It had been a while since their last invasion, seeming only like minutes to him however. Their attack always started off slow, then turned gracefully into a massacre of rampaging destruction.  Each time he witnessed it, he told himself there would never be an attack as bad as this again. He was constantly proven wrong. 

Off behind the rolling hills, starting into the gentle slope of the mountains, he could see the very first faint traces of pink and black shimmering trails make their way downwards, twisting and writhing through the murky headstream of clouds.  Pink death, he liked to call it.  So beautiful in their appearance, but so twisted and ugly the closer and closer the spinning orbs approached him.  Their appearance was foreshadowed by the setting sun, like a sparkling tint of curiosity before their impact was delivered and his world was once again turned inside out. 

He could spot the first couple of them.. Five, six. The first ones always hit the hardest. Eleven, twelve. 

oh god.. this one’s gonna be bad, he thought to himself. Twenty two, twenty three, twenty four. 

The faint booming of thunder was next.  The electric interference caught up in the streams always triggered some sort of lightning and thunder, or rain, or sometimes both.  As a kid he used to love storms, but ever since the arrival of the pink an entirely new image had entered his mind upon the sound of thunder and the luster of a storm – one of fear, helplessness, and pain. He knew he could try running, but he knew from experience it would do no good - The grassy plain seemed to go on for hundreds of miles. 

The sounds of the storm were more imminent now, crackling and scorching the sky with a low, moody  rumbling.  The rain followed, quickly setting itself in just as he expected.  The first few drops caught his jacket and hair, giving him that sudden unexpectancy to finalize what laid ahead for him.  He looked up into the sky and screamed. 

His mind took on a completely new atmosphere, one not of interpretation and curiosity, but the old familiar friend of constant and steady pain, like the pins and needles down his spine.  He could see the forms twisting and convulsing their way closer to him now with their own sadistic charm, unfortunately his eyes were fading away, like the rest of his senses.  All he could do was sit and be succumbed to the beautiful aura that transformed his being. 

The pain was intensifying, more like the steady beat of a drum against his chest now. He convulsed and jerked, foam spasming from his mouth.  His muscles tensed and seized.  The pink was almost upon him; he could feel it now.  His eyes started to melt, along with the first layer of his skin.  The thin flesh of his underdeveloped body gracefully danced its way of his skin as the dozens of streams of shimmering orbs drew closer and closer to his body. He remembered this well each time the orbs came. 

Yes, they were definitely in him now. He knew this pain all too well.  It was past the layer of pain in which a man can rightfully scream out for help or fear – words wouldn’t free him of what he was feeling. 

As the orbs drew into his flesh, his feet rose off the ground. Suspended in the air, a mass of writhing pain and agony slowly transformed itself into one as the nexus of the event approached. 

The things now took on a completely new dimension in his mind – one he could not begin to comprehend anywhere else.  He could feel them through each of his blood vessels, each track of his mind, every hair on his body.  The oneness of this apex made him float like a feather throughout space and time. The living experience which he had encountered was more than anything he’d imagined. 

All points of his past, present, and future seemed to coalesce in his new consciousness. His first birthday, his parents reminding him not to jump in the water, and his first reaction of mortal terror to the shimmering orb streams. 

The orbs had done their job, and he knew it. He could feel the presence drift out from him as soon as quickly as they came. Their presence unadulterated to the mind as it was to his body; he could feel his bones healing themselves as his skin reattached itself to them. 

The orbs were only faint traces in his mind now, quickly doing their festive dance as they grew smaller and smaller in the mind’s eye. Their synchrosity lost dimension too as their beat wore down, and his now apparent convulsions died down into short spasms, then simple flicks of a heartbeat, then nothing. 

The simple sounds of a reminiscent storm drew overhead, and the faint smell of rain blew through him.  He collapsed onto the ground, looking up into the now passing sky, wondering how long it would be before it all happened again.