103-nowhere to run

ELENA’S POV

“I can't breathe…someone, help me! I can't breathe!”

I gasped awake, groping around the dark bed frantically before my eyes slowly adjusted to the low light in the shadowed room.

What the hell was that?

My heart was hammering desperately inside me as the memory of the wispy grating voice filled my head and I tried to catch my breath.

The shadows in my room were all wrong…long where they should be short and thick around the stone-walled crevices that were usually empty in daylight. It took too long for me to realize the pathetic wheezing sound I’d heard only moments earlier had not come from my head or the nightmare that still clutched to the back of my mind like a stubborn child.

“The courtyards! Oh god!” I croaked, stumbling out of bed with the tangle of thin cotton sheets at my feet and bracing myself against a window just in time to look out the blue darkness.

The courtyard I glimpsed from my bird’s eye view of the window was a tangle of cloth lines and thorny plants