. . .

He is breathing through thick fabric, and of air redolent with the vapors of the hats. His chest heaves, rises and falls, but he takes in no air. He is struggling for breath like he is struggling for what is lost. His limbs begin to hum inside them, his vision prickles with the sparkling that is suffocation. He sucks it into him, airlessness like a great lump of starless night in his chest and in his thoughts; it is his body and not his mind that parses the situation first, that understands it, that overcomes him with its own cravings and drags him up onto hands and knees and hacks out a little more than a mouthful of dead hat.

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