The Way Back Home: A 1917 Fanfic

Chapter 35: Sleeping Beauty

January 10, 2024
Richmond, VA

Amelia dreamed as she drifted in and out of feverish delirium, having called out sick from the library after catching a cold that progressed into pneumonia. Her skin felt like a heater turned with the dial at maximum temperature, sweat soaking her pillow, lying on the small sofa in her living room as she shivered with chills under her thin blanket.

As much as she disliked missing work, blemishing her spotless attendance record, at least she was away from the reach of vile and brutish Klaus Baumer and his way of harassing her...

Her cynical thinking faded away as she was pulled back into her fever dream, her lungs aching as she coughed with a hoarse crack to her voice, stabbing the inside of her throat as she tried to swallow with no saliva at the back of her mouth, a weak moan escaping her lips...

Her hallucination dream progressed as she struggled to open her heavy eyelids she felt herself floating on a hard surface, wooden and rectangular like a crate, barely keeping from slipping off as it rocked back and forth on the chaotic waves of water.

The smell of oil entered her nostrils, the flammable liquid having spilled onto the water's surface... then the approaching flames ran along the oil trails crawling along as the crate carried her inch by inch to an uncertain demise by either being burned or drowned...or both.

Amelia's fever and pounding blood vessels in her head kept her dream self from being fully aware of the danger, lying limp and spread-eagled upon her stomach, one of her arms dangling on the side of the crate to where her fingertips skimmed across the water, her leg also hanging overboard dangerously close to where her toes were already underneath...

A frightened male voice called her name... and she wanted to raise her head and open her eyes to find who might have come to save her.

But she was just too damn sick to move... Her head felt weighted as an anvil and her eyelids refused to open... She just had no strength, struggling to keep breathing, each lungful of air made more agonizing by the smoke inhalation from the fire. All she could do was moan softly as the crate floated onward...

A ring of flames surrounded the crate keeping her afloat, leaving her trapped in her inferno of hellfire. She would've been blessed by drowning in the water...

Amelia's unconscious form slipped closer to the edge of the crate, her arm hanging deeper into the water up to her wrist as well as her leg submerged past her ankle. The waves were bumping her nearer to falling off...

"Amelia!" The same voice called out her name.

The individual to whom that voice belonged dived into the water after her...

She wanted to call out to him, but her voice only provided another whimpering moan as a large wave tossed her over the edge, gravity pulling her down as she slumped off the crate and plummeted into the rancid water, immediately disappearing under the surface.

She sank slowly down into the black depths, thick bubbles emerging from her mouth as she could no longer breathe. The thickly polluted liquid flooded her nostrils and her esophagus, down to her tortured lungs, her gag reflex useless to expel the rancid taste in her mouth...

Her eyes remained closed as her consciousness faded again, her body convulsing... She floated numbly in mid-water, descending further by the second to the sand that awaited her down below to be her tomb.

A strong arm wrapped around her waist as more bubbles escaped her mouth and nose, her eyes sealed shut as she hung lifeless and unaware of her possible rescue, Amelia's body being pulled upward back to the surface.

Debris from above fell and more flames loomed over them with the ignited oil, keeping them both underwater. The arm around Amelia loosened in fear and she began to sink back down toward the bottom, the water determined to keep her in a drowning state, draining the life out of her, suffocating her lungs...