ARC: Crushed by Eliza Crewe Page A

the grimoire open before him. He murmurs words I can’t understand.
    Then the hands on my face begin probing until they find the joint of my jaw. They dig in, trying to force my mouth open, as more hands pull back my lips and wedge themselves between my teeth. I fight it. I fight it until I’m sure my jaw is going to break. Finally the hands are too much, too strong. My muscles give and my mouth cracks open the tiniest bit. Before I can close it, a hand slides in, flat on my tongue, forcing it wider. I gag as the hand pushes into my throat, then choke as it pushes still further and I’m unable to get any air at all. I can’t fight, can’t flail, I can only stand there as the world turns grey. But I won’t give in, I won’t let them in. I will suffocate to death before I’ll allow it.
    Then, finally, suddenly, the hands release me. I bend, eyes closed and take huge ragged breaths. Take that, assholes.
    But I’m wrong. So, so wrong. The hands ride my gasping breath like a wave and are now inside . I let out a gurgled scream and try to reach into my mouth to claw them out.
    But I can’t. They’re deep inside, in my chest, my limbs, sliding along the inside of my skin, shoving and squeezing. Then they start… pushing me out. Or maybe pulling me.
    I’m pulled from my own fingertips until I can’t feel them anymore. I’m pulled from my toes, then my legs, and my body collapses onto the floor. I’m shoved up my neck and I hear my breathing stop, and I’m pulled from my vocal cords so I can’t scream. I’m shoved up, up into a corner of my mind. I can still see through my eyes and I can hear. I still exist, but I’m a passenger. I control nothing.
    “Professor, she can’t breathe. Look at her! She can’t breathe!” I hear the Sarge shout.
    My mouth still hangs open, but with no one to control my lungs, no air is pulled into my lungs. I can’t feel any part of my body, can’t feel the floor under me, can’t feel my lungs not move.
    But I can feel myself die.
    I can see the dark spots enter my vision, and I can feel the equally dark spots in my thoughts. But I can do nothing.
    “Herman!” The Sarge shouts, and Professor Puchard blinks eyes made unnaturally big by his thick glasses. “She can’t breathe!”
    “Well of course not. She’s not in control,” he states like it’s obvious. “Someone has to be in control. Who’s going to possess her?”
    I’m alive enough to think the situation deserves a snarky comment, but not alive enough to come up with one. Not that I could say it aloud for anyone to appreciate anyway.
    “You are!” Sarge snaps.
    “I can’t; I’m casting the spell,” he states without nearly enough urgency, in my opinion. “Simply breathe into the mouth.”
    The Sarge growls but whips around. Before she can take a step in my direction, Graff leaps over the table, oddly reminiscent of how I had done not ten minutes before. He slides to his knees before me and breathes into my face. At first nothing happens and I see his eyes shift sideways toward Professor Puchard as if to ask “what now?”
    Then my body arches. I can’t feel it, but my view of the room changes. My eyes roll back and I see the pink of my eyelids, the black fringe of my eyelashes, the jerking movement of the walls before me as my body seizes, then arches, then seizes again.
    And I can feel the heat of something foreign, something wrong , filling me. It squishes in next to me, packing me into my little corner of my consciousness. The pink of my lids darkens. I’ve been without air too long.
    “What’s happening?” demands the Sarge.
    “He’s in,” Professor Puchard says. He sounds closer.
    “Then why isn’t she breathing?”
    “I followed the spell.” Professor Puchard sounds both confused and defensive.
    “ Then why isn’t she breathing? This was a mistake. It’s over. Get him out.” The Sarge orders.
    “I’m telling you, there’s no mistake.”
    “Get him out!”
    Then We breathe. I don’t