Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Cecil!” I shout while praying like fuck he’s nowhere near the inferno. There are enough chemicals in the greenhouse to cause a sizable explosion. I barely survived such a blast, so I don’t see Cecil fairing any better.
When Cecil fails to answer me, I shoot up from the floor before racing outside like sloppy mud isn’t sloshing up my legs. “Cecil, are you in there?”
With silence strengthening my worry, I toss open the greenhouse door, protect my lungs with my forearm, then enter the black smoke-filled space. My lungs commence protesting within a nanosecond of bursting through the deadly haze, but my intuition proves right when I spot a dark figure slumped over the tomato seedlings.
“Cecil!”
The pain I endured when Cecil dressed the wounds on my back in the weeks following Ophelia’s accident has nothing on the terror raining down on me now.
Cecil’s chest is still.
He isn’t moving.
I don’t even think he’s breathing.
With no concerns for my safety, I race his way. Flames are licking at the ceiling of the greenhouse, but I push through my panic as determined as ever to save Cecil as he did me almost four years ago.
The chemicals I mentioned earlier are at the point of boiling over, so when I reach Cecil, instead of commencing CPR as his still chest is desperately begging for me to do, I drag him out of the danger zone by the scruff of his shirt.
His heaviness as I drag him over months’ worth of produce adds to the weight on my chest. I thought only deer got heavier after dying. I had no clue humans did as well.
Just as we reach the clearing between the cabin and the greenhouse, the containers of chemicals explode. The blast is so furious, I’m thrown a good six to eight feet from where the flames race over Cecil’s frozen form.
My back is on fire, and my skin is giving off the same putrid scent it had after my father’s goon set Ophelia’s car alight, but after rolling on the sloshy ground to put out the flames dancing across my skin, I scamper back to Cecil’s side, then commence CPR like help isn’t over an hour away.
“Come on, Cecil.” I pump on his chest like the first-aid book he left lying around taught me. He said his odd assortment of books were fire starters, but within a couple of months, he was comfortable enough around me to read them without fear of judgment. He even lent some of his favorites to me.
Thrillers are my favorite. I’m halfway through a book by Stieg Larsson now.
The fear making it hard for me to breathe eases a little when my third set of compressions brings back Cecil’s coughing gurgle I’ve grown accustomed to the past four years.
While his lungs fight to remove the smoke choking them, I roll him onto his side before racing into the cabin to fetch him some water. He forced me to drink water by the gallons when he learned the cause of the wounds on my back. It didn’t help my skin, but it kept my lungs healthy.
“Here…” I shove the glass into his hands before crawling across the crispy ground to switch on the sprinkler system. The blast took care of most of the flames, but for what it missed, the sprinklers will get.
“Slow sips,” I urge after returning to Cecil’s side. As he gulps through the water with more gusto than a man on the verge of death, I ask, “What were you doing out here? You know you’re not meant to go outside by yourself.”
He’s barely coherent, but a reminder that he isn’t as young as he thinks he is won’t go unpunished. He smacks me up the back of my head with his open hand before grumbling under his breath, “I’m not dead yet, boy. It’ll do you best to remember that.” I curl my arm around his back when his smoke-hazed senses almost send him falling backward. Although he shoos me away, his slit eyes can’t hide the admiration in them. He’s pleased I saved him, proving he still has a lot of living left to do, but he’s also confused. “Something felt off, so I thought I’d investigate.”
“You could have woken me. I would have checked for you.”
“I could have… but I didn’t.” In between coughs, he mumbles that he was fine years before I arrived, and he’ll be fine years after I’ve gone. Before I can disclose I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, he mutters, “Then something went and struck me over the head. Knocked me out cold.” He slaps my hands away when I attempt to check his head for a bump. “It wasn’t hard enough to kill me. Just enough to keep me down for a little.”
“A little? You weren’t fucking breathing—”
I get whacked for the second time.