he began to cough

He began to cough. It was mild. Slowly, with the insistent coughing, it turned into a rasping, drawn out cough. It began to get louder. It began to get harder. Rougher. Wider. Louder. Spittle began to fly from his mouth. His chest began to heave as if it were going through spasms. His eyes began to water. He began to gasp for air in between the bouts of coughing, those in-between periods becoming shorter and shorter. Eyes watering with tears. Chest feeling tight, drawn out of breath. Out drawn. Fingertips feeling a tingling sensation. He coughed, gasped. It stopped. He looked up, the sound of gasping the only thing running through his ears. And the heartbeat beating through them. Drumming through. It was racing, his heart. How fast, he didn’t know. But faster than when he drove his car when there were only fifteen minutes left to get to work.

He looked up at the sky. It was kissed an orange brown. The sun was setting on the horizon. The clouds hung low and lazy. No animals could be heard. The silence was still and eerie.

The thunder cackled far away, returning with aplomb. The men played chess. The shadows gasped. As if all of a sudden, all of them needed some air. Why? Wheretofore? It didn’t make sense. But they did. That’s what happened. He didn’t know or understand any of it.

He shook his head. The vision disappeared. He looked around. The beautiful sky was darkened now. Now just the dark of night, but it felt like the dark of nightmares. Hazy. Yet precise. He would forget it once he woke up. But he felt with a growing dread, there was no waking up from this. He felt tears burn his eyes, his nostrils. He sniffed and looked around. He couldn’t bear it. He closed his eyes, scrunching them so tight that they hurt. He shook his head. He felt flies all around him. Buzzing around, but mostly alighting. Everywhere. He felt they were depositing little maggot eggs. In a few hours, he felt, the baby maggots would squirm out of their eggs, and begin to burrow into his skin. Once inside, they would create tunnels, some running parallel to his veins, others around them. When they were big enough, that’s when it would really begin. The first would begin to gnaw at a vein, and as sound as the pinching sounds of it opening, and the rushing sounds of blood squirting out were heard, the others would begin. Blood would begin to rush out into his system, flooding it. Killing the maggots. But they would be happy. Their job would be done. He would tumble. He would stutter and fall. The fall would be heavy, the thud shaking everything. His whole universe would fall apart. He didn’t attach undue importance to himself. The few who knew what he was understood why he thought the way he did. It was true.

Gaias shook his head, tears falling from it. A crack opened in the earth and from the fissure came a flood of water.