Untamable Resolve: The Witheridge Witches

Ch. 8 - Lullaby

Drowning doesn't feel as horrid as I thought it would. At least not yet, anyway. I held my poor grandfather's second wife's hand as she suffocated to death when I was a teenager due to fluid filling her lungs. If I were to die today, it would be much quicker than that.

At least I wouldn't suffer too much.

I will be able to last just under five minutes if I can manage to keep calm. Panic will kill me. I was on my high school's swimming team, and I know that back then I could hold my breath for four. But with me being out of practice, I'm not so sure. I still my body and let the current take me, allowing my arms to float and touch the ice that acts as a barrier between myself and the frantic wolf, following my body down the river.

It makes me happy he's panicking.

I have at least bought myself a few moments of freedom, if not death, and I will savor them. Being trapped under the ice isn't unbearable, and oddly, it's almost pleasant. I can hear it singing a lullaby to me when the ice shifts. It clicks and echoes as the sound waves of its song meet me. I close my eyes for a moment and then suddenly feel a warm sensation. I flutter my eyes open, and a mirage of an image of my mother flashes in front of me.

Am I hallucinating?

I can see her freckles and the nose I inherited from her as she smiles at me. I reach out to touch her, even though I know she's long gone. I miss her so much. She mouths the word "survive" to me. And with that, she vanishes.

Looking at my outstretched hand, I see the garnet ring she gave me begin to illuminate with a hue of red light. It quickly dims as I pull it closer to my body to inspect it. Trying again, I reach my hand out, it immediately gets caught in between a fallen tree's branches.

My whole body jolts as the last of my air escapes my mouth. Knowing my time is limited, I grasp the branches and pull myself closer to them, securing myself from being swept away in the current. Could this be my mother's doing? With all of this activity, my lungs have begun to ache, and I know I have only seconds left before my body forces me to gasp for air. I look up at the ice and desperately search for an exit.

My mother wants me to survive.

I will survive. Spotting a small opening right above me, I know I will have to beat the current to make it there before it sweeps me away, taking me to my death. I use the last of my energy and the aid of one of the tree's sturdy branches to kick off and make it to the hole in the ice. As I fight the strong current, I nearly miss the opening.

However, I manage with one hand to grab the side of the jagged ice, which cuts deep into the soft flesh of my arm. My body screams at me in pain. I can't hold my breath any longer and breathe in the frigid, icy water as my lungs give out. I began to let go when someone grabs my arm and pulls my limp body out of the river.

Holding me up, the man slaps my back as I spew out the water that I inhaled. After clearing the water from my lungs, I collapse into his warmth. My hair froze as soon as I was pulled from the water

He rocks me back and forth. "It's okay. It's okay," he says, trying to comfort me. It's almost as if he's trying to comfort himself as well. This monster is repulsive, but after what I had just put my body through, it don't care. My eyes flicker open and shut as I keep fighting to maintain some form of control.

As I begin to drift off, my captor whispers, "Sleep."

I want to keep fighting him, but in my state of utter exhaustion and oxygen deprivation, I let go.