Her Dirty Secret [Down Draft]

Chapter XXIV

Chapter Twenty-Four

[UNEDITED]

"Why does it hurt so fucking much?"

"I don't know. Would you like me to go get your mother?"

"Please."

Iris was crying from the pain on her back, and I was honestly getting ready to.

You know the feeling your foot gets when it's "asleep"? The "needles and pins" feeling that stays for quite a while, until you've shaken it off? It feels a bit like that, except on a much larger scale, and the "needles and pins" might have been doused in vodka.

Basically, it burns and stings at the same time.

"Shh, it's alright, Iris." She was laying in my lap, and I was stroking her hair soothingly until Cristina came back with my mother. "I'm so sorry baby!"

"You have to do something."

“I’m not even sure what it is, Amethyst.”

“It’s a damn birthmark!”

“Well, what do you suppose I do then, hm?”

“I don’t know, dammit! Anything!”

I changed Iris into a little wolf cub, because I thought she might be able to handle the pain more easily.

I could feel my canines extending, and my head exploded into an ocean of pain. Suddenly, the only thing I could focus on was the pain on my back, four inches below my left shoulder, and the incredibly small body of the toddler in my lap. Her screams terrified me.

The sound of my heart thumping in my ears, impossibly loud, and unbelievably fast, that terrified me. The red lines in my vision, so thick and opaque I could barely see; I was afraid I was going to die.

What scared me the most was when I couldn't hear my heart anymore. It wasn't thumping loudly in my ears, and it wasn't beating annoyingly fast. It was still. It was cold, it was still, and it was quiet.

And then I couldn't hear anything at all.

I could feel Iris. She wasn't in my lap. Her body was flailing sporadically, and I could feel the thumping of her heart. Fast and hard just like mine.

Then I could feel the beating of another heartbeat, sense it, really. It wasn't fast and erratic, it was calm. It was steady and strong. I recognized the beat to be my precious infant's, my baby's heartbeat.

He was calm. Henry was calm, so why couldn't I be?

What was happening to me?

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I was pretty sure I was dancing in a cloud of snow. At least, that's what it felt like. And, well, I wasn't literally dancing. But there was snow. A lot of it. And I wasn't cold, surprisingly.

I was shocked that I wasn't cold. I was used to it. The biting wind, the blistering chill. Actually, it made me feel better. It helped me realize that I was alive. That is, of course, until I went numb. Until I couldn't feel anything anymore. Then I didn't like the cold because I couldn't feel my toes.

The simplest of feelings, but if you couldn't feel your toes, would you get worried?

However, since I couldn't really feel the cold, I had nothing to worry about. Except for the horrible sensation of being almost alone.