Night scratched at me like splinters. Snatched sleep spun naught but wicked dreams of yellow air; rooms full of people whose blackened mouths frothed bubbling spit.
Breathless hours of muffled respiration had written themselves into 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, bored with my wheezing panic.
I willed sleep, but will proved no match for this demon which stole air and in its place left throat aching fear. Sweat dampened the too-warm sheets, denying comfort. Pinned beneath the cloying weight of blankets I felt trapped. I sloughed them off. Now cold demanded a portion of suffering. Coughing increased. 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 bellows; these lungs were punctured bladders leaking the breath of life into malevolent space.
The world's noise echoed in my head. I snapped my fingers 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 of the dark back to its chasms and allow me 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.
Night Air
This reads like an asthma nightmare, Jimmy - I think you mentioned that you suffered from asthma? Hard for others to imagine, I suppose, but you definitely give the experience a nightmarish tinge here. If anything, it's possible you overdo it - there are some very melodramatic images here - but as a non-sufferer I'm not sure I have the right to make that judgment.
The power and the conviction of your descriptions and images can't be denied.
Is this still something you have a problem with?
Cheers
David
The power and the conviction of your descriptions and images can't be denied.
Is this still something you have a problem with?
Cheers
David
No. It's not so much of a problem now, David; after all, I was able to complete thirty years in the Fire Service in Belfast with the condition ( I just didn't mention it and by the time I joined it was controllable.)
Maybe a little OTT but at the time (11 of 12 years old) it filled my nights and pretty much controlled my days as well. One beneficial aspect was that it pretty much forced a sedentary lifestyle for the years during which it ruled and gave me the time, and inclination,to read; a habit which I have maintained throughout. So 'every cloud' as they say.
Jimmy
Maybe a little OTT but at the time (11 of 12 years old) it filled my nights and pretty much controlled my days as well. One beneficial aspect was that it pretty much forced a sedentary lifestyle for the years during which it ruled and gave me the time, and inclination,to read; a habit which I have maintained throughout. So 'every cloud' as they say.
Jimmy