Changing You ✦ The Sequel

Chapter 40 {Z}

✦ ZACH ✦

I remember my skin feeling ice cold on the outside, but burning hot in the inside.

I remember people talking to me but not being able to respond or move; lacking control over my own body.

I remember feeling like I couldn't breathe.

I shot up, pain shooting through my body and forcing me back down. The coughs that built up in my throat caused me to panic, because I really couldn't breathe.

Before I knew it, I had ripped the plastic mask off my face, the ties catching behind my ears because I was being too careless, and I pulled until they snapped.

I remember the pain in my head, feeling like it was exploding, every sound blasting through my skull like a gunshot.

Machines beeping, loud and clear, right next to my ears. The squealing wheels of carts being pushed down the hallway. Cars honking at each other, right outside the building.

I pressed my hands to my ears, tensing up at every little thing because I had no idea where it was coming from and it scared me.

It scared me that I could hear every single word being said three rooms down. That I could hear the toilets flush two floors below me. That I could hear the footsteps of pedestrians walking down the street.

I remember looking around the room and panicking, because there was something wrong with my eyes.

I squeezed and blinked until my head started spinning, hoping the colours would blend back into their natural state, but it didn't help. I saw nothing but specks of red, orange and yellow, their intensity so bright it was like watching the world through an immense fire.

Then I remembered what happened.

Someone touched me and I flinched away, biting my lip against the spikes of pain bolting through my body.

God, I was scared.

Scared because my senses seemed so much sharper than they ever had, picking up on every little thing and so many little things at once that I couldn't separate one from two anymore and everything became a mess. A blur of information.

Like I had pressed shuffle on my favourite playlist and Spotify decided to play all the songs at the same time, leaving me unable to filter just one melody out of the giant tornado of noise.

"Zach-"

"What is happening to me?" I asked, too sharply, even though I knew and realised, all too well, what was going on.

I pressed my hands to my ears, harder this time, so desperate to shut everything out that I nearly fractured my own skull. "Make it stop," I breathed, gritting my teeth and clenching my jaw until it started to hurt. "Please make it stop."

"Zach, it's okay. You're okay." Riley's hands touched my forearms and tugged at my elbows, softly, and I don't think I had ever flinched away from her touch so quickly. So directly.

"Tell me it's not true."

I forced myself to look up at her and watched her, the same way she watched me, saw the tears pooling in her eyes and the words dying in her throat. She swallowed their corpses.