If you missed the first part of this, you should probably read it first: Seconds from Death, an excerpt from the memoir I’m writing.

Seconds From Death, Part 2

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Oh dear God. I can’t breathe.

My instinctive reaction is to grab Carolina’s hands and try with all my might to pry them off my neck. But the harder I yank and pull on her hands, the harder she squeezes my throat. I am very underweight at this time in my life, malnourished according to the doctors, the butt of skinny girl jokes. I don’t even weigh a hundred pounds. Carolina, being a very large woman, probably weighs at least three times as much as me.

Now she has me trapped inside a tiny, claustrophobic room, far from the nurse’s station, and no one is in the hallway outside. No one knows that I am being murdered. By the time they find out, it will be too late. I try to scream for help, but without air in my lungs, I am unable to make any sounds.

I am struggling with every ounce of my strength, trying to escape from Carolina’s strangling hands, but my desperate efforts are getting me nowhere. I see pure hatred pouring out of her bloodshot eyes, coupled with a sickening glee at the sight of my ineffectual struggle. The harder I try to escape, the harder she clamps her iron grip down on my throat.

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Dear God, I can’t breathe!

Suddenly I realize that my vision is going dim. I can still see the enraged, perspiring face of my attacker, framed by her short, graying brown hair. But everything else is going dark.

I lose my peripheral vision first. My field of vision is rapidly becoming narrower and narrower, as my brain shuts down due to the lack of oxygen.

That’s when I know: I am dying, right NOW!

Copyright 2021 by Linda Lee Adams @LadyQuixote