Species

Chapter 17

     He left.

Luckily for Chloe her poor body was so drained and tired she drifted off to sleep very quickly after he left. Unluckily for Chloe she woke up from yet another horrible pain ripping across her stomach. 

Rolling  over to her side she wrapped her arms around her stomach whimpering. Please, stop. Oh, Good God, please, make it stop! she pleaded in her head. She tried to move and get comfortable as if that would somehow make it stop. Every move hurt. Her body ached and burned and she couldn't understand why. 

Tears streamed down her face like a river. "What is happening?" she asked aloud to herself. Her face hurt from crying so much but she couldn't stop it. She couldn't move, she was in the most pain she could ever remember being in, and she wasn't sure but something told her this was not normal.  

Her eyes scanned the room, but she was alone in a dark room. There's no one to help me. More tears came as her heart now ached too. The emotions, the pain, the fear, it was all too much. Too much. She wanted to beg for death. For the sweet, sweet relief of death. 

"Help!" she tried to scream out in between sobs. But she wasn't nearly as loud as she thought she would be. "Help." she tried again. Her voice was weaker this time because she had no hope. No hope she'd make it through whatever was happening to her. No hope that anyone would hear her. No hope. Her eyes were black and grave as she threw her head back on the pillow and the tears ceased. She stared up at the ceiling, but she was not home in her eyes. She looked like an empty shell of a person. While her head seemed frozen her body shook furiously. 

      The skin on her belly pulled and pulled in opposite directions as a bubbly grew in her. The bubbly moved unevenly within her searching for a spot to set up camp. Once the bubbly within her found a spot and settled an inhuman scream blared out of her like a siren. Sophie, who had been in the room next door waiting for Chloe to awake was the first person in the room.

"Chloe?" she called and then turned on the light switch. She stood there shocked at the horrendous sight of her. In Chloe's search for comfort she knocked the blankets off her leaving her in only a pair of panties. Bruises covered her now swollen belly bump. Her body was still shaking and her eyes were still in a dead stare at the ceiling not actually seeing.

"Help! Help! HELP!" Sophie screamed down the hall. Patrick emerged from his room across the hall. His eyes were droopy and his hair was sticking out all over the place. He'd obviously been sleeping. How he'd managed to sleep through that god awful shriek, Sophie would never know.

"What now?" he asked begrudgingly annoyed.

"She needs help." Sophie pointed at Chloe's room jumping up and down clearly hysterical.

Patrick wiped the sleep off his face and then looked at Chloe's room and sobered up quickly. He looked at Sophie with concern as if to ask "Are you serious?". Sophie nodded, cried, stomped her feet, grabbed at her hair. She didn't know what to do. 

Patrick snapped into action and ran into the room. He darted straight for her bed and din't stop till he was close enough to touch her, but when he stopped. . . he stopped. He stopped and looked at her in what felt like slow motion. He saw the hollowness of her eyes, the absence of life in them. He saw the horrendous bruises covering her belly that she had not had two hours ago. Her limbs shook like there was electricity running through them. 

         "Get Drew now." he whispered to Sophie who was falling apart in the hallway. He turned to her. "Go!" he ordered sharply. She shook her head falling against the wall. "I can't." she barely got out the words. "I can't. I can't."