Hot Sauce looked at the open curtains: she looked at Nona.
Then a huge, rippling sound entered Nona’s head. She was aware of a tight, hard noise, pop—pop, distant and then much much closer—as though her whole head was exploding. Everything went black, but she wasn’t asleep. She had the biggest and most frantic headache and she was terrified, her body wasn’t working, she could feel nothing and perceive nothing. The headache got worse and worse and worse, then suddenly it stopped, and she didn’t know anything at all.
Time exited her body. After a period apart from it, the headache came back. It wasn’t as bad, and then it got a lot better. The blackness didn’t go away, but her other senses started to come online. There was something rough under her face that smelled like wax crayon and lemon cleaner, and she was drooling—her mouth was full—full of something disgusting and sticky. Her mouth opened and it all fell out. She was lying down. Nona, so well-versed in thinking about what her body was doing in various states of consciousness, could tell that.
Nona the Ninth - Day Four, Chapter Eighteen
