I have learned today that when I drink orange juice all day, the symptoms of the sick go away mostly. At least, the cough stops. The hot flashes and the dizzy not so much, but the cough stops.
Current Word Count: 10647
From Chapter 2
It wasn’t until after the cries of injustice and demands to their invisible captors, yells at the screen of static for mocking them and obscenities began in full force that she felt that maybe getting off the table was the worst decision she had ever made in her life.
There was something odd happening to her back. Whatever was pooling between her shoulder blades was starting to do something. What, she didn’t know and her eyes flew wide and stared at the static for some explanation for it before it started to happen.
She dipped forward, then ended up on the floor as she felt something break through the skin of her back and out. There was the sound of it scraping against the concrete floor, getting larger and skittering further and further until after several minutes it had stopped doing anything at all. She didn’t feel any pain from it, only a little pressure and a deep sense of fear over what was happening to her.
What came next, however, was deeply painful, so much so that she would probably awaken screaming for years to come.
Something more came out of her back, this time flesh complete with nerve endings that stretched, expanded and separated rapidly. Lira let out a scream of pain, feeling it as it brushed against the concrete floor completely unprotected and fastened itself to the structure that was already there. It was like a completely new set of arms being formed, but she could feel these ones like they had been set on fire. They wrapped around and stretched themselves out thinly, then the pain began to subside as they started to develop a new layer over them to protect them.
Skin. She knew enough to know that skin covered nerve endings and that was what was happening. Or so she might have thought if her mind wasn’t going white from the sheer pain of growing the new appendages. It was infinitely worse than ever getting a limb broken and she didn’t know what else to do, tears streaming down her face as something formed to keep the muscle from directly touching the ground, air and the other one that was resting on top of it.
Yes, there were two of them, as she realized now that she could breathe again. They were cushioned and they felt weird. It was all she could feel right now, those things sticking out of her back that she didn’t know how to control. She could feel the pair of them rubbing against each other and she didn’t know what to do now.
Her ears were still dim and dizzy, unable to really make anything out besides her heavy breathing. Her throat felt raw and she was exhausted. Whatever had just happened, it felt like she had spent an eternity in a hellish pain that was never going to stop. And now that it had, she tried very hard to catch her breath.
It was too soon, however, to celebrate. Below her newly formed skin, something was brewing, waiting anxiously for the right moment to strike. Lira thought it was probably just discomfort from the newly formed limbs. Instead, it was something very different and, while better than the pain, was by no means pleasant. In what felt like hundreds of needles poking out of her flesh, something grew out of her ski all at once, coarse and like they were made of steel, the itch driving her near insane while they continued to grow. Her mind went white again, trying to deal with the sheer itch of it all and desire to just rip the new limbs off for that would probably bother her less. They continued on and on, growing for yet another eternity until finally, even that stopped.
And when it did, Lira’s throat felt even more raw. She didn’t even notice herself saying anything that time, though it was probably for the best. Her head was swimming and she was barely holding on to consciousness after it all. Whatever had happened, maybe she was better off not moving. There was something attached to her before, right? Something that would have kept her from feeling a thing. Why didn’t she just take that out? She still couldn’t feel a thing besides her head and the new arms growing out of her back.
Weakly, she looked back and saw a blanket behind her in the pale glow of the static. A rather fluffy blanket. And was that a pattern on it, or maybe just the way it was folded? It was black, whatever it was. Maybe her new arms could bring them over her because she was feeling like she should probably feel quite cold about now.
[Header image by Shaz]
Tags: nanowrimo, raven project
