Big, Bad Wolf by Essex Bridget

Author:Essex, Bridget [Essex, Bridget]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Rose and Star Press, first edition
Published: 2014-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

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I gasped and sat upright as cold water splashed on my face. There was a moment of sputtering and I sucked in air through my mouth...barely. My limbs were too heavy to move. My body sunk back down without my telling it to do so. I had no control on my limbs, on my thoughts. I felt like I was underwater.

“That was interesting,” came a wry voice. Nenna? Nel? I couldn’t remember her name. The woman who was Kara’s friend. I blinked and tried to make sense of what I could see. A broken ceiling.

“I'm here, Megan.” It was Kara. Her deep, soft voice washed over me, and the fear that had gripped my heart began to recede. I could still smell the dead animal, could still feel the tension from finding it. There was heat from the summer sun all around us, and I was self conscious…my dress had holes in it...

“She's not coming out of it.” Kara's voice was distant, but distraught. “She's going back in.” I wanted to say something, tell her I was here, what was she talking about?

More water. I was drowning--I’m twelve years old in the mountain stream, and I’m drowning. I breathe in water.

“Wake up!” Kara shook my shoulders, and from wherever I'd been, I came back. I was cold, so cold...my body wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Get some blankets.” That was Nedra. Names and places rushed back into my head like waves. I remembered where I was now, when I was. I wasn’t a kid...I sat in an abandoned factory, surrounded by strangers. Friends of Kara’s, I remembered.

“She's freezing,” Kara breathed, and she snatched up a blanket from the ground, covering my body with it, rubbing my arms, my legs. She normally moved so smoothly, so fluid, but right now fear made her ungraceful, all jerky motions done in quick time. Seconds passed, I saw the way her lips formed a hard line.

“She'll be fine,” said Nedra then, moments later, when I was swathed in blankets and had a mug of coffee in my hand. I was in Kara's lap, where she sat on the floor. I hadn’t stopped shaking.

I didn't know what to do, so I asked a question. I asked it with anger in my voice, but Kara's body beneath mine absorbed most of it. It came out sounding soft, quiet: “What just happened?”

Nedra sat down next to me, then, and I saw in her eyes a vast amount of pure youth. She was not as old as she appeared, with her jet-black hair and deep wrinkles lining a face that could have mirrored my own. What had she gone through, what had she seen to appear so old?

“You blacked out. I’m pretty sure you have the flu.”

It would explain everything, but I couldn’t let it go: “No...no. I saw something.”

She regarded me with hooded eyes. “What did you see?”

I thought: Big, bad wolves... I was shaking as I stared up at her.

“What did you see?” she repeated, kinder this time.

“I don't know.

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