Knot Your Damn Omega (Slate City Omegaverse)

The cold water felt good on my skin. My muscles and lungs burned with the effort of running on soft earth and keeping myself upright.

My bag was slung across my chest and the sandals I’d worn were long behind me. I would rather run barefoot than slip around on those. This park was well maintained—I would be fine.

The only thing keeping me going was the burn. The pain I loathed was the only feeling which made sense. It was the only thing I would allow myself to feel. The physical pain was replacing the shredding happening in my chest. It was ripping me open, slowly.

My truth was burning me alive. Tied to the stake of my own naïve dreams.

I stumbled, slipping on the wet grass, and caught myself. “Fuck.”

It was truly pouring now, and I needed to turn around at some point and go home. I couldn’t stay out here forever, even if that seemed like the more appealing option at the moment.

The river was getting close. The Slate River divided the city in half and curved out of it, turning back south a few miles later. This park was nestled in the bend of it. I would turn around when I got there. It was at least a couple miles back to the entrance and then my run home. By the time I got there, I wouldn’t have enough energy to keep my eyes open, which was the entire idea.

We’d had so much rain in the last week, the water was building up on the ground because the dirt was already saturated. I was splashing behind me nearly as much as a car, but I kept going. The soreness I would have tomorrow would keep me occupied.

This was foolish, one piece of me acknowledged, but I couldn’t stop. If I stopped now, I would break. Movement was keeping me together just a while longer.

The sound of the river reached me long before I saw it. It was overflowing, rushing with brown, dirty water and debris because of all the things it was collecting on its way. It smashed around the curve of the park, almost looking like an amusement park ride on the other side the way it splashed up and slammed back down.

It looked exactly the way I felt. Spinning, dizzy, angry, overwhelmed, and full of things I didn’t want to be there.

Slowly, I moved over to one of the trees dotting the upper bank for a bit of shelter. I could stay here for a minute and listen to the crashing noise. It was a nice replacement for the roaring in my head.

The banks were high here, carved away from erosion and intentionally trying to keep park visitors away from the river. It was fast on calm days, now it would be a nightmare.

Water gathered around my ankles, puddles at least an inch deep. I laughed once as my foot sank into the mud. If I was going to be out here, at least I could get a mud pedicure out of it. Had to make the best out of things, right? That was going to be my life now.

I shoved my other foot down into the mud, and felt the squish between my toes. It grounded me. Let me breathe. My chest still ached like there was a knife in it, lungs trying and failing to take a true even breath after all the running.

The water around my feet was running down, sinking past them and draining the puddles. I pulled my feet out and lost my balance, the mud thicker than I realized.

Vertigo hit me again, and I tottered to the side, realizing too late it was the ground moving, and not me. I lunged for the tree and missed, the bank crumbling beneath my feet, disintegrating and tumbling away, dissolved by the water I’d let into it with my feet.

There was nothing to hold on to. Grass and dirt caked under my fingernails, and I couldn’t even scream. I fell with the avalanche of dirt, rocks battering me and chunks of earth catching on my skin.

Pain seared through me like fire, my ankle suddenly in so much pain I had to scream. It was lost in the sound of the rain and the river.

Oh, fuck. I wasn’t moving, but I was hanging. Partially suspended under the precarious overhang of the bank by my ankle. It was caught on a root of the tree, bent at an angle it shouldn’t go.

My head was in the dirt, and every movement sent a new wave of pain through me. Blood was rushing to my head. I was going to pass out if I stayed like this, and I needed to be free. I needed to get away from the water and away from the overhang.

Think, Esme.

At least I wasn’t hanging. When I got myself free, I would only fall on dirt. Small blessings.

But the way I was hanging, I couldn’t reach my foot. It was too far and too awkward, and it was wedged between the crossing of two roots that didn’t want to move. The only way it was going to move… was if I moved it.

Even preparing to move it was agony.

It’s that or pass out, May-may. You can do this.

It was Eva’s voice in my head. I could do this. I had to do this. I was broken and devastated, and I wasn’t sure my soul would ever recover, but I wasn’t going to give up and die here.

Passing out and dying hanging from a tree root was unacceptable.

I took three big breaths, counting myself down, and I shoved upward, screaming as I did. My ankle might as well have been made of glass for all it felt shattered.

The dirt was slick, and I kept falling, rolling down the bank too fast to control.

Please stop, I begged. I couldn’t go in the water. I wouldn’t be able to get myself back out. I didn’t even think I could walk.

I hit the bottom of the curve, slamming into the rocks on the shore too hard. But I was no longer moving. The water was close, but I wasn’t going to slip into it.

Everything hurt, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My body gave in to the pain, and I faded into black.