I woke up coughing, my lungs burned and my body throbbed. I felt dizzy and then I moved on my knees almost on instinct and with great pain, threw up. It did not stop after the initial emptying of my stomach, it just kept on going. I did not understand how there can be so much in there. I must’ve thrown twice the amount my stomach can hold by now. I was confused and my half-sleeping mind woke when trying to process my current situation.

I remembered the agony, my ripped of... shocked I opened my eyes… or at least tried to. No matter how loud I ordered them to open, they didn’t listen. I knew they were still there, I felt them but the sensations they gave me scared me. They were horrifyingly familiar with the feeling of burned skin that had melted stuck. I felt a cold fear take root in my bones. It only grew stronger after I remembered the pain when I fell in liquid… fire, boiling water… acid? The memories of scorching pain were doused in the cold hard fear that grew by the second.

“No.” I croaked out. My panicked voice roughly exited my burning throat.

I didn’t even want to check but my trembling hands… hand already started trailing along my face, I shuddered uncontrollably. My hope got extinguished the second I touched my cold dead skin. My hand touched my fear with its equally destroyed skin. Like a horrible battle was fought on my skin that was now filled with reversed craters, remainders of a war I feared was fought.

“No!” I cried out. I could feel blood filling my throat, it screamed in pain. My lungs screamed, everything screamed, everything screamed in pain. But I didn’t listen.

My hand trembled, even more, the further I went up to my face. A horrid sensation filled my mind. A disgusting scratchy sound tickled my ears as my hand scraped over the dead skin. My hand painfully slowed down for every bump my fingers encountered, making the process that extra bit more agonizing.

Trembling I reached my eyes, my fear blossomed into full-blown panic. My hands felt no change in my blistered skin. If I went with just the feeling from my hand I could not have felt the difference. My breathing started to get out of control, my hand pretty much spasmed. I once again ignored the screaming of my muscles. I knew what I was supposed to feel, I knew that my body didn’t lie. I knew why I couldn’t open my eyes. But I didn’t want to listen.

“No,” I muttered. My hand told the truth but it hurts to listen. So I stopped. I looked down but I could not see, yet I knew what I would find. I could feel tears coming from one of my eyes.

My eyelids burned shut, even if I had the proper medical knowledge to… do anything. I wouldn’t have the tools. On top of that, I couldn’t even be sure that the heat wouldn’t have damaged the eyes themselves. And I doubt that I could tear them open without permanently removing my eyelids or just blind myself.

“I am blind now,” I stated as fact. I knew it was a fact, but I did not want it to be true. So I did what I do best, I lied to myself.

I knew what happened to my face happened to my entire body. The boiling pool I must’ve fallen into had hit my entire body, every single place, I could still feel it. My body doesn’t lie, it never did. It hurt to think about this, so I did not. I was practically blind now I knew I could not even... I pushed it to the back of my mind, with all the other things I pushed back there, locked in a closet. Only to become the monsters that haunt my dreams. Scars that will never quite heal, most of the time literally and figuratively. I ignored the most pressing problem and went on to the next most pressing question

“Why didn’t I die?” I did not even have to think long. The answer came quickly, as it wasn’t the first time I had burned my wounds shut to survive. I knew it was different, I knew it wasn’t fire and it wasn’t out of a free will. I also knew it was the only possible reason for my survival. I can’t be sure I never can. Yet I felt like I didn’t ask the right question.

“Why couldn’t I just die?”

First being torn apart by a monster then falling in boiling water. I really thought I would bleed to death back then. Peacefully dying when my brain already shut down from the bloodloss. It seems like one big joke, first, the agony then the loss of my arm, and now this. The pool that took my sight burned the wounds shut and took my chance of a peaceful death. Even if my wounds burned shut I had such a high chance of dying from the amount of blood I already lost.

“Why couldn’t I just die?” I couldn’t find an answer. There was no answer, I just had bad luck… right? Maybe if I hadn’t rolled I wouldn’t have fallen in the pool. Just maybe the falling rocks from the cave would’ve crushed my head. I could’ve avoided all of this if I hadn’t moved. I could’ve avoided all of this if I gave up. Actually, I could’ve avoided everything if just gave up from the very beginning. I just laughed very loud, so loud in fact that I screamed from the pain it brought me. I didn’t care I just laughed whilst screaming. I stood up and my muscles started screaming too. It made me laugh louder, screaming together, laughing together. Maybe they thought it was funny too.

But the screaming hurt, everything hurt, I hurt, they hurt. I could make it stop. My head snapped to the pool. Fear, pain, confusion, realization shot through me in rapid succession. The pool could not take from me. It had no hands, it had no will. The only reason it took my swift release from was that I was too tired to put any effort in. I would not make the same mistake again. I will have what is denied from me. It could grant me what I wanted, I will have back what it took. I will make it stop, I will make everything stop.

So I ran and dived straight into the swift release of my suffering. I knew it would take a while to finally die but the pain would be worth it. Time seemed to slow down, or my thought sped up, no way to tell which it was. But in the middle of the air, I noticed the sound of unmistakable bubbles popping behind me. Something I totally forgot about. Before I even knew that this meant I had dived the wrong direction my head hit the wall hard and I blacked out.