NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY: The Adventures of the Creeping Bam (BOOK 1: The Job)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: ART

I wake up in spluttering terror to find my lungs are on fire and I'm spinning through something thicker than air now, but I think it's the stabbing, needle-sharp pain of freezing cold that's brought me howling back to my senses. I open my mouth before I realise what I'm doing and I choke instantly as it fills with water so cold it hurts my teeth, and for what may be several moments I just start thrashing blindly, unable to focus in the fluid, swimming madness around me. I'm drowning, there's a small part of me that realises this, but most of me is just beyond control now, scrabbling about with nothing to gain purchase on. I'm being tossed about through furious fast waters and while there's wild light coming from somewhere there's not enough of it to convince me I'm near the surface, whichever direction that's even in. All I have a sense of is myself, and that's desperately finite right now.

Something suddenly comes rushing at me fast and hard from one side and I'm smashed across a big rock that would beat all the air out of me if I actually had any left. I think my chaotic limpness might be the only thing that saves me from getting pulverised by the impact, but it still hurts like hell, and for the bare moments I'm dragged across it and then swept out the other side all I can do is curl up into myself from the pain. It seems to get darker now and I'm spinning madly, then suddenly everything brightens and my head breaks surface.

Opening my mouth the moment I reach the air I take the deepest breath I can before I'm dragged down, and I start clawing upwards fast now that I finally know which direction I'm actually facing, holding onto what air I was able to snatch while I fight to right myself. There's something screaming in the back of my mind that Gael was with me when we were falling and now I don't know where they are, but I can't quite keep that square in my mind right now as I'm finding it hard enough just keeping myself alive. The current's ferocious and it keeps dragging me down, but I'm determined now, and after several frustrating moments I finally pull myself up and breach the surface again, gasping out the bad air and gulping all the good stuff I can as I battle to stay up.

"ART!!!"

It's barely there, I don't know if I'm actually hearing it or simply imagining it, but as I fight to keep my head above water while I'm tossed over a small but savage drop and barely manage to claw myself back up I swear I hear it again. A voice ... their voice, I'm sure of it. I cast about as well I can considering I'm being battered about all over the place, and then I catch a glimpse of ... well, there's something getting tossed around several feet ahead of me. It's hard to tell when I keep getting splashed in the face and my eyes are swimming from it, while the foaming white waters create a constantly shifting landscape of chop around me. Then I find myself dragged across a string of rocks on the right and I've got more immediate concerns.

For a few moments I'm ploughed under again, but with such swift savagery I don't quite have enough time to catch a breath for it, and I'm out of air before I can even start trying to pull myself out of it. That voice in my head is shouting more urgent instructions at me now because it knows as well as the rest of me that I'm not gonna be able to survive very long like this. I thrash about helplessly for several more moments while my lungs start to burn again, and the urge to open my mouth to breath is terribly strong, my survival instinct the only thing that's keeping me from doing it. Suddenly I'm at the bottom and I find myself getting dragged, and now all I can see is a swirling cloud of disturbed river mud swimming around me and again I have no idea which way is up. I don't even bother trying to swim now, terrified that I might just pull myself deeper if I choose the wrong direction.

Then a new surge in the current yanks me around hard and I'm swept so close to another massive boulder in the path of the flow that a small part of me is amazed I'm not crushed to splinters in an instant. Instead I rush round it close enough my nose barely whispers across its smoothed side, then I'm flung upwards and break out again, and I cough and splutter as I'm able to drag in breath again. I get bare moments of peace before the river drops away ahead of me, and this time I manage to catch the sudden drop before it can surprise me, scrabbling with my arms enough that I'm able to turn myself around and get my feet up enough. This time when I go over the eddy I'm able to plunge almost upright and the moment I hit the deep white water I start pulling myself upwards and surface in seconds.