Page 220 of Carousel

It’s over. The mask is on me.

I’m trying to get my fingers under it to throw it off, but he’s doing something to me to make me stop. I no longer want to.

I try not to breathe in the gas that will hook me.

I’m laid to rest on the wooden platform.

I wonder if, just maybe, I’m dead.

It would make sense.

My life was just a hell others had made for me.

When I wake again, I’m not on the platform, but in the world in my mind. It’s changed. No longer smoky and dark – now it’s much like the world at altitude. A bluish milky sky, like the colour of Old Mother’s eyes. A raging, deafening wind that won’t let me be. An emptiness.

The only sound I can hear over the wind are my breaths. Are they coming from me? They’re rattling. Shallow and irregular. Sound like they’re being sucked painfully out of me.

I understand. They’re coming from the real me. Outside.

Drake put a mask on me.

Did he drug me?

I don’t think he did. My thoughts are clear.

It was an oxygen mask.

He gave me air. Just air.

And then I hear something else. Commands, being spoken to me. They blend into the wind.

Breathe, Ara, Drake’s voice tells me, calmly.

Breathe. Deep, and slow. In, and out.

I need you to calm down.

And breathe.

It’s softer than his usual voice.

Tender.

He repeats the words again and again.

And his magic is working.

I am calmer. I hadn’t realised how panicked I was. I’d been shuddering, as if being rocked from within. My heart was thundering.

The wind is still wild, but it’s no longer raging against me. More like with me. And now that it’s not so loud, I can hear my breaths clearer. Bring them into more of a rhythm. Get them deeper, steadier, just like he wants me to. In and out.

Deep and slow.

Oxygen fills my cold, aching lungs.

I didn’t want to breathe. I was scared to.

But for Drake – his softly spoken words, as if they were being said to a lover – I do.