Aurelie tries to unchain her neck

The redhead was sinking through the green water. Feeling the panic grow inside her heart, she realised she would never be able to swim with heavy chains wrapped around her body. Frantically, her hands reached for her neck, explored the many coils of rusty chain that had been wrapped there. There were so many of them that the metal links were stacked tight from her shoulders to her jawline, hindering the movements of her neck. She could not even look down at her own body.

As she sank through the cold water, her fingers found a carabiner. They hastily manipulated it, releasing it from the links it had been snapped to. That allowed her to uncoil the long chain from her neck, turn after turn while she kept sinking. She worked fast and before she was totally out of breath she had managed to free her neck. She began to swim up as fast as she could, using her free arms like paddles, undulating her legs, her whole body, like fish. Aurelie was a good swimmer and she managed to stop her downward drift once she had found how to move her partially bound body in the most efficient way.

Her legs were still chained though and the weight was slowing her down. The surface was far away above her and she was only making slow progress. Her lungs were burning, her arms were tiring fast, her vision was darkening. Somehow the chain she had detached from her neck was still floating above her, way out of her reach.

Realising she was not going to make it to the surface, Aurelie, out of breath, resisting the urge to breathe sea water, curled her body and reached for her chained ankles. It was a race against **** as her fingers found the carabiner, opened it and uncoiled the chain. At last her legs were free from that dead weight and she could now swim to the surface unhindered.

She felt so weak, though. The water was like lead around her and the surface was so high above her now. She could hardly see it. Her legs moved so slowly, her arms were so heavy… Her lungs were in fire, she needed air, she needed to breathe to extinguish the fire that was raging in them.

Finally, she took a deep breath. Salt water rushed in her lungs. She began to cough in the most horrible way as the seawater attacked her trachea, her lungs. She curled into a ball. She drew several more breaths, getting only water. She was sinking again into the darkness. Her body had a last spasm, a last breath that flooded more water into her suffering body and then she passed out while her body slowly plummeted through the sea, never to be seen again.

THE END