Born of Blood

Chapter 17

Scarlet wanted to open her eyes.

She could hear the rain, it pattered against the roof high above her body. The wind lashed against the building, howling around the corners and pushing through the trees so near where she lay. Scarlet missed the rain, she missed standing in the clearing by her Giant Sequoia and letting it beat across her skin in peace- when times were simpler. She was scared, a deep rooted fear seeping like infection in her gut. Scarlet weighed a million pounds. Her arms were led, pressing into the surface of whatever she was laying on with a force so strong her heartbeat thrummed like molasses through her wrists. Her legs were tethered to the soft fabric underneath them, she couldn't wiggle her toes, move her knees, wobble her legs, they were too heavy for the weak girl to control. Her body was held down by an ocean, she had been tied to a weight and dropped to the bottom, she couldn't breath.

The pressure in her chest held her ribs still, they struggled against the water that rested so heavy atop her body. Scarlets lungs began to burn, they spasmed with a desperate attempt to open, to breathe, but Scarlet was in a sea of waves, and no air could reach her desperate body. She began to choke, her throat spasming and her chest convulsing, Scarlet sputtered and coughed as fluid rolled its way from between her lips and down her neck. Her dry neck, the skin itched with the watery trail, she wasn't under water. She hacked and gagged against the running water that worked its way from her lungs to the surface until she could finally gasp for air in the heavy world around her. It was shaky, the rattle sounding in her chest a bad omen, but the burning had stopped and Scarlet had a moment of peace before her head felt like it was being split open.

A long pulse echoed around her skull, pulling the breath from Scarlets body as she struggled to breathe against the pain. The pulse settled and she gasped, before it rang through again and settled into a pounding rhythm, Scarlet tried to cry out for help but all that left her mouth was a gurgle of air. She struggled against her led arms, begging for her body to allow herself to hold her head together- it had to have been falling apart- but they didn't cooperate. Her body didn't move despite the agony she was in under the calm surface. Her stomach rolled, and Scarlet felt a fever spread across her skin. Her organs felt distended, bulging in her abdomen, like they had gone bad, they were rotting beneath her flesh, a carton of milk in a broken fridge. Her body gagged to throw up, her shoulders convulsing, sending pressure to her splitting head, and finally Scarlet released a moan of pain.

Sensation was returning to her fingers, her toes, and her body slowly began to feel its presence return. Her skin prickled with the freezing air of the room, her hair along her body lifting in shock to the cold. A humid breeze crawled across her face and she could smell the rain thick within its cloud. A cry built in the back of her throat as the humidity calmed the pounding in her head, it made her skin feel less feverish, and in that moment Scarlet knew she needed to step outside and lay in the rain. It wasn't a question of how to do it, or why, it was as simple as she was in pure agony, and that condensation soothed her. The only problem was, Scarlets arms were made of led.

She tried to move her fingers, to twitch them or to wiggle them, to show she had some control over her body, but she didn't. She couldn't roll her ankles, or flutter her eyelids, all she could do was primitively gasp whenever her lungs set themselves on fire with a need for oxygen. The wind blew its aggravation around the structure she rest in, she could hear it so loud from her right side. She could feel the breeze force in the freezing air, the humid waves fanning across her skin, was it a window? Scarlets eyes rolled with the effort of trying to open them, and her left shot with a quick lightning bolt of pain before she gasped for breath again and remained still. Her head thumped with a dying heartbeat, she could hardly breathe, but she knew if she were to step into that rain she would be okay. With a snap, whatever glued her eyes together broke apart, and a dark room awaited her. A grey sunlight filtering through storm clouds streamed through a small window to her left, she sighed as she felt the breeze wash over her again. Her right eye did all the work, spinning with its bleary vision to map the room, looking for a door.