Breathless 2012 Novels & Stories

It practically took him ten seconds to get the words out. For his generosity, Miss chole gave him the role of homeless person, and we knew he'd do fairly well in that role. The homeless person, you see, was completely mute, but the angel always knew what he was thinking. At one point in the play she has to tell the mute homeless person that God will always watch out for him because God especially cares for the poor and downtrodden. That will be one of the tip-offs to the audience that she'd be sent from heaven. Old Mason is being attacked emotionally.

What’s he going to say when he finds out? A cold feeling filled my chest. Like two steel bands wrapped around me and tightened. Tightened till I couldn’t breathe. My throat clogged up. I grabbed my chest, hitting it with my fist, willing the air to go down to my lungs. My throat made a rattling sound. I reached out for anything. Anything at all. I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! Oh God I’m dying! I can’t breathe! Why can’t I breathe? Darkness encroached the corners of my vision. I felt myself slipping away. Help. Help me! I can’t breathe! Somebody help! Please!

Then my arms – the numbness climbing like cold water rising, erasing sensation inch by inch until I couldn't feel the note cards I was holding and heard them hit the floor before I realized I'd dropped them. My chest. Someone was standing on my chest. Not pressing – standing. Full weight. Both feet. The pressure so complete that my lungs forgot how to expand and each breath became a negotiation – half an inhale, a quarter exhale, not enough, never enough, the oxygen entering my body and evaporating before it reached my blood. Breathe. Just breathe. You know how to breathe. You've been breathing for nineteen years. I couldn't.

She should have taught him the proper breathing because the more they walked far, the trail was going steep. However, she didn’t hear Vale complain. He appeared just having fun and not even showing any fatigue. Maybe he did a lot of cardio exercises, and she couldn’t be bothered. As the elevation went up, the oxygen became thin. Einille sensed, and that she had to breathe properly. But she did not let his companions knew her discomfort. She distracted herself by taking photos of the breathtaking surroundings.

Anna POV I can’t breathe. The arm around my neck is too tight, and I can’t answer the questions that the man behind me asked while he’s suffocating me. The edges of my vision start to darken, and I’m sure that I’m going to pass out. But then the arm releases me as quickly as it grabbed me. My lungs fill with much-needed air, and my body gives out. However, I don’t fall. Instead, I’m grabbed by my shirt collar and hauled into a standing position that’s only slightly more comfortable than being strangled.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Six **** At midnight, the atmosphere changed completely.It didn’t start with sound, it started with absence of breath. I woke up gasping for air, my lungs were burning as if I had been underwater for hours. My chest was heavy, but there was no air anywhere. Not because the room was stuffy,but because the air itself had been emptied of life. I stumbled to the window. The courtyard below was a graveyard of total stillness. Students collapsed on the stones, not dead,breathing, but shallowly, like their lungs had forgotten how to pull in the world. Their eyes were opened wide with fear,mouths moving with no sound, as if screaming into a void that swallowed every

Nervous, Mary said, "He's found us, so we have to go. I checked the forecast, and there might be a thunderstorm tonight, too…" She knew how scared I was of thunder, and that my heart was too fragile to even withstand the slightest bit of fright. I could no longer walk, and even breathing was becoming exhausting. However, I managed to give her a nod. "Alright." As Mary pushed me away, the prayer card in my pocket fell out. I watched it fall there, on the ground, left with no strength to pick it up, nor the strength to speak. I knew, then, that the life that my parents had given me was coming to its end.

This was already awkward Blair sat on the chair and turned his back to me without saying anything. There wasn't anything to say. I had no idea what had even come over me. I barely knew the guy but I let him touch me like that. It was obvious that I needed to have a release but I knew better than to give it to first guy who took my breath away.

The man beside me is cold. Not sleeping-cold. Not early-morning chill. Dead-cold. I know before I open my eyes. My body always knows first—my skin humming with the familiar, sickening quiet that follows. The silence after a heartbeat stops. The silence after I take something I never meant to claim. I lie still, staring at the ceiling of the rented room, counting my breaths like it might undo what I’ve done. One. Two. Three. The air smells wrong—iron threaded through sweat and cheap soap. My throat tightens.

It’s then they notice Odessa panting, sweat beading her brow. Her hands grasp the table’s edge, her knuckles white with the effort. The light of her bound wolf flickers off and on in her eyes as though there’s a battle between her and the wolf within. Levantus grabs her arm gently and opens his mouth to speak, but Odessa lets out a pained whine before her legs give out. “ODESSA!!!” Levantus cries her name, catching her as she collapses, growing paler by the second. Her eyes roll back and her breathing grows uneven. Every so often, her body twitches as though she is being struck.