Vomit

My stomach felt like a knot, dead centre on a 10 foot rope, that was being pulled by oxen on either side at all times.

This feeling started three days ago. First it was a sharp, needle-like feeling like a lingering jab that gradually became excruciating. I became tropically feverish, with vivid dreams of my family and my friends. I sweated thousands of beads onto my soft sheets and blankets, and then down the cracks of my leather sofa when I finally had enough strength to leave my bedroom.

On the third day I was completely immobilized. I remained bed-bound, sweat streaming from every pour of my body. I didn’t once move my head, and allowed my vision to slowly fade and blur. My centre vision was completely brown from staring at the dresser beside my bed; in my peripheral vision, the colours of my bedroom all ran and blurred into one other. Later on, all I could see was brown.

I never vomited once, and my bowel habits never changed. I drank plenty of fluids, and ate anything I could manage to keep down (which never accumulated to more than a slice or two of bread a day, or a small piece of fruit).

For the entire third day, however, it felt like there was a golf ball in my throat. For certain periods, I would sweat enormous amounts, and my vision would become focused again. The colours would separate and return to their origin. I would try to swallow whatever bile that had erupted into my chest, and that had sputtered into my throat. For a few seconds afterwards, my head would cool down rapidly, almost blissfully. But I was still near 102 F, so the sensation never lasted long.

For those brief seconds of vision, I would see that the light of day outside had changed. The last time it happened that day, I judged it to be about 8 or 8:30 in the evening. The pain in my stomach became blinding, the sweat breached my skin like light-pressure on a full, heavy sponge, and my vision instantly zapped back to normal, like forcefully stopping a thrumming spring. The blurring turned to focus so quickly that my sweat turned freezing cold for a few long seconds.

My stomach began to bubble for the first time since the pain. At first it was light, but then a minute later it felt like a rapid current over thousands of tiny pebbles. The golf-ball returned to my throat, and water spurted from my chest a few times, whilst I struggled to swallow it away. The bile began to burn, sending a hot inferno wriggling through my chest like thousands of fiery little millipedes.

My forehead quickly became warmer than it was, replicating the heat that was present in my chest. The water became lumpy, and had a bitter, murky taste to it. As each second started to drag on, the lumps became pungent, bigger, and bitterer. Sweat continued to pour from every pore, most noticeably from my forehead and scalp. The lumps seemed to all become one, and I began to wheeze as I struggled to breathe.

My vision was shaking, every buzzing colour distinct from each and one another in both my central and peripheral vision. Desperately trying not to choke, I garnered whatever ounce of strength I had to get out of bed. I fell out, whacking my head off the corner of my brown dresser and landing on my two knees and two palms. Wheezing, eyes watering, sweat dripping off my body and making little pattering sounds, and my knees and right-hand fingers were pressed into the rubbery linen floor. I stuck my left index finger into my throat, to try and heave the thick, choking vomit from out of my throat. I kept my index finger at the top of my throat for a couple of seconds, but the sickening, restrained feeling was already present, and my attempts to bring it up were futile.

I decided to try stick my finger down even further. Slowly, trying to hold my breath while doing so, I slowly moved it further down into my throat, closer to the gathering bile. I stopped as soon as my finger met the thick, blobby vomit. I moved both my head and neck back and forth as I rubbed the surface of the gooey bile with the tip of my finger.

Desperate and struggling to breathe, my buzzing, strongly-coloured vision became blurry once again, and the sweat all over my skin instantly became uncomfortably itchy and freezing. My head continued rocking back and forth in reflex, and no matter how deep I forced my finger into my throat, the vomit wouldn’t come out. Blind, and gasping for air, I jabbed my finger quickly and forcefully, burying it deep into the thick glob of vomit.

It bit my finger.