Short Writing Contest Task 2: Numb

I am held in a soft embrace, kisses are littered on my hair and warm arms wrap around me. I lean back and smile; I could stay here forever. This bliss is like a dream. But his arms grow tighter and his fingers curl around my neck in a grip painfully tight. My heart is pounding and a hoarse scream wrenches free of my throat. White blossoms within my vision and my lungs burn in protest; he is wringing the life out of me. I am about to die.

I fell into the abyss and it spat me out.

Now I'm floating in this dark ocean, completely disconnected from the living. My senses have been cut and cauterised, numbing me to the world. I don't know how long I've been here but it feels like an eternity.

The ocean I've been gliding over is shifting, as if a storm were brewing. I am spinning out of control. The ocean begins to drain away and with it, the darkness. And there was light.

White blooms across my eyes and there is a tightness on my neck. These sensations that I'm incapable of feeling now are dragged from the recesses of my memory. The whiteness begins to take form and colour as my eyes attempt to send the sights before them to my brain. The ghosts of fingers entwined around me fade away to nothing. I feel the waves again, the sight I try to process morphs and shifts and I feel nausea deep within my gut. Everything tosses and turns around me and then, just as suddenly, stops. 

I have eyes again: I have my sight back.
I don't understand.

My line of sight is at a strange angle, my head must be tilted to the right. I am near a wall that contains two things of note: a notice board, and a mirror. I still can't feel my body though I can see some of it. Deep inside my core something is waking up, turning itself on again. As if I were a machine preparing its cogs to start turning.

I look at the refection of my body. I am naked but there is nothing erotic about the sight before me: the skin along my back and the base of my thighs shows dark pools of stagnant blood inside me. My skin is starting to bloat and is pulled unnaturally tightly across my features with a sickly grey hue. I may have woken up but my body is still that of a corpse.

I look at a calender hanging on the notice board, it marks October and the days are crossed of up to the 31st. I died on the 28th - I've been rotting for three days now. Suddenly I'm glad I have no sense of smell. However I don't look like I've been dead that long; that's when I notice the second item on display - a thermometer marking -20 degrees. I've been preserved here.

I wonder now, if my lack of feeling hasn't been caused by a delay in my body "waking up" but has been numbed by the cold. If it has that means the cold is affecting me. That could have other consequences. What does my awakening even mean? Am I alive, undead, a zombie? I don't understand how I'm here.

There's a clock there as well, reading 11:55, is that in the morning, evening, who knows! It feels significant somehow. When I see the hands edge closer to 12:00 I feel pressure, as if there is a great weight on me. I still can't feel anything. It's all due to the damn cold; it keeps me pinned down, keeps me numb to the world.

It's almost 12:00 now. I feel like I've sunken down, into the earth. It threatens to spill over me.

I am trapped in a cool embrace, my body is numb as the cold wraps itself around me. I am motionless; I pray to each and every deity to save me. This torment is like a nightmare. My grasp to life loosens and I am slack in the arms of the cold. My heart is quiet and my throat still.White blossoms within my vision and I am utterly numb; the life is leaking out of me. I am about to die.