a coughing spell
When she first noticed the taste in her throat, she thought it was from something she'd eaten, prior to that
moment. She recalled that she'd had a rather large helping of spaghetti, crowned with two slices of crusty bread for
supper. Each slice of bread having been festooned with liberal quantities of butter and garlic, she thought it the
source of the unusual aftertaste. As the taste was not strong enough so as to become immediately unpleasant, she
neglected to give a proper ration of thought before turning her mind back to the relatively trivial matters that had
previously occupied it. If she had thought about the taste a moment longer, she might have realised that it tasted
nothing at all like garlic. However, she was exceedingly worried about the chips in the matte finish of her blush-
coloured fingernails, and the taste in the back of her throat just wasn't making enough of an impression to bring it into
the foreground of her consciousness.
Her fingernails, smooth and oval shaped as they were, could not sustain her attention forever, although some of
her former friends were certain that they quite possibly could. She ventured into the bathroom and appraised her self
before her spotless, slightly crookedly-hung, square mirror. As she prepared to strip the foundation from her
forehead, the blusher from her cheeks, and rouge from her lips with the aide of a good stiff cleanser, she coughed.
The cough brought up another, stronger, more unpleasant taste of whatever it was in the back of her throat, and she
presently gagged. Shaking her head, she bent down over the toothpaste-spattered porcelain sink and turned on the
tap. Poking her fingers tentatively into the stream of cold water, she shuddered. She hated the feel of perfectly cold
water on her face. Impatiently, she awaited warmer water. Plumbing systems in old houses often take some time in
warming up, and presently she put her hands on her hips.
Coughing, she reached for a glass, filled it with the now lukewarm water, and drank it down in two great greedy
gulps. All this coughing had allowed the taste to work its way up onto her tongue. Reflecting on this change in
circumstance, she realised that she had detected the taste earlier in the evening, but had done nothing about it. Being
a relatively simple person, she didn't stop to think very deeply at all about what she could have possibly done.
"I suppose I could've chewed a lozenge or something," she thought, swirling warm water around her mouth, and
squeezing it between her straight, tea-stained teeth.
A particularly violent cough (which quickly became rather a coughing spasm) rocked her body forward, and she
dropped her cup and the remainder of the water in it into the sink. The cup fell under the strong, steady stream of
water from the faucet, which was now thoroughly heated to the point of steaming up the metal fixtures of the faucet.
She steadied herself on the edge of the bathroom counter, and stood up as straight as the coughing would allow.
Staring at herself through the steam in the mirror, she noticed a trail of vulgar reddish bile that, horribly, had affixed
itself on her face, in a line from the left corner of her mouth to her jawbone. Her skin and throat burned with pain,
and her cheeks with embarrassment and disgust, and she quickly wiped it away. Forgetting that the water she had
left running was now nearly boiling hot, she thrust her contaminated hand beneath the spigot, only to recoil with an
abbreviated scream. Cursing in a most unseemly manner, she turned off the water with her other hand while
frantically waving her burned and throbbing one about.
Her next attempts to collect herself were failures, as the water took a moment to cool, so she could not
immediately put her throbbing (and still contaminated) hand in some cold, or at least tepid, water. More importantly,
the coughing had begun again. The woman re-enacted the whole scene that had occurred just previously; however,
this time she had left the cold water running, so she was able, finally, to rinse the acrid bile from her fingertips.
Breathing heavily in an attempt to collect her composure, following her last coughing spell, she thought about what
an awfully difficult and drawn-out task it would be to wash off all of her makeup, and how much nicer it would be to
simply fall into bed and go to sleep.
The thought of slumber resting sweetly in her mind, she exhaled loudly and laboriously, spitting out more of the
crimson-tinted mucous with the exaggerated breath. This sensation of the bile clinging fiercely by strands of itself to
the various parts of her tongue and mouth brought her to her knees in weak distaste and nausea. Crawling nearer to
the toilet, she heaved her stomach outward, hoping that she might feel a bit better after expelling from her person
whatever substance was making its presence known. She felt it in her chest, moving through her body, ravaging her
like some sort of an accelerated disease. She felt a pang in her right side, and changed her position, which helped
little. With a crumpled handful of toilet paper, she scrubbed furiously at the bile on her face and neck.
The taste had become unbearable. Standing up, she cupped her hands under the water (which was still running,
and by now very cold) and brought them to her mouth. She rinsed her mouth over and over, but the taste wouldn't
leave her. It was as if it had permeated her actual tongue, or the very walls of her mouth, and was there to stay
permanently.
Seeing that the rinsing wasn't helping, she turned off the water and dropped back to her knees on the ivory
linoleum floor. Wadding more toilet paper, she started to manually scrub the insides of her mouth, trying to clean all
of that mucous, all of that sickness, out of her. Shoving more bunched paper in, and more, and more, until she fell
backward, choking on bile that hadn't anywhere to escape her body. She fell onto her back, down on the ivory
linoleum floor, with toilet paper blooming out of her mouth like soft white blossoms.
She had been eaten through.
Email: reflectingoddess@mailcity.com