Available Darkness Season 1

pounding heart. He searched the mirror for a way to save the girl, afraid if he did not act quickly, the next image would be from inside her closed eyelids.
    The silence of dusk was shattered by a gunshot that was half in his mind and half an echo in the distance.
    “Nooooo!”
    John screamed, instinct and rage seizing control of his limbs and driving him into spontaneous motion.
    Though every move seemed to rip his wounded flesh even more, he swallowed the pain and scanned the room. He grabbed the blanket on Abigail’s bed and wrapped it around his body in one quick sweep. He lurched forward and also grabbed two pillow cases, then ran towards the door, stuffed one case inside the other, and pulled them over his head.
    “I’m coming, Abigail,” he said, hoping that whatever connection there was between them carried the message to her.
    He breathed in deeply before opening the door to abandon the safe harbor of the motel in a deadly swap for the savagery of awaiting sunlight.
    John stumbled into the parking lot, hunched over, draped in a blanket, shallow breath echoing against a wall of pillowcases and blowing back, burning hot air against the shredded flesh of his face.
    “What the hell?” a man’s voice said, somewhere to his left.
    John turned his head, but couldn’t see anything beyond the pillowcases. While there was light around him, natural and otherwise, there wasn’t enough light to discern the shadows which raced across his one-eyed gaze.
    A woman, also to the left, shrieked several times in rapid succession, or perhaps there was more than just the one woman wailing. John couldn’t tell.
    As he moved forward awkwardly, sunlight singed his feet, but the pain wasn’t nearly as severe as what he’d felt back in the motel. He hunched over, draping the blanket lower and thickening the protective barrier that stood between sunlight and skin. The fire in his flesh slowly cooled as he tried to figure out where he was in relation to where he wanted to be.
    To his far right, he heard the shrieking chaos and screeching metal simmering in the shooting’s aftermath. John hobbled forward like a blind hunchback, navigating the parking lot with only memory and muffled sound as his guides.
    He stumbled several times, barely managing to keep himself upright before slamming into the side of a car. The blanket slipped through his fingers against the grain of his surprise as his skin met one of the final shafts from a fading sun. He was immediately punished.
    John screamed and fell to the ground, grabbing and yanking the blanket back over himself. He swallowed hard and tuned his ears to the reception of unfolding disaster. John pulled the blanket tighter, rose to his feet and continued to amble blindly forward. His mind desperately reached into the world, famished for the slightest sign of Abigail — any signal to pull him toward her — but the air between them seemed empty. The connection between them dissipating like wafting smoke from a flame lost to the wind.
    Still, John could practically smell Abigail’s peril and knew he had to find her. He continued to push himself harder and faster against the antagonistic wind of blind momentum. He’d made it out of the motel parking lot and about 10 yards down the street when he felt his blanket brush against something, his feet tripped into the tangled fabric, and he toppled into approximately 180 pounds of anger.
    “What the fuck is your problem?” a man shouted from the other side of the blanket.
    “He’s got a gun!” someone else screamed.
    Gun?
    Who has a gun? Do they think I have a gun? Or do they see the men Abigail saw?
    Confusion, panic, and the sounds of running footsteps reverberated in all directions. Some moving away from him and others — straight at him.
    “Hey motherfucker,” a man’s voice yelled, livid but leading.
    John felt a harsh blow to his back as someone shoved him to the ground and an entire city seemed to land on top of him, punching, kicking, shoving him down.
    His world twisted into a sudden whirlwind of suffering and bedlam.
    A distant wail of sirens grew louder as hands clawed at his pillowcase, tearing at his hair and where the pillowcase had stuck to his bloody face.
    John’s fingers strained to hold tight to the pillowcase and blanket as he curled into a frail ball, taut with despair.
    More yelling, and cursing, drowning out his cries to get off.
    An army of blows assaulted his ribs, his back, and his head as the angry mob