Where There is Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

Let it Burn

Breath slammed from his chest – no thought to wonder if he was dead – Gus was somehow face down in prickly blades of hay textured stuff that tickled up his nose and no ability to even sneeze it away. He felt something kick against his shoulder but movement was a far off fantasy.

The struggle beside him continued while he worked on his diaphragm. Choir rehearsals had taught him the importance of breathing from deep within the lungs; from the diaphragm. Nobody wanted to be like poor Aaron Erickson – forced to lie on the floor, on his back, until he learned the proper methods for filling his lungs. Maybe that was the trouble. Lying on his stomach wasn't doing him any favors.

Another hard kick to his legs burst free the lock around his chest and Gus sucked in several tablespoons of dusty earth and dried grass – immediately belching out a roar of coughs that ripped most of his intestines free.

His wrists buckled at the first attempt to push his face away from the tufts of turf poking at his cheeks and lips. Hunching himself up on his elbows, instead, he heaved another wracking cough past his teeth and took stock of the damage.

"Sh-cuhh-awn?"

He was alone.

~-~-~

A tickle of wet slid across his eyelid.

It was all numb. Numb, muffled, couldn't even hear his breathing. He could feel his chest, though, as air started to pump, fast, through his lungs.

Circling, circling brain bubbles bubbling drifting back into the dark. He'd never left it. Never left...

Razor inhale of choking blades and dirt crusting his teeth - head rush filling his brain with blood - staring up at his toes in the black - knowing they were above but too dark to see - too dark... oh God he was... he was...

Shawn blinked, then squinted at a hazy yellow circle floating far out of reach.

Breath hitched up his chest and he pulled in a musty gulp. It took a few moments of additional blinking, his tongue rubbing back and forth across his teeth. He was upside down – legs braced up a stone wall. His chest pumped harder for breath before the thick air turned it to rough coughs.

His knuckles bumped across damp grit but a burn through his shoulder stopped the motion. Fingers flexed - then seared. Burn traveled up through his wrists and woke up other aches as it passed through his limbs. His hands felt like fire.

It was taking longer to track back over the last... day? Maybe it helped, the blood rushing to his head, because pieces of recent events were dripping back into place.

Basement, dolls, Daniel, Gus, blood, fight, falling, ouch.

The final bit of memory, hands dragging against rough walls to slow his plummet, answered the question of how he'd survived as well as why his hands felt like they'd gone through a wood chipper.

Relief felt like cold water when he wiggled the toes somewhere overhead. Bits of stone and dirt crumbled under his heel as he slid one leg left – testing the waters. It ached all through his hips and back but he didn't thiiink anything was broken. Every grunt and whine sounded dull – as though his head were inside a barrel. And he had some experience with that. Basically, wherever he was, it was small.

His left leg had made about four inches of progress before he attempted to move the right one. Most of his weight, now, resting on that heel, he felt his shoulders pushing into the squishy dirt as he dragged that limb towards his other leg - whole body shifting in a tilt.