A Lesson in the Storm: Season of Desire: Part 1 (Seasons Quartet) Read Online Free
Author: Sadie Matthews
wrenching the wheel hard into the direction we’re spinning. What good will that do?
‘Turn it the other way!’ I cry, adrenalin coursing through me, making my hands tingle and shake while my insides whirl with fear. The car is still turning: we’re spinning slowly down the road. How long can he control it? Surely we’ll hit the mountainside or the barrier before too long.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he says through clenched teeth. ‘For God’s sake, sit back in your seat and get your belt on.’
He’s right, of course he’s right. I’m feeling sick and dizzy, as we begin to enter a second cycle of a spin. I sit back in the seat as he directed and fumble for the seat belt. It seems to take forever to push it into place, my hands are shaking so badly, but just as it clicks into the socket, everything changes again. I feel the wheels grip the road, gaining traction as they hit a seam of bare tarmac, but it’s only for a second and then we’re not sliding but skidding over a layer of stones and grit, and a kind of chaotic force seems to take possession of the car. The loose skimming turns have become bumping, jerking, teeth-clattering madness. The white world outside the window judders past.
I hear him shout something out – it sounds like a curse.
The car rocks violently as he applies the brakes, the machine struggling to obey him against the powerful forces dragging it out of his control. Then, as panic fills my chest and throat so badly I can hardly breathe, I sense that we’ve entered another element altogether. With a sickening crunch, the barrier crumples, the road beneath us vanishes, and we’re out into the white void.
It happens so slowly, every instant dragged out to ten times its usual length, as I gasp, suck in a terrified breath and scream. I know it’s coming: an impact. I can almost anticipate the hugeness of it. I know it will crush me into my very core. My body is already straining against the belt as the car tips forward and begins to plummet. It veers wildly to one side, hits something and flips back the other way. I can see the blurry vision of the man in the driver’s seat still wrestling with the steering wheel. I wonder what the point is, and at the same time I wonder what it will be like when this long tumble is over and we’re smashed to oblivion at the bottom of the mountain.
I’m still screaming and yet inside, a quiet, scared voice is saying, ‘Will it hurt when I die? Will it be quick? I don’t want to be hurt, just let it be fast…’
And then another voice screams back in panic, ‘I don’t want to die! This can’t be happening to me, it can’t, I want to GET OUT!’
‘Let me out!’ I’m shouting. ‘Oh my God, please! No, no no!’
Then it comes: a huge, elemental jolt that sends me tearing into the seatbelt. A pain fills my chest and then I’m thrown upwards and into a blessed blackness.
When I come to, I have no idea where I am, or why. It’s as though a section of my memory has been discarded. I can remember being in the elevator in the house and here I am, lying somewhere strange, cold and uncomfortable. Where am I? And this is more than uncomfortable. It hurts.
A voice is speaking to me urgently, its insistent tone piercing the fog that’s clouding my mind.
‘Come on, Freya,’ it’s saying, ‘come on, sweetheart. You need to move for me. We need to get away.’
I let out a long sigh and a burning pain clamps my chest. My face contorts.
‘Are you okay?’ the voice asks, a note of anxiety in its measured tones. ‘Where does it hurt?’
I feel too tired and confused to speak. I lift one hand towards my chest instead, trying to indicate that I’m in pain there. Every breath is sharply excruciating.
‘All right, all right,’ the voice says. It’s deep and masculine with something comforting in its timbre. ‘Take it easy. Shallow breaths, if you can.’
I can smell a strange and powerful scent. It
‘Turn it the other way!’ I cry, adrenalin coursing through me, making my hands tingle and shake while my insides whirl with fear. The car is still turning: we’re spinning slowly down the road. How long can he control it? Surely we’ll hit the mountainside or the barrier before too long.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he says through clenched teeth. ‘For God’s sake, sit back in your seat and get your belt on.’
He’s right, of course he’s right. I’m feeling sick and dizzy, as we begin to enter a second cycle of a spin. I sit back in the seat as he directed and fumble for the seat belt. It seems to take forever to push it into place, my hands are shaking so badly, but just as it clicks into the socket, everything changes again. I feel the wheels grip the road, gaining traction as they hit a seam of bare tarmac, but it’s only for a second and then we’re not sliding but skidding over a layer of stones and grit, and a kind of chaotic force seems to take possession of the car. The loose skimming turns have become bumping, jerking, teeth-clattering madness. The white world outside the window judders past.
I hear him shout something out – it sounds like a curse.
The car rocks violently as he applies the brakes, the machine struggling to obey him against the powerful forces dragging it out of his control. Then, as panic fills my chest and throat so badly I can hardly breathe, I sense that we’ve entered another element altogether. With a sickening crunch, the barrier crumples, the road beneath us vanishes, and we’re out into the white void.
It happens so slowly, every instant dragged out to ten times its usual length, as I gasp, suck in a terrified breath and scream. I know it’s coming: an impact. I can almost anticipate the hugeness of it. I know it will crush me into my very core. My body is already straining against the belt as the car tips forward and begins to plummet. It veers wildly to one side, hits something and flips back the other way. I can see the blurry vision of the man in the driver’s seat still wrestling with the steering wheel. I wonder what the point is, and at the same time I wonder what it will be like when this long tumble is over and we’re smashed to oblivion at the bottom of the mountain.
I’m still screaming and yet inside, a quiet, scared voice is saying, ‘Will it hurt when I die? Will it be quick? I don’t want to be hurt, just let it be fast…’
And then another voice screams back in panic, ‘I don’t want to die! This can’t be happening to me, it can’t, I want to GET OUT!’
‘Let me out!’ I’m shouting. ‘Oh my God, please! No, no no!’
Then it comes: a huge, elemental jolt that sends me tearing into the seatbelt. A pain fills my chest and then I’m thrown upwards and into a blessed blackness.
When I come to, I have no idea where I am, or why. It’s as though a section of my memory has been discarded. I can remember being in the elevator in the house and here I am, lying somewhere strange, cold and uncomfortable. Where am I? And this is more than uncomfortable. It hurts.
A voice is speaking to me urgently, its insistent tone piercing the fog that’s clouding my mind.
‘Come on, Freya,’ it’s saying, ‘come on, sweetheart. You need to move for me. We need to get away.’
I let out a long sigh and a burning pain clamps my chest. My face contorts.
‘Are you okay?’ the voice asks, a note of anxiety in its measured tones. ‘Where does it hurt?’
I feel too tired and confused to speak. I lift one hand towards my chest instead, trying to indicate that I’m in pain there. Every breath is sharply excruciating.
‘All right, all right,’ the voice says. It’s deep and masculine with something comforting in its timbre. ‘Take it easy. Shallow breaths, if you can.’
I can smell a strange and powerful scent. It
Readers choose
Francesca Simon
Amy Stephens
Lacey Roberts
Gamearth
Richard Price
J. K. Rock
James Beard
Py Kim Conant
Ernest Hemingway