I was naked and alone, terrified and strapped to a cold stone altar in a dark room with a single light on me. I had been taken just like she had always feared. If only we had known that this is what it meant to be taken, that it would walk up to us well dressed and glittering with lies.

I could still feel them connected to me, like extensions of myself. Four of them. Just by relaxing myself a very little, I could see they were also in similar positions, but they were in smaller rooms somewhere below me. My tiny heart raced like the flapping wings of a hummingbird.

I followed my small, cold arm down to my hands, now numb from the straps and the icy stone. Stuck into my wrist was a lengthy silver needle and coming from that needle was a long red tube. The tube was originally clear, and it was only red because it was taking my blood, drop by drop. Three more similar needles and tubes were distributed around my body. One in the other wrist and two in my groin. 

Suddenly, searing pain rippled across my head then down my spine. I felt myself pouring faster from the cannulas, like someone was sucking on the end of the tubes. A light inside me winked out, leaving three remaining. What had they done?

I reached out with that separate part of me toward where one of them had been. I felt…nothing. It was like a jagged, torn edge of a wound where a limb had been severed angrily. Tears streamed from my eyes as I realized that they had taken one of them from me, irrevocably. 

Another pain and then another chased down my body. Twin pains for the identical bonds that they had severed. Two more lights flicked out inside me. I reached out again and the edges felt cleaner this time, but also hollow like life ended at the edge of my invisible wound.

A fourth, final wave. This one was so intense that I cried out in my small voice. I lashed my invisible hand out and grabbed onto him, refusing to let them take that particular part of me. I held him closer, drawing on him to help us stay bonded. 

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Let me go or they will kill me. His voice reverberated inside me.

Immediately, I stopped. 

I can’t live without you. I waited for a reply.

You’re gonna be alright, I promise. 

What are they doing to you? I demanded.

I never said this to you, but I love you.

The hot pain was unbearable this time and I lost my vision and then my hearing and then my sense of touch. The light inside me didn’t wink out, it burned out. It was like an explosion. I felt myself coming back, and the stone beneath me was warm now and soaked in sweat. I reached myself out and felt for the connection. This time, it wasn’t severed. It was like it had been scooped out. It was a veritable crater inside me. We had been bonded too closely to take him from me easily, I saw, and that realization made me feel what I had truly just lost. A part of me was gone, forever.

“I love you, too.” I whispered. 

I closed my eyes and lay still in exhaustion. I reached my hands, the invisible ones, inside me and felt the two currents, expecting them to be dry and faint. They were so potent that just looking for them filled me with the lightness I had come to enjoy. I had been the bond holding me and the other four together. They had been glued to me by my own will and the blood we shared.

I suddenly worried that I couldn’t remember their names. None of them came to me. It felt like trying to grab the wisps of mist on a foggy day. I could see it was there, but I could not touch it. I could see their names, the shape of each, even the length. But to actually form the name in my mind was impossible. I reached for the name I knew I should know. That last bond had a name that I cherished. I dug myself into the currents inside of me to try to grab the name. I felt the altar beneath me tremble as a I drew harder and harder to pull his name into clarity. 

A spark. A single letter. 

I.

Then, nothing.