saitaina | 15 minute ficlet: Burning Day

Originally published at Memoirs of a Nobody. You can comment here or there.

Title: Burning Day
Rating: G-PG
Fandom: Original
Word Count: 506

The fever burned at her skin, making her shift restlessly under the weight of the sheet, sweat slowly rolling down her forehead and nose, running over her closed eyelids in an attempt to seek to re-enter her body.

She groaned softly through parched lips, shifting again, feeling the burning to her very nerves. She needed release, needed an escape from the constant ache and burn. She felt so hot, like the nine levels of hell come to claim her all at once.

Tears mixed with the sweat as she broke down, the head muddling her mind, breaking her defenses, making her weak and pliable to it’s desires. It was a torture, a long, slow pain that would never give up, never relent until she was a broken shell, completely torn apart by the firey fingers sinking into her skin.

A cool, damp cloth was placed against her skin and she wanted to cry out, the difference in temperature a shock to her body. She trembled, fighting back the tears of frustration and pain. The cloth was already started to head up, creating it’s own unique hell on her forehead as she lay back, trying to remain still lest the slightest movement send another column of fire through her body.

It hurt.

It hurt so bad that her mind was shutting down, blackness trying to claim her vision as she shifted restlessly again before finally stilling, mind blank and empty.

And then the cycle started over again, restlessness, pain, heat, burning, sweat. The same events day in, day out, hour in, hour out, minute by minute, second by second.

It was hell, it was torture it was a mind numbing terror that she would never return to a life she could even now barley remember. The fever was all she knew, the only thing that existed in the endless monotony of days the kept passing her by without end.

She slept, she ate, and was forced to bathe in some foul smelling liquid that looked like water and provided relief for only as long as she was in it. IT made her dizzy and nauseous and wasn’t worth the effort but there she was, every day, sitting in the chilled tub, leaning over the side, trying not to pass out or throw up as they splashed the liquid over her reddened body.

As she slowly drifted off towards the endless darkness again she felt something cool against her forehead and cheek and wanted to cry out, the relief fleeting at her mind once again emptied and the darkness claimed her.

–

The young woman stared down at the small, fever ridden girl in the bed and brushed her blond curls from her head, a tear sliding down her cheek as she watched her daughter sleep restlessly. The three year old shifted in her sleep again and the woman returned her hand to her forehead, a small ice cube slowly melting over the girl’s face. “Sleep, my angel. For in sleep we can escape the horrors of reality.”