Free beats per minute by Alex Mae

her
heart jumped until it was pulsating in her throat. She felt vomit rising but
she didn’t care. All that mattered was getting away. A
terrible wind, which rocketed her head back painfully as she tore through the
trees, howled in her ears. The branches whipped back and forth at an
accelerated rate, scratching her arms.
    Now her feet met pavement with dry, frantic slaps. Her chest
was beginning to hurt, breath ripping at her lungs with her rising bpm. Keep
going. The wind was still fighting her, and as she reached the side of the
row of houses her vision blurred in and out of focus. She imagined Christian’s
breath hot on her neck.
    And then it happened.
    The now familiar sensation. The distortion of perspective, the images curling at the edges,
bending, like in her bedroom earlier that day. Her mind was failing her. Just keep going. Her eyes were rolling in her head, panicked, as she continued
to move: she was being swallowed whole by a nightmare. She had no choice but to
plunge into the opening; but the path before was now a neverending tunnel,
terrifying, mutating in front of her eyes, compressing and expanding in tandem
with the beating of her heart. Cars zipped back and forth in the distance like
shooting stars, gone in a blink. She felt a strange crackle along her skin as
if all the hairs had shot up to stand on end. The pendant pulsed with heat
alongside.
    The urge to stop and put her head between her knees had
never been stronger; but her desire to live won out. On she ran.
    Suddenly, Christian was beside her. Then, as if
materialising out of thin air, he was on the other side; the howling of the
wind seemed to accelerate when he was near. Now, with a burst of unreal speed,
so fast she did not even see, he was in another position: flinging open the
gate, further down the path, and running toward her.
    She skidded to a halt, her arms outstretched, certain he was
going to crash into her, at the speed he was going he
would knock her off her feet-
    Her hands met thin air.
    The weight of her movement propelled her forward, and
instinctively she fell down to one knee. Her darting eyes found only the flimsy
wood fence framing the alleyway and the dark expanse of the forest and roads
beyond; again, and again, she checked, but there was not a soul in sight. Even
so, her attention did not waver. She did not allow herself to register concern
that her vision was still flickering at the edges, as if objects in her
periphery were vanishing and reappearing at will. She did not even think about
why her pendant had begun to cool against her clammy skin. As her bpm returned
to normal the unsteadiness in her vision began to subside. She hardly noticed.
    Her body, unused to exercise, ached. She was still shaking
from adrenaline and fear. But a little voice cut through the sticky, tar-like
mire of her mind and told her that she was too exposed, like a sitting duck.
She had to keep moving.
    No sooner had she got to her feet was she back on the
ground.
    She landed heavily on her backside. It hurt. An aching in
her jaw and the metallic tang of blood, trickling gelatinously inside her
mouth, told her that something or someone had knocked her down. She hadn’t even
seen it coming.
    Christian crouched in front of her. The light blue eyes were
thoughtful; kind, even. Raegan could have almost believed it was all a dream if
it wasn’t for his smile. He was enjoying himself.
    ‘I’m very glad to see you again.’
    If she wasn’t trapped against the wall, Christian blocking
her escape, two impossibly strong hands holding her legs down; if a tooth in
her mouth hadn’t come loose with the force of his punch; if the howling wind
and the squeezing and expanding of space in her vision hadn’t now accelerated
again; if the pendant on her chest wasn’t burning with painful intensity – they
could almost have been back in Mojo’s, engaging in a flirtation.
    He was toying with her. She couldn’t pretend to herself that
she was going to survive