(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN…) A NEW TYPE OF PAIN

The street had only just begun recovering from her outburst when something shifted in the air. It was subtle at first, little more than a change in pressure that made the fine hairs along the back of her neck rise instinctively. But even the people nearby seemed to notice it too, because whatever hesitation had kept them rooted in place vanished all at once.

Someone shouted, then the crowd scattered in every direction with a kind of learned panic, storefront doors slamming shut almost immediately while others dove behind parked cars or sprinted into alleyways without looking back. 

Taylor barely had enough time to consider the implications before fire swallowed the street.

It came from somewhere behind her left side, a massive wave of incandescent heat that crossed the distance before she could react. One second she was standing there, and the next the air ignited around her with a roar so violent it drowned out everything else.

For a split second, so abruptly that her mind failed to process it properly at first, it felt cold. An awful, piercing cold spread across her skin, sinking deep enough to ache in her bones before she even understood she had been hit. Then came a strange numbness, as though her body had stopped belonging to her entirely.

And then the pain arrived.

It consumed everything.

Taylor opened her mouth and screamed, though she could not hear the sound herself. The flames drowned it out completely, filling the world with a roaring crackle that pressed against her from every direction. Heat crawled over her skin in waves, devouring thought and breath and coherence alike until nothing remained except agony so intense it ceased to feel real.

She stumbled blindly, though she could no longer tell whether she was moving or falling.

The smell hit next.

Burning fabric.

Burning hair.

Burning flesh.

Some distant part of her realized the last one was her.

Her throat tore itself raw with screams that never became words as she could not think clearly enough for language anymore. The pain had reduced her to something far simpler and uglier, an animal reaction stripped down to its barest form while the fire consumed her alive.

Somewhere beyond the flames, people were shouting.

Taylor never heard what they said.

Her vision warped into shifting orange and black, shapes dissolving behind unbearable heat while her body stopped responding properly beneath her. She collapsed eventually, though she did not feel herself hit the ground. By then, sensation had become something almost non-existent.

The only thing left was the burning; it went on for far too long. And even when merciful death finally claimed her, even the reset didn't bring her peace. No, the pain had already burrowed into her psyche, somewhere deep enough that the reset could not touch it. 

Taylor jerked violently as the world snapped into place. Then, she staggered sideways and nearly slammed into the wall beside her, one trembling hand flying to her throat as ragged breaths tore out of her lungs. The skin beneath her fingers was smooth, intact, but her mind refused to believe it.

She could still feel the fire, could still feel her nerves screaming at her that she was burning even while cool air hit her face. 

“Oh God,” she rasped.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the moment she did, she saw it again: flames rushing toward her, her skin blackening, and fire filling her lungs while her body forgot how to do anything except suffer.

Her stomach lurched violently.

Taylor bent forward, one hand braced against the wall as she fought the sudden urge to vomit. Her entire body shook in erratic bursts that she could not fully control anymore, adrenaline and terror tangling together into something ugly beneath her skin.

Taylor had died in increasingly brutal ways ever since her loops started, but burning… burning was new. And it was the worst way to go. 

Nothing else even came close.