Micah felt too hot. Not the normal kind of warmth from blankets or the slow heat that built up after sleeping through a summer night. The heat was heavy, suffocating like a furnace shaped like an octopus, its many arms wrapped tight around him. It squeezed, pressed and roasted him from the inside out. Its weight draped over his chest and limbs as if the thing had decided he was its personal pillow.
Micah groaned and shoved blindly at it, half-asleep and cranky, expecting it to slide away.
But it didn't budge. The creature, or whatever his feverish mind decided it was, latched tighter. Thick, burning limbs clung stubbornly to him. Micah, annoyed and still stuck between sleep and waking, kicked at the intruder as if trying to boot a clingy octopus off his body.
Someone grumbled next to his ear.
