He paused, wrenching turgid air into his lungs.
He had to get away, he had to go quickly – but, like an enemy, the steepness of the path was dragging him back; even the dead weight of his body was against him, working in treacherous alliance with gravity to slow his progress to a slug's pace. And now, to add insult to injury, he had been forced to stop for breath while his chest heaved maniacally and the air rattled in his throat.
He waited with fuming impatience, desperate to be off, but the panting didn't ease. In fact it seemed to grow more manic still until he was rasping like a labouring engine. Indeed it seemed that the longer he waited the harder became the panting – which surely couldn't be right. Eventually his patience cracked; he'd given it long enough and if his body wouldn't co-operate of its own free will then he had no choice but to impose his will on it. And so he clamped his mouth shut, forcing his chest to be still. For a moment all was quiet. Then he felt the pressure to breathe building irresistibly, like a head of steam, and though he fought against it until engorged veins throbbed against his skull and his chest was about to explode in the end he could hold it no more and it burst out of him, heaving and sucking at the air like a thing possessed.
So – he couldn't control his own respiratory system; like an obstinate animal it went its own way, regardless of his wishes. Then he noticed his heart thumping against his rib-cage, completely oblivious to him, another animal with a will of its own. He shuddered. They were all in there, living inside him: the spongy pink lungs, filled with foam and phlegm; the windpipe with its white hoops of springy gristle; and the purple coils of intestine, writhing like a nest of worms and filled with their liquid ordure. This then was his body, a collection of loathsome alien parasites. Fingering his face – damp greasy skin, flesh, teeth – and grabbing at his legs – thick white bones, huge slabs of meat – he whimpered with disgust. He wanted to pull himself apart, to be rid of the whole foetid mess. The panic of revulsion roared in his ears and he opened his mouth to scream.
But he caught himself in time. It was another trick, just another of the wood's silly tricks, no more than that. And a nasty one this time. He looked around himself, sneering at the surrounding trees and undergrowth: a contemptible collection of overgrown weeds. OK, so the first field had played tricks on him too, with its simulated acceleration and fake vertigo, but at least it had stuck to regular practical jokes, none of this porno mag and video nasty stuff.
The One Who Is Two (Book 1 of White Rabbit) Page 16