I’m sure that very few get to wake up in their own corpse. In a way, it’s like winning the lottery…but unlike a lottery, when it happens to you, you might be unsure if you want to cash in your ticket.

I remember being cold and wet when I awoke, or at least that was how it felt. My whole body was pins and needles as I lay surrounded by walls of dirt, feeling too afraid to move and shake myself out of my sensory paralysis. What lay in wait underneath the static that crawled through my skin? A massive presence loomed inside me, threatening to surface at any thought. Any movement. It was eager to rip me apart like a lead weight held up by tissue paper.

Memories of terrible things seeped back into me, yet they felt like they were from the life of someone else. They felt like bad dreams. What happened didn’t make sense, and in a fair, logical world, wouldn’t have happened.

…And yet, it did. Or did it?

When I finally twitched, I felt in those sharp, uncalculated movements that I was an amalgamation of rock and slime. My flesh felt soft and raw, as if it would slough off of my skeleton. It felt…disgusting. I felt disgusting. The taste of vomit lingered in my mouth, but the belt around my muzzle forbade me from spitting it out.

I curled my tail between my legs and shuddered. Time to get up. My forelegs went taut with pain as I lifted myself off the dirt and fell back onto my haunches. I sighed through my nostrils and closed my eyes as the blood rushed through my limbs once again. I could smell it’s coppery reek emanating off of me.

Fire rampaged through my flanks and backside, and I eagerly surrendered to it by collapsing into the cold dirt. I felt déjà vu as I let out muffled cries. My throat bunched up and strained to produce anything beyond grotesque squeals.

The pain was too much. I needed to breath. I drunkenly reached up with the foreleg that hurt the least to undo the belt. When I accidentally brushed my neck I paused. The hide was matted and sticky, and when I pulled my hoof back it was covered in blood.

It all happened. All of it. It wasn’t a stranger’s dream anymore. I am Elixir, but I’m not who she was. She was strong and confident; disciplined and needed.

An expecting mother.

She was all that yesterday, but not today. Today she is me. A sore, stinking, heap in a ditch.

It was all taken away from me…my pride, my dignity, my hope…and of all the things to be returned to me, I was given my pulse back.

Life may not have been what I wanted back, but as I looked into the life essence that smeared my hoof, I imagined a use for it. I could think of a motivation to crawl out of this hole in the ground.

I was going to share this agony with a certain someone.