Just a completely random piece that I wrote in the middle of the night the other day
“Will?” Halt knocks on the door, wondering whether or not it’s necessary to do so. Will isn’t normally one to sleep in, and yet it’s a bit later than he would have expected the boy to sleep. “Will, are you awake?”
Still no reply. A mixture of annoyance and concern war between him, and it’s enough to make the final decision. He turns the doorknob. “Will, it’s late. You need to—”
He stops. The room is the same as it had been the night before, with a few items scattered about the floor. The desk is a wreck—nothing new about that. A few arrows are lying beside the bed, just as they had been the night before.
“Will?” He turns around, heading for the verandah. Maybe Will was awake already, doing chores, or maybe he was at the creek. Halt doesn’t think so. He isn’t an egotistical man, but he knows he would have heard the boy moving around. It’s simply part of being a Ranger. Will hadn’t woken up, and Halt was beginning to wonder if he’d ever fallen asleep.
“Will?” The little clearing surrounding the cabin is also empty. Will’s not in his bed, and he’s certainly not anywhere nearby. There’s only one conclusion, and it’s one that makes his heart sink. The one thing he’s certain of is that he needs to find the boy as soon as possible.
Failure. The voice pounds in his head. Failure. Failure. You failed. You’re a coward. It’s all you can think about, isn’t it?
The pounding in his head accompanies the pounding of his feet as he runs. Sticks, rocks, and dirt find their way into every crevice, and yet Will doesn’t stop. At least he can feel the pain. At least he knows that he can still feel.
His throat is too dry to keep shouting. He just wants the voice to go away. Halt had told him it would go away, and yet it was still there. The voice was like that stubborn hangnail that never fell off, and a hell of a lot more painful than that, too.
A sob tears through his throat. His foot lands on a large rock, and the pain bursts up his leg. He stumbles, falling to the ground with a thud, the foliage of the forest smacking him in the face. As he forces himself to sit up, he can see the fresh blood on his foot, dripping down into the grass.
It hurts like hell, but he can still feel the pain. Grunting, he forces himself to stand, crying out as he puts pressure on the foot. The pain is good, he tells himself. It’s good. He likes the pain, right? It’s better than…
His heart clenches. No. No, no, no. He can’t think about that. He can’t, he won’t. He can’t let it get to him again. That’s what Halt always tells him. He has to get through it.
The voice is back again, louder than before. He starts to run again, ignoring the stabbing pain in his foot, wanting nothing more than to get away from the voice. He hates what the voice is telling him, and he hates that he’s afraid of the voice.
But what he hates the most is that the voice is his own.
