Rachel woke up on Tuesday morning and rolled over to check her phone for the time. 6:16am. She looked to her side, where her husband was sleeping soundly. Not having to get up yet, she laid in bed, wide awake, for the next hour and and 14 minutes, until her normal 7:30am alarm went off. During this time, Rachel’s thoughts were racing through her head, and whenever she closed her eyes, she saw what looked like the silhouette of a person with a bright light at the center of their chest. It didn’t have a negative effect on her; on the contrary, she felt a strange calmness just at the thought of this bright light.
At 7:30, both she and her husband awoke. They said good morning to each other and went to their separate bathrooms to get ready for the day. When she stepped out of the shower, Rachel looked at herself in the mirror, and saw the light, although barely visible, emanating from deep within her chest. She didn’t know what it was, but whatever it is, she knew without a doubt that she wanted more of it.
She finished getting ready and went downstairs to eat breakfast, where she once again joined her husband. While they talked over their breakfast, Rachel couldn’t help but focus on the light that she could see through her husband’s blue buttondown shirt. Though she had no evidence to suggest it, Rachel somehow inherently knew that no one else would be able to see these strange lights illuminating from within themselves and others. As such, she didn’t bring it up to her husband.
In fact, she had a strong urge to release the light from within her husband and take it for herself. The problem was, she didn’t know how to go about doing such a thing, and certainly didn’t want to hurt her husband, so she refrained from doing anything of the sort. She gave her husband a kiss on the cheek and left for work, which for her was a nursing shift at the local hospital.
As she drove to work, Rachael saw people on the side of the street with the same glowing lights deep in their chests, some brighter and more predominant than others. Rachel was fighting the urge to get out of her car and tear them open to get to their light, even though she had no idea what the light was or what she would do with it once she got it.
She arrived at work and noted disparities in the brightness of the light coming from everyone’s chests, both patients and hospital employees. She began her rounds, starting in the geriatric unit. The first room she walked into was that of a 96-year-old, dying man named Clyde. Clyde was an indigent, emphysema ridden man who had been in the state’s care for some time. He had a dull glow in his chest, unlike a lot of the other people Rachel had seen, where the light was much more pronounced.
She sat down next to Clyde and asked him how he was doing, not because she was genuinely curious, but because she wanted to figure out how to extract the light from within him. She wanted to figure out what it was, and why she had such an urge to get it for herself. Figuring Clyde didn’t have much light within him, and it seemed like a good idea to get a small bit of it first. She tried pressing her hands against his chest, nothing. She essentially put her hands all over his upper body, but with no success. It was only after Clyde turned his head that she noticed she could see a glimpse of light from within his ear.
She moved in to get a closer look, and upon inhaling, the light in his ear grew slightly brighter. That was it. She knew how to get it. She used her hands to clutch the top of Clyde’s head and his neck, and brought her mouth right up to his ear, inhaling sharply. The light came out through his ear and directly down her throat, into her sternum; not literally her inner chest, but more…within her, in a spiritual way.
She noticed that there really wasn’t much light to transfer to her from Clyde, but when she finished, she noticed Clyde was dying. Not dying as in an overall sense of the word, but actively dying. His heart monitor was beeping rapidly, and before long, it flatlined. Rachel quickly left the room.
She took note of how she felt now that she had consumed more of the strange light. She was feeling revitalized, but noticed a craving for more. The little bit that she had gotten from Clyde had done next to nothing to satisfy her. She noticed the patients generally had less lights than everyone else in the hospital, so she wanted to try one of them next. She didn’t know how to get close enough to either an employee or a visitor to extract the light from them.
Then she noticed a young man looking at her, giving her a flirtatious gaze. Rachel was a beautiful woman, and though she was married, she knew how to use her sexuality as a weapon if she needed to. She nodded for the man, who had a substantial amount of light in his chest, to follow her and walked down a hallway. She then entered a janitorial closet on the left side of the hall, making sure her suitor saw. The man entered the closet, where he introduced himself, and said he “couldn’t believe this was happening”.
Rachel wasted no time and didn’t say a word before pinning him to the wall turning his head to the side, where she exhaled all of her breath, then inhaled as sharply as she could. This time, the light took about 3 full breaths to fully get out of the man and into Rachel, and Rachel had her eyes closed during the process. When she opened them, the man in front of her wasn’t the man she’d involuntarily seduced, but rather a man of about 70 years of age, who then dropped to the floor.
It was at that moment that Rachel knew what the light was. It was the remaining life the person had left. Each time she had taken the light from her victim, she had noticed a burst of energy, and this time, a bruise she had on her forearm from an earlier minor injury had completely dissipated. She somehow knew that getting people’s light would keep her young, that fact was just inherent to her. She had no reason to believe that besides intuition, but she was right. Rachel was essentially stealing life away from others.
As soon as she had this revelation, ideas began digging themselves into her brain. She wanted to figure out more about the light. Did it give her special abilities? Did it extend her own life? She had to know. As she went to open the door of the janitor’s closet, she nearly ripped it off its hinges. Luckily the hallway was unoccupied when she exited. Now that she’d had a taste of whatever the light was, she needed more. Thinking about it, she figured that children probably had the most light to offer, if her hypothesis that the light was years left to live was in fact correct.
The need to know these things, and to find out more about her newfound strength took precedent over everything else in her. She no longer felt the need to stay at work. In fact, she knew she wouldn’t be able to do any light-extracting there without being caught, so she she left. She got in her car and went to an area of the city where a lot of homeless people congregated. She skulked around the alleys for a few minutes before finding a lone man sleeping on his side next to a garbage dumpster.
She walked up to the man and loomed over him, noting the semi-bright light within his ear. She leaned over and began breathing in, the light from within him flowing out of his ear like a bright smoke. This time, she kept her eyes open, and actually watched as the life drained from this man’s eyes and face. His dirty but smooth skin quickly wrinkled as he rapidly aged. Then suddenly, the man quickly sat up, now awake. He looked at Rachel and was entirely disoriented.
He tried speaking, unsure of what was going on, but wanting it to stop. Rachel then effortlessly slammed him back down, with so much force that it dislocated both of his shoulders. She pinned him to the ground with one hand and forced his head to the side with the other She then got the rest of the light from within him, and the man stopped breathing. She ;et go of his now nearly 75-year-old looking body and went on her way.
This time, besides the impressive strength she’d already gained, she found that she could move at above-average speeds. She knew that there was more to this, and she was going to figure out what it was. This was going to be the starting point to a long road for Rachel…
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