My vision came back in an instant.
I gasped as I raised my body from the sand.
Something in my chest felt like it was straining against it, my heart. It was beating so hard, like it wanted to escape from my body.
My legs felt cold, so cold, my hands were shaking, practically a blur in the night's light.
I looked around, trying to make sense of everything.
Was I dead?
Was I in the afterlife?
The gun.
It was still in my hand, I began examining it.
The barrel I had shot myself with was empty, and the shell was on the floor.
I slid my hand from the barrel to the muzzle.
It was still warm.
Dropping the gun, I opened my mouth and started touching around the roof.
Nothing.
Just solid, warm flesh.
It couldn't be that it had failed or jammed itself.
The shell was right there and the muzzle was warm as if it had just been used.
This must be a dream.
That's it.
I pinched my arm to check if I was indeed dreaming...
Ouch.
I wasn't.
As I looked down, the lamp was still beside me as I had left it just moments ago, the waves were still clashing against the sand.
Everything was the same.
I tilted my foot towards my face.
There it was. The blood I had stepped in back in the living room.
It was still there.
Almost like being stabbed, my heart began aching. Not an emotional pain, but an actual physical one.
I threw myself back into the sand, my back arching back.
My fingers clawed at my chest as if I could just pry the sensation out by force.
I grimaced and my breath hitched as a low groan tore out of me.
My shoulders jerked and my legs kick against the sand, trying to get the energy out of my system somehow.
I scraped uselessly against my scales using my nails, scratching harder in desperation for any relief.
Nothing in the exterior felt out of the ordinary.
My scales were in place, no wound could be felt.
But the pain was unbearable.
In an instant, it went away.
That scene couldn't have taken more than 10 seconds. But for those 10 seconds I was miserable, they dragged on as if it was about to go on forever.
I stared at the stars above me, small, bright white dots painted onto the night sky's blueish black canvas.
My breath came out in short bursts, I could almost feel my lungs swelling and shrinking several times a second and the echoing of my heartbeats traveled all the way to my ears.
I tried to stand up, but it was useless.
My legs didn't work.
I shook each of them, trying to get anything out of them, but nothing.
I hit my knees right at the spot where a nerve should be.
Nothing.
Trying to reach out for the lamp, my hand fell down straight to the sand.
I swung one time, two times. My hand always ended up on the sand.
The lamp was right in front of me, right in reach.
But it was as if it was physically escaping from me.
Something in my chest and my legs made me feel as if I was pinned down in place.
I couldn't move anything below my waist.
A feeling began rising from the depths of my torso, into my throat, and at my mouth.
HMPH-
I placed my hand on my mouth, well I tried, half of my mouth was uncovered from my lost control of my limbs.
I gave a hard swallow, it tasted like nothing but metal.
Like I had grabbed one of my rusty springs and shoved it down my throat.
But it came back.
I gagged.
But swallowed.
Over and over.
Until I just couldn't hold it in anymore.
I looked down, at the moment I hadn't noticed, but I had managed to move my lower back.
Opening my mouth, strings of blood began pouring down onto the sand.
One after another.
The larger ones made wet plap sounds as they hit the clumps of sand below.
My nose, mouth, and throat were filled with the aftertaste of metal.
Coming from my blood's iron.
I wiped the remaining blood of my lips using the back of my hand.
My vision turned blurry for a moment, but after shaking my head it went back to its regular sharpness.
Gulp.
I looked at the back of my hand, examining the blood for a moment.
Faint darker dots could be seen along it.
Blood clots.
Cells from my body, now out of it.
They reflected the faint moonlight, resembling gelatine.
I grimaced before shaking them off my hands in a swift movement.
My hands slid around the sand, trying to keep myself anchored to something physical.
It felt cold.
I tried to inhale deeply to calm myself, but my chest wouldn't expand all the way.
Each breath was stopped short by my own body, as if an invisible weight had been laid on me.
I dragged my gaze back to the spot where the gun had fallen. It lay there quietly, half-buried in sand.
Something shifted inside my chest again.
A pressure, not a pain.
Something tightened around it, in the area of where my heart was.
My vision dimmed at the edges, I was simply too defeated to trash around and just let it be.
The world felt as if it were tilting.
If I were to stand up and fall now, I wouldn't fall frontwards or backwards.
I'd fall up.
I laughed. A short, breathless sound.
In a blink my vision went back to normal.
My limbs tingled, pins and needles crawling slowly upward from my legs toward my spine.
Would you look at that.
I could feel them again.
Yet it still felt like dead weight.
Every heartbeat echoed in my skull.
Grains of sand were pressed into my scales, stuck between my clothes and my body.
But something made my stomach drop.
Nothing felt right.
My upper body felt several times heavier, as if I were being pulled by something, downwards.
No.
I wasn't lying down anymore, was I?
My eyes told me that I was, but my body disagreed.
As if my center had been moved, gravity didn't feel right anymore, like my weight had been redistributed.
I felt suspended in the air.
While still laying on the ground.
That was the word.
I felt suspended.