She's Lungs: A Narrative Fiction

As I jumped into the water, I only had one thing on my mind: saving the victim. As I swam towards her I saw her head slip under. I called for a backboard before I dove beneath the surface to bring her head above the water. I

An excruciating feeling shot through her body, never in her life had she felt this much pain. It was unrelenting and seemed like it would never end. The girl wanted to scream, to try to stop this, but couldn't move, every flinch caused more pain to shoot through the moving limbs. Her eyes unclenched, colors spun around her head, crawling on her melting flesh and burning through it with it's acidic touch. Smoke filled her lungs with each attempt to breathe, it felt like everything inside her was to collapse at any moment, her lungs, her bones, her skin, her skull, everything was to fall to pieces and cease to exist. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest, it's speed decreasing as she ran out of fresh air. Her throat burned almost as bad as her

Annabelle and Ellen swam halfway, but their legs and arms were getting tired. Annabelle almost drowned because of her lack of strength, but she tried her best and made it to the other side. Right when they got to the other side, they were exhausted and all they could hear were the sound of their

I panicked and tried to sit up but was crushed under the weight of the white blanket that had fallen from the sky during my nap that now had me pinned down threatening to become my new grave. I could no longer feel my legs, kicking to try to free myself from this opaque prison was now impossible. With fear taking over every part of my being, I screamed as loud as I could, it seemed as though my screams held the same amount of power as senseless legs as the sound failed to travel past my face. I could not tell which way was up, or down, disoriented and with the weight of the snow crushing my chest, I was quickly losing the ability to breathe, I panicked further. I was drowning. With my arms stuck at my side and my vision becoming increasingly blurry, I could not hold on to consciousness. I slipped back into a mental void into what seemed to be a terrible

One day this woman's husband got really sick. One night he screamed loud from on top of his lungs while the woman was outside in the forest looking for some food. The woman came to see what was going on, but nothing was their not even her husband.

Her soul tossed restlessly. Waves thrashing violently in the night of a storm. Wrecking everything in its path and engulfing everything whole. And she too, was drowning. Suffocating. There was no point in putting up a fight. All she could do was take a shallow breath and let it all go.

In her mind she silently pleaded for death to take her again, for her to not feel anything. Her body hit the ground hard, groaning from the impact she tried to register where she was. She had fallen on something hard and metal. Snakes were crawling over her, tying her down against the railroad tracks.

The next thing I knew I was deep in the water. I just knew if I held onto him, I’d survive” (C. Lun, personal communication, June 10, 2016). Cing never learned to swim, but in the water, she saw a guy swimming away, so she held on to his leg tight. When she got to a dry land, she “didn’t feel anything, everything went so fast” (C. Lun, personal communication, June 10, 2016). They were still in Thai when the boat accident occurred which killed more than half of the passengers. After the boat man made a quick phone call and not to long after, a new boat arrived. In her mind, she thought “the people with the new boat came to rescue. But it didn’t happen. I asked the guy whom got me to dry land to get back in the water and save my kids. He chuckled, he thought I was crazy. As I looked around, everyone was screaming and crying, but I thought my kids were safe because I didn’t know how to swim but I survived. I was expecting the same miracle to my kids” (C. Lun, personal communication, June 10, 2016). All the survivors were forced to take seat in the new boat. “Drowning is a leading cause of accidental death around the world… particularly among children and adolescents younger than 19 years” (Dean, n.d., pp. 1). The kids or Cing, does not know how to

Her eyes watered in pain. Ursula coughed as she clung to the edge of he pool spitting up water and pride in equal measure. Everything above the surface of the water hurt as life rushed back into her. She rested her head against the rough concrete edge. Slowly she breathed, willing herself to calm down, for her heart rate to slow. It hadn’t been the water that nearly drowned her but her memories.

As her teeth pulled the leather, she then led her other hand to extract the murky liquid into a syringe before she dug the tip deep into her veins and hastily pushed the plunger down. One, the liquid traveled through the syringe into her bloodstream, two, the substance circulated through and three she slipped back onto the mattress she was sat upon and fell deep into the depths of the warmth that was now pulsating through her skin. She practically melted through the mattress as the substance took control, lying there limp as she sat in this blissful haze. The physical and mental numbness set in, she didn't care anymore as she as sprawled out across the bloodied mattress.

I hit the icy water hard, and knew that my stomach would surely have cuts on it later. That is, if I even got out. I was just inches from the jagged rocks, and my body was suddenly forced towards them. The rip current was so heavy, that I could barely move my limbs. I slammed against a rock and struggled to keep conscious. My head felt so heavy and sore, and my mind kept fading in and out. my body was numb from the cold water and was pushed under the water over and over

Amalia took a deep breath. And opened her eyes. I'm here again. A gentle, wind began to flit through her hair. It slowly morphed to water. How peculiar. Then it was wind. Then water. The gaps between the water sped up until there was no air. She was drowning. She tried to breath, but water was the only thing there. She clawed at the water around her, trying to swim, trying to get out, trying to breathe. Her vision blurred, her heart felt like lead in her chest, her fingers went numb. She needed to breathe. She brushed a wrinkled finger against a soft fur. She tried to grab it, but all that was left of the once delicate fur was sharp needles. They scratched her hand, causing blood to blossom through the water, staining the deep cobalt a crimson violet. Help me, she tried to scream. But the glacial water had numbed her voice, and all that escaped her mouth were the last bubbles of air. They floated gracefully to the surface, but Amalia was gone before they could touch the misty morning air.

I ran down the cliff as fast as I could. My heart beating faster than it had ever done before. What had I just caused? As I arrived to the bottom, the paramedics had arrived. I could barely breathe, I was out of breath. When she got pulled out of the water my eyes drowned with tears. The water was red with blood and her body had

I couldn't feel the coolness of the fingers. The fire blistered away every memory of cool. "Still no change?" "None." The lightest pressure, breath against my ruined, pockmarked skin. “Can you hear me?" I knew, beyond all doubt, that if I could somehow unlock my teeth I would lose it—I would shriek and screech and writhe and thrash. I dreamed of opening my eyes, twitching a finger—something to prove I had control. ”Sweet girl, can you open your eyes? Can you squeeze my hand?" I stayed paralyzed. I knew that the pain in her voice now was nothing compared to what it could be. Right now she only feared that I was suffering. My resolve wavered for a second. "Her heart is even weaker than when when she was first found.” "She's so still.” "I did everything I could have and more. I'm not sure I can keep your persistence, your faith in saving her." A broken whisper. "She must be in agony." "We don't know that. She has so much morphine in her system. We can't determine the effect that will have on her experience." Faint pressure inside the crease of my elbow. Another whisper. "Darling, I love you. I'm sorry." I wanted so much to answer her, but I couldn't find my tongue of lips, my teeth absent, locked pearl gates. Through all this, the racking fire went right on burning me. But there was so little space in my head now. No room to truly ponder their conversation, room to remember what had happened, just enough space left over to suffer in. Something pressed softly to my

She turned round and suddenly she knew, this was it. All she could do was laugh, what else could she do? Swim, she would never make it. It was right in front of her, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide she was in the open. She closed her eyes and hoped it wouldn’t hurt, when suddenly she saw the light.