BREATHE YOU OUT

PROLOGUE


“…Eighty-seven… eighty-eight… eighty-nine…”

His breath was being ripped from his lungs in ragged gasps with his agonising effort to breathe, but he didn’t—couldn’t stop.

His body pumped up and down on the cold black parquet and the sweat coursed down his naked back, down his muscular arms and thighs, and pooled onto the floor beneath him.

His feet were balanced on the piano stool, his hands on the floor and he continued to work the press-ups long beyond his point of endurance.

Mick Jagger’s harsh vocals vibrated throughout the room, “I wanna see it painted – painted black – black as night—black as coal…” The heavy drum beat pounded in his head yet still he couldn’t control his body and make himself stop.

He couldn’t endure any more. His muscles were beyond the point of agony; he just couldn’t go on… And yet, and yet…

Suddenly his right hand slipped on the pool of his own perspiration and he fell forward. He landed uncomfortably on the floor and his exhausted body curled into a foetal position.

He gasped and shivered in the indifferent moonlight and then the darkness and the ice possessed him.