It took her mind—or part of it, at least—and stole her memories and nearly destroyed her entirely. And what it didn’t destroy was left for others to chip away at; those beastly figures came to her bedside armed with chisels, and they laid into the remnants of her mind with a spiteful glee. But she wouldn’t leave. She stayed and suffered their blows in silence; though her tongue was stilled, and her eyes shuttered in comatose night, she felt them digging into her, and heard their voices as they haggled over her flesh. Something tethered her to this world – and though this counter-force left her helpless to confront her torturers, it nonetheless kept her grounded, however tenuously, in the waking world. Then one day, this binding force pulled apart her eyelids, breathed speech into her throat, shocked her muscles back to life, and bubbled up inside her with such an overwhelming force that the only way she could tame it was to release it in one long uncontrollably violent scream.
It is a decade since that day, and though you might not hear it between the calmness of her speech or the mirthful lilt of her laughter, if you listen real closely you just might detect an echo of that first breath after coma.
