Cipher [sahy-fer]: Zero; A person of little or no influence, importance, or value; nonentity.
That's excatly what Talia Fox is. A zero amongst a sea of other numbers. That is until she makes an imperishable deal with her maker. Now the seven teens t...
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"Colter"
"Colter"
It was like a thousand pound weight was sitting on me, all the while I couldn't open my eyes either. There was more weight... but it was on my chest. God, I couldn't breathe. The pain was crushing; the lack of air unbearable. Even if I wanted to open my eyes, just to understand what was going on, there was this bright light like looking into the flash of the camera. The light searing into your retinas and casting the splotchy shape when you closed your eyes. Neither of those could compare to the amount of noise.
"Colter!"
So much noise...
And pain— so much pain.
"Colter wake up." Then, a sob.
Was the pain from my lack of oxygen or maybe the weight on my chest...more noise. More noise and more pain.
"Colt— please I didn't mean it!"
Then more sobbing and the endless, helpless cry of my name. Just wake up— thats all I had to do. Pry my eyes open and figure out what the hell was going on. Although the act was simple, it was much harder than it seemed.
There was a thunderous sound, a sound I had heard so many times. A sound I had created dozens of times alone while stomping away from my mom in the heat of an argument. The bang of my silver door knob on the drywall of my room. My room...were we in my room? I couldn't remember where I'd been last.
"What have you done?" The voice held so much panic, that even I began to feel distressed. My brain was frozen, feeling like it had seized up. I couldn't concentrate on anything else that I was doing. Why couldn't I wake up? Why couldn't I breathe as fluidly as I'd like? It was all beginning to effect me, like being thrown into ice cold water.
This must be what death feels like.
I must be dying.
"I didn't mean to, I-I swear, I just w-wanted—"
"I don't care what you meant to do!"
Then more weight. So much more weight that the little bit of oxygen I was able to get through my nostrils was expunged from my lungs in seconds.
"Get off my boy! Get off my son!"
There was more sobbing but from someone different. Two different types of sobbing, different frequencies, different paces...and a heartbeat. It was ringing in my ears, echoing off the walls of my head, creating a sound that roiled my stomach in a surprisingly good way.
"I'm t-trying to—" A pause to sob. "I'm trying to help him. He needs m-my help"
It wasn't my heartbeat though. I was happy to say it wasn't my own. I couldn't feel this one apart from my own. I could not only hear it, but feel it and that alone caused me to fight harder. The tympanic heartbeat was fast, like a blur. The beat so loud that it seemed as if it wanted to escape its cavity.
