My Precious Nightmare

Chapter 32: The Change

Sky wasn't a stranger to pain. Being a lone girl in a gang in middle school and early high school, she'd been expected to be even tougher than the boys. They could swear and shout all they wanted to. But she had to grit her teeth, take care of business, and keep walking.

This pain was another creature, though. It wasn't pain, it was a tidal wave that crashed into her third world country's coasts, tearing at the membranes of her insides, stripped each cell apart before setting on fire every little screaming citizen and kept them alive to feel more.

She didn't even realize she was Sky or a lone body or anything other than sheer agony until she felt herself throw up what had to be her stomach itself. Slimy, thick, and meat-like, it clogged her throat. She couldn't breathe.

Her body somehow found the care for oxygen among all that pain, and she rediscovered a mouth, gasping for air. She tried to swallow her stomach back down, tried to bite through it, but her teeth cut through nothing and her throat came back dry and empty.

Why can't I breathe? She heaved again, desperate for it, screaming all the while.

Ice claws clamped over her neck and pulled her head back from...where? It shook her and stuffed something just as cold to her face. She recoiled, screaming, though she couldn't hear it. Hearing just wasn't important. Not when you're dying.

But she could...she could...

She opened her mouth wider, trying to get her tongue past the disgusting cold thing. Her aching, screaming mouth.

Air. She could taste it.

But the cold thing was in the way.

Using her matted, useless coast arms ravaged by natural disaster, she beat back the cold and lunged at the air with every fiber of her dying, flaming being.

Her teeth broke through the surface of the water. Glorious, glorious oxygen. Air flooded down her throat, settling her stomach back where it had come from. The waters receded from her flooded land. The fires died. The little people of her being calmed as their bodies were set back on the shore. Her insides fell into place. Wonderfully normal, friendly pain settled in, even drawing back enough to reveal her aching, but still whole, body. She could feel again. Breathe again, as oxygen flowed down her throat in between gulps of whatever relief she suckled to.

Slowly, she began to hear.

"You're turning white. Just push her away long enough to get a drink."

"I told you to stay put."

"Look, I can leave the room so she can't get to me—"

"Just hold on. I think she's finishing up."

"How can you even tell?"

"I just can."

The words vibrated whatever her mouth had suctioned to, tickling her lips. She stopped mid-drag, startled.

"See?" Again, it tickled.

The thing she was drinking was talking.

Alarmed, she unstuck her jaws and pulled away, her insides rolling. The sleeping agony within her stirred, demanding she go back or face the consequences.

But she started to think more. The ground she was on was soft, terribly soft—that was a blanket. A bed? And it was dark—no, her eyes were closed. Why were they closed? Where was she? What was that amazing smell? When had a giant taken up the beating of her heart by pounding against her rib cage? Why did she hurt so much? Where had she been before? Who was she?

Her stomach clenched and reached up. It was going to come out again. Come out and strangle her again for oxygen even as it forced her to vomit out all her organs.