Suffocation

 Suffocation- to kill or be killed by the deprivation of oxygen, as by obstruction of the air passage. When you look it up in the dictionary, it seems simple, painless, dull, when in reality it is something completely different. In cartoons, the nerdy kid with the plaid shirt, glasses and the inhaler starts hyperventilating and comically clutches his/her throat. Then the kid will continue to take a few puffs of a clunky inhaler. When watching a cartoon, many may laugh, but if they saw what actually happens, they might not be so quick as to take it as a joke.

Suffocation is a funny thing. It lures her in with the promise that it will all get better if she could just get one good gulp of air to soothe her lungs and her aching chest. That maybe she could breathe like a normal person does. 

            She sits against her snug down pillows that are propped up against her bed. She takes another huge gulp, but it only adds to the growing emptiness she feels inside of her chest. In the back of her mind, she hears herself gasping and wheezing. She also feels the wet, hot tears slither absentmindedly down her face. Her lungs like an innocent slug subjected to torture with table salt, thrashing about, trying to avoid further conviction. Her breath whistles past her lips as she greedily sucks all of the air she can grasp. Nevertheless, however determined she is, her attempt proves to be futile as she is met with another wave of fresh pain.

She squirms around, uncomfortable no matter what position she moves into. Everyone around her hopefully gazes into her eyes, anticipating her to tell them that she is fine. Yet she still sits there naively focusing on passing oxygen through her god-forsaken lungs, but to no avail leaving her exactly where she left off.

Would it not just be easier to stop trying, to face the facts, to accept the truth? The pain will never go away. So what is the point of trying to fool myself, when we all know what will be my outcome.

She takes one final breath and her eyes slowly ease shut. The breath she does not have does not catch in her throat. A silence spreads throughout the room, filling her chest with a soothing ache. Her heart bangs against her ribs, struggling to escape. Her eyes flutter as her chest starts to convulse.

Finally, she surveys her last surroundings from afar. First, her parents and her brother curled up, asleep in the other room, blessed by the sandman, their faces peaceful like sleeping babies. A seemingly tough girl lies awake mourning her grandmother, a friend taken away too soon by a too well known disease, cancer. Another girl drowning out her pain of self-loathing by inflicting deep gashes on not only her own flesh but on her surveyor’s darkened heart. Lastly, she sees herself, a frail, seemingly harmless girl that always does what is expected of her, an innocent person that comes off as a carefree, giggly and giddy, when in reality she has the most crestfallen, desolate and forlorn heart of them all.

Her world slightly unfocuses and blurs into nothing.

Reviews

[HippieSoulPunx]

Interesting story. There were points where I thought it might be the story of someone hanging themselves, or someone with cystic fibrosis. I like that it kept me guessing right to the end, but that the cause wasn't really important anyway, because the focus was on the feelings. I used to get really bad asthma attacks as a kid, so I get the general feeling, and the way you described it was so detailed and vivid that it was easy to remember the struggle to get air, and the desperation your body sends you into when you can't get it, even when it's hopeless. Creative writing.