Chapter 32

The gentle swish, swish of something outside my consciousness brings me around, and the warm fluttering heat that seems to be growing over my back, heels, skull, and legs as my limbs tingle back to life, and I start to cough. Not warm enough to heat my lifeless corpse and the inner block of ice that is my organs.

My body wracks with the sudden crack of a violent choking fit that fully wakens me because it hurts like hell, as though there’s a fire in my lungs. My eyes flutter open, through the hazy fog of an awful headache, to the point I’m nauseous with it, and my body feels like it doesn’t belong to me.

My fingers flinch of their own accord, and the sudden sensation of smooth yet rough and damp textured balls pulls my eyes to where I can feel it. Blinking, fluttering my lashes until my hand comes into focus, I realize it’s laid on gravel and sand mixed. Wet, shiny, tiny stones and pebbles smothered in grittiness. My fingertips are dirty as it sticks with clinginess to m