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It hurt to breathe. Scout would draw air in until the knives stabbing between all her ribs made it impossible to inhale further. When she exhaled, it was like her lungs were pulling away from the sides of her chest cavity as they deflated, tearing something all around her insides.
Then she’d breathe in again.
She couldn’t draw a full breath; the knives made that impossible. She almost wished she could just stop; the pain was so unrelenting.
But she had a vague sort of memory that she had stopped breathing at some point a moment before her awareness had returned, and that had been an entirely different kind of horror. So she kept moving the tiny amounts of air in and out and tried to figure out what was happening to her.
It felt like something was sitting on top of her chest, pinnin
