Stray Soul

Waking up, I felt every part of my body aching.

“The hell is going on?" I thought to myself as, while the aching itself wasn’t something new to me, my body had never ached like this.

“Did I... sleep in a weird position?” I asked myself and started opening my eyes, but I couldn’t.

“Huh?”

I tried a few more times to open my eyes and realized that I couldn’t feel my eyes. Scratch that, I couldn’t feel anything. But for some reason every part of my body still continued to ache.

“The hells going on?!” I yelled out, a bit scared as like any normal person, I wasn’t used to not feeling my body.

But while I was still confused and scared about not being able to feel anything, I felt something pulling me, but it didn’t feel like whatever was pulling me was trying to force me, it felt as if the thing was trying to guide me somewhere.

“H-huh?!” and like what the child me would do, I didn’t trust weirds things in the darkness, so I started trying to shrug it off and soon, it disappeared.

“What was that?” I asked, but before I was able to think deeply about it, I felt more things trying to pull me, so like the first time this happened I started shrugging them off, though this time more aggressively, as I really didn’t like the feeling of these things, whatever they were, touch me and trying to pull me.

But the pulling didn’t stop, and I could feel more and more things trying to pull me from various directions, and the aching started getting worse, and in some places, it even started to feel like sharp things poking at me.

Now I am not a person that gets scared easily, or at least I’d like to think myself as such, but after connecting the dots, and getting a clearer idea about what these things were doing, I got a bit spooked and might’ve overreacted.

“Get off me! I SAID GET OFF ME YOU DEMONS!!!”

…

..

.

I think my overreaction was on point as I am not used to not being able to feel my body and I am also not used to not being able to feel my body while some demons I cannot see start pulling me somewhere.

Thankfully though, after some time, I was able to shake off last of whatever those things were, and didn’t have to worry about the already bad aching turning into worse pain… or at least I thought that as after a few seconds, I realized that for some reason the feeling of being poked at by something sharp still continued to somehow spread and overtake the aches, though at a slower pace than before which let me to believe those things from before were somehow hurting me or fastening the process.

But, now what? How do I stop this feeling of pain from spreading? I mean, it’s not that bad, as it literally only feels like I am being poked by a sharp pencil, but it was feeling like only aches a few minutes ago, so, if only a few minutes ago they were feeling like aches, what will they feel like an hour later? Will I feel like I am being stabbed? Hopefully not, but I can’t be sure now, can I?

Ignoring all that, where the fuck am I? Because I am sure this is not my bed nor is this my bedroom. Am I having some kind of sleep paralysis? But I’ve never had sleep paralysis before, and I don’t think it can develop this suddenly.

Or am I somehow dreaming?

…No, for some reason me being in a dream just seems wrong. I don’t know why though, as it seems even more improbab- ACH!

Suddenly I felt a sharp pain, though I can’t tell where, I definitely felt it.

“Okay, thinking later, now I need to find a way to stop this pain from spreading… somehow.”

But there was just a tiny problem with that, I didn’t know what was causing the pain to spread, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the pulls from the thing before as I couldn’t feel it anywhere, so what was causing it?

“I mean, the pain was spreading faster because of those things touching me, so maybe it’s because something I can’t sense is touching me now too?”

Even though that felt a bit wrong, because I couldn’t see anything that was touching me, not that I could see anything.

So, I just started focusing on my aches, hoping to feel something that could somehow help me, and after a few moments, that felt like hours to me because I was panicking a bit, I felt something passing through me, and it was somehow causing the pain to spread to the aches, it was as if my… body was deteriorating somehow, aches became short but sharp pains and sharp pains became longer and sharper pains, I am probably wrong on that but eh, don’t really have any other idea what was going on so might as well throw in a stupid theo- ACH!

Okay, okay I’ll stop and get this fixed!

…Somehow.

So, I started trying to focus on those things passing through me, and GOD were there a lot of them. They felt like really small particles, but they were moving like water or wind, constantly flowing and when a wave of them ended, another one would fallow close behind.

They couldn’t really… deteriorate my body by themselves, but when there were a lot of them, and there were a lot of them, they could just punch through me without a problem, which was very bad for me.

Now, to stop them… how the fuck do I do that?

In the case of the pulls, they felt like a tangible thing that I could just shake off, and I did that, but in the case of these things? They felt like water or air, how the fuck am I supposed to shrug off air? And they didn’t even act like air or water other than the fact they seemed to somehow flow, what am I supposed to do, dodge them?

… Maybe???

Not knowing what to do, or having any other plans, I tried to move out of the way of those things, whatever they were, but was met with one tiny problem, I couldn’t see or sense them when they weren’t touching me, so I literally could only move away after they had hurt me, which wouldn’t really work, and there didn’t seem to be a patter on how they flowed, they probably weren’t even alive, or alive in any sense of the word I knew of.

Hmm… then dodging doesn’t work, but what to do now?

I started thinking about various ways I could think of stopping them but the fact that the pain was spreading through me was kind of a bummer as it didn’t really allow me to think too deeply as every so often I would wince from it and would have to start again.

But there wasn’t anything that came to my mind, except for one thing.

“Just try and shrug them off I guess?”

I mean, I wasn’t really counting on this working, but might as well try as I didn’t have anything else to do.

No reason to dilly dally any longer, so I just started shrugging my body as fast as and as hard as I could and started watching the things passing through me.

And after a few seconds of observing the particles, I realized not all of them were flowing at the same speed, and the slower ones just bounced off me in another direction thanks to this, and I was able to divert the faster ones to the edges of my body instead of my centre… not that ı was sure how my body looked though.

I mean, did I still have a body? Wait, scratch that, what makes me thing I don’t have a body? What if this is just a dream and I am just making a lot of non-sensical moves in my bed right now? And if the aches make my body in this weird dre- ACH!

Okay, okay, I’ll stop… for now.

I was able to fling some waves due to their low speed, but the faster ones just moved closer to my edges, which I wasn’t sure was a good thing or not… not that I was able to send all of them flying to the edges as some of them still just pierced through me.

But this confirms one thing, I am somehow tangible to these things, whatever they are, so I should technically be able to somehow join the flow of particles and ride them like a ship, right?

But can I even make some of my body harder to ride the ‘waves’ or control it somehow? Well, only one way to find out!

So, I started trying to turn my body into something like a sail, but then quickly realized that I couldn’t really control my body like that, and I was already like a sail so trying to change it wouldn’t even do anything.

Then a light bulb appeared above my head, I was able to shake my body and tilt it a bit while doing so, so shouldn’t I be able to shake my body a lot and fold it in half? And if I succeed, I’d be making myself as twice as dense! … not in that sense, I’d say I am pretty smart… anyways.

Like I was saying, effectively making me twice as dense and hopefully, hard enough for the waves to just carry me and not pass through me.

So, I started wobbling aggressively, trying to touch my two tips to each other… seriously, what do fuck do I look like? I swear if I am a flat fucking d- ACH!!!

Okay, I’ll stop, I’ll stop…

And to my luck, the wobbling worked!... Somehow… I can imagine a lot of luck being involved in it…

But it worked and that’s what counts, and as the waves of particles started hitting me, I realized this was a stupid fucking idea.

The particles wouldn’t pass through me and would just get stuck there and later more particles would hit them moving them a bit deeper with each hit, and the areas where the particles would get stuck felt like ı had laid on them while sleeping, it just felt like static had overtaken those parts of me… but I was moving… somewhat.

But hey I was moving in the end! Maybe not at the speed of light, or as fast as some of the waves normally are, but I was still moving!... Just don’t ask me to ‘unfold’ as I really don’t think it will be a pleasant experience…

Wait, where are these waves actually going tho?

Actually, isn’t it high time I wake up, if this is a dream that is, which I am more and more feeling like this somehow isn’t...

Hell, forget about this being a dream or not, what’s going on?!

I wake up, am unable to open my eyes and weird things start pulling me and when I am finally free of them, I realized I am getting assaulted by waves upon waves of something that I am currently using as propulsion, and what’s with my “body” anyways?

I swear, if I am seriously like a di- AUGH!

As I was complaining, the particles somehow managed to ram me into something, not that this sad attempt at ramming did anything to thing I was rammed into though, and the thing I rammed into felt like a solid wall, I’ll leave it to you to guess how ‘fun’ that was.

But after a few moments I started sensing something, it was as if I was lying in a very uncomfortable position, but soon after that I started feeling something and saw some light entering my eyes.

“What the…”