pierced the darkness. Weeping echoed in my skull. Each syllable was drenched in a darkness that clawed at my soul.
And then… time stopped.
I was walking down a corridor—endless, cold, heavy with the stench of death. It felt like a graveyard abandoned by even the worms. My footsteps echoed like gunshots in the silence.
Then a voice sliced through the void.
A voice that felt like ice crawling down my spine.
"Die for me… Go on, die for me. Die to atone for your sins… Die… Die… DIE…"
There was no face. No source. No way to tell if it was a man or a woman. But every syllable left me trembling, trapped in a chaos so deep it bled into my bones.
I was terrified. Desperate. My body screamed it into the void.
Jovany: "Doctor, what's happening to him?!"
Doctor: "He's going into cardiac arrest! Step back and let me work!"
Jovany: "You mean he's dying?!"
John: "No… No… NO! Damn it! He's NOT going to die! He CAN'T die!"
And then… the dream shattered.
And my heart stopped with it.
To be continued: "The Voice That Hunts the Living"
Azema Jovany...😉