Within the Beast

I felt pelted, bruised, dead as the winds hurled me in a forever spinning momentum, piercing my abilities to think, to breathe. I could feel the tenseness of death’s bloodcurdling fingertip run across my spine, sending chills all throughout every cell in my dying body. I forced myself to open my eyes as the whirling and thrashing of the winds continued. The fearsome gusts conflagrated my pupils in a way so harsh that the experience set my eyes throbbing more than when I had looked directly at the sun just the day before.  I was soaked, harassed, persecuted as I flew about, helplessly in the wreckage, remains, and dead.

I could see nothing more than the shrieking winds, remains of the past, and the destruction of the future. The limbs of trees, crumbs of granite, and many other suffering things flew around with me, and seemed to torment me along with the ghastly gusts of the tremendous killer; the tornado. I was beaten repetitiously with deadening blows. With each strike against my deflating soul, I found my senses to be failing, my heart skipping beats, my life streaking away with the blood that eventually ruptured from my desperate body in such nightmarish conditions. Nausea overcame my flailing head and drowned me in my own blood and tears. I had no energy. No strength. No will. I let the bellowing winds slaughter me. I cried as loudly as my parched remains allowed as death’s beckoning overwhelmed and defeated my flying, distressed state. I waited for my breath to cut, for my internal structures to give in to the stress of the clouds and debris in which I had been swallowed. I closed my eyes and waited for the darkness to enclose me, for my thoughts to lose existence. With all of the chaotic mischief  tangling my structure with the suffocating darkness, I felt the winds slowing.  The circling rotations I had been trapped within were declining in speed as I descended lower and lower until I found myself gasping for air, for life, as I was plummeting toward the earth. I was wailing, crying, screaming at the top of my lungs as the ground drew nearer and nearer faster that I could imagine. I closed my bloodshot eyes as my stomach was swelling within me and my heart stopped repeatedly in shock. With one last breath of the foul air I had been breathing for so long, I was pounded into the soil, head first; ready to not awaken to see the light of day again.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. I could hear the medical instruments at work, detecting if I had died or not. I was far too faint to move a single muscle in my once ordinary body. I managed to open my eyes, slowly, ever so slowly. Once the electrical lights of the hospital came into view, I quickly came to a squint, as the brightness defied anything that I had experienced in the monstrous tornado. Through my blurred gaze, I could see only blotches of color. As my brain became to process my awakening, I could manage to see the room I had been maintained. Once my vision had returned to me, it became blurred once again. In tears, I thanked the skies above me for sparing my life. My head was throbbing in an unforgettable pain. But, with all of the dramatic events that had led to my imprisonment in this hospital bed with needles pierced into my veins, my heart throbbed also in joy. I had felt death’s bewildering grip upon my broken shoulders. I had experienced an overwhelming amount of beatings against massive, everyday objects that were once a casual sight to see. I had survived. I was alive. I am free from the grasp of the torrential storm. I am living. I am now. I am thankful. I am me.