The Lungs: A Narrative Fiction

I breathe slow, deep, cleansing breaths that sooth me. I close my eyes and listen to my breathing. I inhale peace and contentment. I exhale all my worries. I drift off to sleep easily and sleep well. Tomorrow I wake free from negativity.

he opens a door. Inside, the room is cluttered, dark. On a queen-sized bed, under a window draped with lace curtains, his mother is asleep. He jumps squarely onto the bed next to her. He gives her a hug.

Dragging himself to a sitting position he drags his hands over his face and hair. Pushing himself to his feet he stumbles, making his way to the table. He reads the note, leaving it where it lays as he pulls a bottle out of his pack and staggers back to his bed.

I remember falling asleep, but I don’t remember being in a bed. I had fallen asleep in the hall due to my emotional state. My body didn’t need the sleep. My mind did. I’m actually happy I did. It got my mind off all my problems and sorrows for a good while. I sit up, pushing the unfamiliar blankets off my body. I’m in a strange hard bed in a foreign room. Everything around me feels new and alien. This isn’t my dull little prison. This room is slightly decorated with light brown walls and a dresser covered with random things.

I didn’t stop running; I kept this up for what felt like thirty seconds at least before the overwhelming urge to cough stopped me. I attempted to grip the side of the wall before I keeled over and violently choked up more blood. Shaking, I stretched my arms out around me, praying that I would find something in this seemingly empty room that could give me some kind of relief. Something that would take away that

"ME!" I fully came to consciousness with a scream and a realisation of the cold sweat that drowned my skin and the pain surging through my extremities. I loosed

“There, we can see your beautiful face again,” she says, depositing the washcloth into the murky water, and extracts the bandages and tape from the medical kit. “It's not bleeding, but knowing you, you'll figure a way to open it up again.” She grins.

Heitman sloshes back to the bank and climbs out. He squats next to the fish. It has stopped moving, its upturned eye brilliantly white against the dark ground. It arches its tail and lets it fall. Its gills open and close and its mouth flexes, the moon reflecting off the edges of its scales. Heitman picks it up and walks over to the

His body, motionless of course, was stretched out on the sofa. His head lay against one of his shoulders, and one of his arms trailed down the sofa?his fingers limp and lifeless. There was silence. The atmosphere of lifelessness was prevalent inside the room. I stared hard at his chest, watching for the slightest sign of movement. Nothing.

I stumble out the front of the class towards the trampoline. My heart starts beating faster. My vision blurs. I can’t breathe.

I’m running. I can’t scream, my lungs are burning and something is chasing me. I see a light at the end of the dark and gloomy hallway but it keeps getting farther no matter how fast I run. The thing behind me is getting closer, I can smell its rotten breath. All of the sudden I feel the sharp pain of broken glass burying in my feet. I fall onto the glass covered floor and finally a scream escapes my throat.

He didn’t want to leave his bathroom, hell, he was terrified in his own apartment, he walked back, leaning against the white wall of the small bathroom, he slid down against it, burying his face in his sweater sleeves and wondering exactly why he had to be tortured like this by his own mind.

Horace gets up from the bed, leaving Jessica lazy who stares at the ceiling, and walks into the living room with a delirious in the hands.

“Yes, of course, I 'm listening.” Pins and needles prickle at my hands as the blood returns. I massage them together to ease the pain.

Finally a way out of here. Should take the right door or the left? I’ll go left. Hey, wait a minute, I hear someone behind me. I turn to see… I was back on the floor again. By now I’m gasping for air because some brainiac is covering my mouth and nose with a cloth filled with... I’m faint and my muffled cry for help is useless.