Friday 30 November 2012

A is for air-tight

Well, it's been a while guys but I guess I'm back from the tunnel that is studying honours and backing it up with Nano. Now I have a new challenge and it's one that I can blog to you. #amonthof is a space for people to explore their creative works. The rules are simple. For December we will create a piece every day for twenty-six days. If you want to get involved check out the facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/amonthof/485153634862449/?notif_t=group_activity. They're also on twitter but I can't remember my password so you'll have to find them yourselves.
The first of December is 'A' - here's my piece.

A is for air-tight

The world was still heavy with rising mist floating toward the sky in the sunshine. The world of last night, the thunder and lightning, the parallel bright and dark, had left and now the steam was its legacy. Brown patches in the grass had greened slightly at the rain but it wouldn’t last; this corner of the world would get a lot hotter before it cooled again.
Lawn mowers and the sounds of frustrated DIY mingled with bird song and the chatter of people enjoying the weekend. A dog barked. Nothing unusual happening today in this neck of the woods. Nothing unusual except that I couldn’t breathe.
Was it Newton who said that every action has an equal and opposite reaction? Was it Einstein or Aristotle? I can’t remember. Whoever it was they summed up most of the world quite well. It stands to reason that everything happens because something caused it to. On this average day, while I sat there drowning in nothing, starved for air, I realised that there wasn’t always a reason for the reaction.
There was nobody holding a bag over my head. No one had a noose around my neck. I hadn’t miss-swallowed anything. In fact, my head, my mouth, my nose, my throat, my lungs, they were all clear. I just couldn’t breathe.
Maybe I’d forgotten how. It seems unlikely but I could find no other explanation. Let’s face it, when your lips are turning blue and your chest won’t rise you don’t have a lot of time to come up with explanations.
There was a photo on the shelf. A picture of my mum and dad holding me shortly after I was born. So it was going to be a hollywood cyclical death, huh? I see myself in birth as I experience death. Too hokey. Too obvious. Too much of a cliché. I moved my view which was getting dimmer by the moment. The book case. It housed some of the best things in the world to me. The pages which had kept me from sleep for hours because I couldn’t put them down. The places that I never visited physically but that my mind knew intimately. The friends I had never and would never meet but who I could happily chat to.
The world was heavy and I was heavy too. The books. That was my last.