David Feuerstein

            I watched him from the darkest corner of his closet. He coughed some thick yellow mucus up into a tissue and sat behind his desk with his back to me.

I hated him. He was as disgusting at home as he was at work. Those greasy hands leaving their slime on every object like some foul glazed donut. That low gurgling when he would clear his throat like air trying to break through black ooze. I even saw yellow globs hanging from his nose. He was vile. Vile Vile Vile.

            Silently, I stepped out from my shroud of darkness and brandished my weapon: a cleaver with an edge honed to the point of splitting hairs.

            It was easy creeping across the carpet to him. He didn’t even notice me raise the cleaver above him and bring it down on that instrument playing its cough, cough, cough.

            He fell to the floor looking up at me as he tried to mend the pieces of his throat’s flesh back together.

            I watched as the blood left from the throat.

***

            Sometime later, I found myself sitting at the dinner table with my father over some wonderful baked chicken he had made. We had been talking about some nonsense I would have been more engaged with had it not been for the fact that my dear father was coughing between every few words.

            The cough’s interruption of the conversation was so intense that I could not bear the thought of willingly listening to the words smothered between them.

            To make matters worse, some coughs were of the kind that would suggest medical attention was needed. His fat face would go red as a tomato ripe to be squashed. He would lean forward, mouth agape like some kind of wild monkey, and cough till it seemed he would vomit. Spittle dropped from his mouth to his plate. After the theatrics, and I’m sure they were theatrics for I have never seen a person so willingly give themselves up to coughing, he would lean back in his chair and huff and puff like a cow until the next fit.

            The dinner continued so, and I barely touched my food. The animal, my father rather, had the most contemptable habit of never covering his mouth when he coughed. I would watch the spray of spit and mucus land and trace lines down the food I had so looked forward to enjoying. It was ruined.

            The dinner reminded me of that situation in the man’s office and how he had disgusted me with that cough and those greasy hands. Undoubtedly, there were sickly people everywhere around me. Sickly, disgusting people.

            It was later that night when that noise from the throat burrowed itself into my ears and would not let me go.

My father had recently developed a habit of staying up well after midnight. I tended to be more of an early riser.

I could hear him well into the early hours of the morning producing that foul sound from the throat. It sounded wet like two pieces of meat being squeezed. The noise followed him to his room when he finally decided to sleep, and so did I.

From the darkness of the doorway, I watched that beast in its den coughing without any end in sight. It would heave, play up the reality of its torment, and sit up to catch its breath.

I moved closer, opening the door with the tiniest squeak.

The creature rustled in its bedding and asked, “Hello?” broken between coughs.

I stood still and waited for what seemed like hours for the damned thing to relax and fall asleep.

I slid through the door’s crack and creeped across the carpet to him. Beside him, I examined its face for any signs of wakefulness. All seemed still until the chest rose, mouth opened, and eyes reflected the moonlight.

My hands were around its throat before the first cough could escape. More came from the throat, but I choked those down which produced some kind of guttural groaning until I had finally succeeded in destroying the beast.

Then and there I set top removing the disgusting thing from my home. I lived alone on a fairly sizeable piece of land and decided I would throw the carcass of this animal into the wheelbarrow and deposit it deep in the forest.

For several days I slept soundly within a pristine house devoid of the nonsense that once filled it. That is, until police paid me a visit.

Apparently, some old tenant of the house had not been seen by those who knew him in quite a while. I insisted that nobody but myself had ever lived in the house to which perplexed expressions were returned.

My throat became dry and a soft cough began setting in. I asked the officers if they would follow me to the kitchen so I could drink water while we talked.

They asked me about pictures in the kitchen that showed me standing next to a strange man. I told them I honestly had no memory of him and did not even know these photos existed.

I quickly downed a glass of water trying to scratch an itch in the back of my throat that was growing. It was uncomfortable. If I could reach into the back of my throat and scratch the very flesh that caused me pain, I would have.

My body gave into the coughs hoping that they would fix my plight. I began filling another cup with water, but my body shook so violently that the water would come out of it.

The officers asked me something, but I could not understand them through the pain and sound of my coughs. I nodded to them, and they began walking through my home.

I stumbled my way to the back porch hoping that the crisp air would soothe my burning throat. The air bit at whatever was in my throat and made it worse.

One of the officers came outside and sked me something I could not understand. I wanted to be alone so that I could cough hard like an animal and rid myself of this thing.

I ran from him into the forest. My body jerked from the coughing as I gagged on chunks of mucus finding their way into my mouth. The officer yelled after me but seemed to follow at a distance.

At length, I tripped over something and fell onto all fours heaving and coughing as though I may vomit.

I turned, looking at the officer who wore an expression of dread behind the pistol he aimed at me.

I looked further down at what had tripped me and found a sight most concerning. My father lay sprawled on the ground as if he had stretched out and died right then and there.

How did he get there?