Alone in a room, the darkness from all sides, the light from above. Tied, bound, and oh so lost (sweetness, I think made a mistake).

The smoke curls up around my throne of wood and lust (it’s not me that’s on fire). The grey air twists like a ribbon, gently and slowly flowing over my body and around my twisted limbs.

Smoothly, oh so gently (like a lover) the smoke invades my nose, my lungs and I breathe…

I breathe in…

And…

Out…

It billows from my ungagged mouth in a cloud of particles that belong somewhere other than my body. The toxin (nicotine) calms my mind, awakens my body and feels oh…

So…

Right…

Relaxing in my throne, made of desire, stupidity and addiction, I smile and loll my head back. My eyelids droop lower and the turmoil in my mind eases…

Then it happens…

Suddenly my chest constricts. My ribs are of lead, pressing in, unmoving, unchanging. My pupils dilate, my lungs struggle to inflate but it’s as if I have stone instead of flesh inside of me (Oh god, what the fuck is happening). I tense my arms (bound to my chair) and clench my teeth, trying to find breath. Trying to find air…

And the iron bands around my chest slowly tighten.

I hear my pulse hammering in my ears, a black ink spreading in from the corners of my sight.

(I can’t fucking breathe, I can’t fucking breathe, I CAN’T FUCKING BREATHE!!!)

I try to break my arms free, but (silly little addicted me) the ropes are bound (by me) too tightly.

FUCK

The panic rises in me, my brain whirls and begs and pleads for oxygen, for something to just ease the pain of my crushed and unmoving lungs. I feel my blood slowly and cool, it’s like I’m turning into stone from the inside out

(Petrificus mother-fucking Totalus).
Straining every muscle, using the last reserves of my strength,

I fight for my freedom.

And somehow…

….

….

…

My throne cracks.

I fall, not breathing, down…

The ground under me crumbles…

And I land with a splash in cursed coldness (water…).

I open my mouth (my last energy used in the act of drowning) and gulp water down. And I drink, as if I was at the end of a famine, a drought. I drink until oesophagus and trachea become confused (oh god…)

And I choke.

But I cannot stop. The water (I must drink) flows faster and faster into my bound up, constricted chest.

And the bands begin to loosen…

Suddenly, my feet find earth once more. The water drains away and I begin to cough. I hack and spit water like bitter poison. It comes from mouth and nose, my body on all fours arching and shuddering as air slowly creeps past water into my body. My heart is pounding harder, drumming against my chest as I regurgitate the last of the water.

And then I realise it.

I can breathe.

I suck in lungful after lungful of oxygen. The iron bands around my chest are still there (they will dissipate after a few hours) but they no longer crush me down, make me dead. My heart slow and I feel my body restoring its condition…

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale

Exhale.

I’m alive.

I'm fucking alive.

(I just had a fucking asthma attack)

I’m NEVER letting smoke near me again

(Funny how drowning saved my life).

---

A/N:Yeah. This happened recently (big guilt trip). I was an idiot and had a cigarette before work (a recurring habit I am breaking for my own safety) and proceeded to have my first ever asthma attack while at work. I broke it by enacting my drowning reflex (basically, I breathed in water so that my lungs were forced to do SOMETHING).

So smoking and I are no longer friends. That relationship didn’t work out too well…

I apologise to all those people who know me, because I’m sure this will upset you. But it’s done now. And at least I’m being honest…