Chapter 17

• I coughed and sputtered as water gushed all over my face. I regained consciousness, but I was still weak enough to stand on my own. I rolled a little to my left, got hold of my bed, and dragged myself up to a sitting position. To say I was wet was an understatement; I was drenched, and I could still feel water cascading down my bare skin on my back. The cool breeze from the wide open window caused involuntary shivers to run down my spine, stiffening it, and my body hairs weren’t excluded from this reflex action. I could feel and literally see goosebumps like tiny, leechy parasites there to cling to my skin, stubbornly refusing to fall off. The sharp prickles I felt crawling along the whole of my being — from the crown of my wet, matted head of hair to the sole of my bare, dirty feet — caused my quivers to increase, and my teeth were slightly chittering. I was yet to lift my head; I was yet to decipher anything tangible from the speech coming out of the mouth of the Alpha. My bones were truly weak, my eyes were hot, and the simple, natural task of blinking them hurt and made my eyes sting. I didn’t feel like crying, but they began to produce tears, and I could feel how hot the tears were as they fell through and ran down my cheeks. I felt so cold that I wound my thin, bony arms around my equally thin waist in a bid to stop the cold and warm myself. It was a very pathetic attempt to warm myself up, but I had no other choice; there were no bed covers here, and the bedsheet was just a flimsily thin material of mundanity; it was as useless as my thin arms trying to cover and bring heat to my whole body. Though I felt like a snowball in Antarctica on the outside, I was a burning furnace on the inside. The irony of it, which I considered ludicrous, was very uncomfortable. Intensely hot and extremely cold. How was I supposed to deal with this condition? I had never been seriously sick before; the most body unwellness I’ve ever had was either a small headache or a slight stomach ache that resulted from either working in the sun for long in Mama Lia’s vegetable garden or from eating something that wasn’t accepted by my stomach, respectively. And Mama Lia always made sure to make some healing drink or soup, which made me briefly wonder how she had all those healing powers and wasn’t tempted to use them even once. Or she probably added her magical powers to the healing mix or soup, because I always felt better once I’d taken it and gone to bed. But Mama Lia wasn’t here. She was nowhere to be found. She was no longer alive to nurse her to health and tuck me in bed when I was feeling down. The tears ran down now, still hot. I was crying. I shivered more, and my stomach got queasy. I didn’t have the strength to make a dash for the bathroom if and when this queasiness got worse.
• "Raise your head!"
• The Alpha yelled.