litlover
09-30-2005, 08:42 AM
Night clung like splinters of glass. Snatched sleep had spun naught but wicked dreams of yellow air and rooms full of people whose blackened mouths frothed bubbling spit.
Breathless hours in an agony of muffled respiration had written themselves into my exhausted bones. Small movements provoked paroxysms of coughs. I attempted to deaden the sound of my discomfort by shallow intakes and slow, blowing exhalations. The house creaked and sighed as though bored with my wheezing panic.
I willed sleep, but will proved no match for this demon which stole the air and replaced it with throat aching fear. Sweat dampened the too-warm sheets, denying comfort to tingling limbs. Pinned beneath the cloying weight of blankets I felt trapped. I sloughed them off. Now cold demanded a portion of my suffering. Coughs increased until I cocooned myself again and the little dance of discomfort continued.
My world had shrunk to the size of my inefficient lungs. Each breath a pneumatic cacophony which echoed in my head like diabolical bellows. I imagined Hell as giant, punctured bladders leaking the breath of life into malevolent space.
The world's noise echoed in my head. I snapped my fingers just to see if sound existed outside of my deflated universe.
Shadows crawled along the floor. Time was passing. Maybe the Sun, reborn, would drive this monster back to unholy chasms and allow some respite; just a hour or two and I might feel able to resume our unequal struggle. Surely someone else had committed the same unwitting Sin as me and needed a visit from this Thief of the Air.
No. Morning only lit my terror.
That day, it took the worried Doctor to plunge air into me with his magic hypodermic. I offered my arm to the sting of hope.
They told me I smiled in my sleep.
Breathless hours in an agony of muffled respiration had written themselves into my exhausted bones. Small movements provoked paroxysms of coughs. I attempted to deaden the sound of my discomfort by shallow intakes and slow, blowing exhalations. The house creaked and sighed as though bored with my wheezing panic.
I willed sleep, but will proved no match for this demon which stole the air and replaced it with throat aching fear. Sweat dampened the too-warm sheets, denying comfort to tingling limbs. Pinned beneath the cloying weight of blankets I felt trapped. I sloughed them off. Now cold demanded a portion of my suffering. Coughs increased until I cocooned myself again and the little dance of discomfort continued.
My world had shrunk to the size of my inefficient lungs. Each breath a pneumatic cacophony which echoed in my head like diabolical bellows. I imagined Hell as giant, punctured bladders leaking the breath of life into malevolent space.
The world's noise echoed in my head. I snapped my fingers just to see if sound existed outside of my deflated universe.
Shadows crawled along the floor. Time was passing. Maybe the Sun, reborn, would drive this monster back to unholy chasms and allow some respite; just a hour or two and I might feel able to resume our unequal struggle. Surely someone else had committed the same unwitting Sin as me and needed a visit from this Thief of the Air.
No. Morning only lit my terror.
That day, it took the worried Doctor to plunge air into me with his magic hypodermic. I offered my arm to the sting of hope.
They told me I smiled in my sleep.