Carmen came to with a spider crawling over her face. A cobweb hung down and tickled her nose. The world spun above her head like a mobile, the strip lights grew and shrank.
She tried to sit up, but realised she was too weak and only managed a half-hearted grunt followed by a tense of the shoulders. Her arm ached and throbbed, like her bone was about to jump out of her skin. Her head felt like an elephant had sat on it.
Carmen moaned and closed her dry eyes.
The awful realisation that she could die in there suddenly dawned on her foggy brain. Her face crumpled and she sobbed througbh weak breaths. Carmen had planned her life to be so much more: a famous scientist, an explorer, anything! Now she lay there and watched the world that was once her oyster snap shut and float away. She should have known that hiding in a warehouse was never going to end well.
Those blinking lights were beginning to really annoy Carmen- on or off? Pick one!
But she couldn't look anywhere else. She could have looked at the disgusting floor and remembered dirt turns cuts septic, or she could have looked at her arm and worried about amputation. Lying down with nothing to do really makes you feel aware of your body: every little ache and pain, everything that touches you, the strength you once had being sapped out of your body and down into the hungry earth.
She could practically feel tiny little bacteria sneaking into her arm and multiplying. She could feel a fly amble around on her shoulder. It walked down her arm and tapped about with its antennae. Carmen didn't look over to see what it was doing.
She remembered from somewhere that flies lay their eggs in rotting meat, and the maggots eat it when they hatch. She tried to comfort herself with the fact that they only ate the rotting meat, and were used as a cure at some point in time... But the idea of tiny little things wriggling around and eating her alive wasn't very calming.
Night crept stealthily upon the derelict warehouse, sending sleepy tendrils of darkness to whisper through the room and finally shush the struggling light. Cool air washed over Carmen, relieving her of her fever. She shivered with pleasure.
Carmen smiled and blinked at the peace of the night. Carmen loved the night. The freshness of the air, the quiet, the darkness... The privacy!
Exhausted, Carmen drifted off.
YOU ARE READING
Origin (ON HOLD)
ActionLife was normal for Stanley Shrew, disappointing and uneventful. He even had his Mother making her lamb stew for tea that night. Then he stumbled across the story. The big story. The story that could change his life for the better. All he had to do...
