Chain Gang All Stars

A tearing and opening. A need to end. A way in with no way out.

What she felt was all the hurt her body and brain could summon at once. It started from her ankle, which felt as though it had exploded, and then, when the man grabbed her, as she writhed with the black rod in her neck, the feeling blossomed further and further and Mari was sure she would die and she welcomed it, hoped for it, begged for it.

As Mari was being Influenced, as she felt her rolled ankle, as an explosion erupted again and again inside of her, every other millisecond, she understood the illusion of time. She understood that she could easily be thrown into a space beyond time, that suffering could stretch and re-form what she had known as seconds and mangle them into years.

This was no epiphany, this was pain, and yet, she felt more than understood that she would do anything, anything, to end the pain she was feeling. It seemed her eyes had shut off, or maybe she had just closed them. Either way the space she generally remembered to have eyes was a wrenching, a pulling that made her feel as though maybe her eyes had been pulled out.

She was suffering. And she would do anything to end it. And yet she could do nothing because she was afraid to move. Her everything was—

And then it ended and she was floating, being carried, and she could feel her body, her body and her breath.