SLEEPSONG (BoyxBoy)✔️

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

I was cold.

Everything within my body was still, my heart had fallen silent, and yet I was somehow trapped within myself. Although I wasn't breathing, I could somehow still feel, and what I felt was a heavy, cold sensation settling deep within my breast and slowly spreading outward.

It crept through me, freezing me from the inside.

I couldn't move my arms or legs, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe.

My consciousness melted into darkness, but just before I completely faded my heart stuttered and a surge of foreign warmth entered my body, thawing the ice taking root deep within me. There was an unexpected flash behind my eyes and a wave of heat surged past my lips, spreading throughout my limbs and making my lungs quiver and itch violently.

My muscles jerked involuntarily as the warmth slowly faded, and the ice once again began to expand from my chest, but before it could overtake me, another set of thumps made my heart stutter all over again. A ringing sensation filled my ears, allowing me to feel, to wake up, to realize just how bad my lungs and head were burning.

"Breathe!" a distant voice snarled. "BREATHE, DAMMIT!"

A second wave of heat pushed passed my lips, warming me up from the inside.

"BREATHE! YOU FUCKING IDIOT, BREATHE!"

The thumps came again, and my heart stuttered, pulsed... and then kept going, faintly, an unsteady, palpitating throb that I could feel aching with every contraction. 

My consciousness roused, as if I were surfacing from deep under water, but even as I convulsed, struggling to get air into my still lungs, I began to hear again, began to realize that I wasn't breathing, that I couldn't feel, that something was wrong, and panic took over me.

"BREATHE!" Sebastian roared, just as another flash lit up my eyes. "BREATHE! AERIN, BREATHE!"

Aerin.

My name. 

It shredded through me like a knife and roused an extreme coughing fit. After a moment of strangled choking deep in the back of my esophagus, I got a bit of air inside me and started hacking uncontrollably, trying to breathe even as I vomited the burning, acidic sea water out of my lungs. I kept heaving, hacking past the painful liquid that came flying out of my mouth.

I was forcibly rolled over onto my side by two hard hands, and suddenly, I found it easier to cough, to get it out. Frigid air washed against my soaked skin when I stopped long enough to heave for air, real air, not just bits and pieces that left me feeling like I was asphyxiating.

I took multiple ragged breaths through a throat that felt as raw as uncooked chicken, but the only thing I could control was my own breathing and even that was hard to do with the fluid still clogging my airway, lungs, and throat. Every single one of my limbs felt like lead, tingling and prickling unpleasantly, and my head was hurting so bad that I was certain I'd been hit. 

I felt very sick, and lightheaded, and cold, and wet, and I suddenly wished I could pass out to get away from it. My eyes fluttered a little, feeling as heavy as garage doors, but when I finally opened them a crack I very nearly winced at the brightness that shot into my head.

When my vision cleared I realized I was lying on a damp beach made of hard pebbles and the sky was far lighter than it had been before. I heard ragged breathing near my ear and fought to turn my head, slowly, bit by bit, forcing it to rotate on my neck until I was facing the sky.