The Drowning
What Spenser noticed one biting winter morning on the walk through campus was that if he took a large gulp of coffee from his travel mug and lolled it around the back of his throat, he could swallow and then immediately exhale, combining these acts into one and increasing the quantity and quality of the vapour that trundled from his mouth. The heat of his coffeebreath colliding with the damp air all about his face. So warm. Then so cold.
Sometimes Spenser swallows, exhales, and then tries to inhale the coffee vapour back through his nostrils all in one go, creating a satisfying feedback loop, a closed respiratory system of some sort, through which he can cycle once for each gulp that he takes.
Step after step. The cloying scent of sandalwood mixing with the coffee. Sodden leaves squelching underfoot.
And he thinks about his little brother at the bottom of the lake, applebright lungs filling with murkblue water. Imagines his brother’s vanishment in boneless, meatless ways — can only picture glutted vessels and flooded cavities. Pulmonary imaginings of his brother’s end are all that he can conjure. Deluged capillaries choked to bursting in catastrophic failure. Bronchial trees swaying underwater like some nightmarish deluvian orchard.
Copse. Corpse. Coffee and sandalwood. This the scent of ruined forests.
←PREVIOUS EPISODE← →NEXT EPISODE→
_________