It’s almost pointless, useless to explain asphyxiation. The imaginary hands are clammy and wet against your damp neck. Cold inexistent fingers lightly press upon your flesh, marking you wtih their fingerprints. The sensation changes from one second to the other, and you become conscious of every blink, or of every drop of rain falling from the rainstorm outside your window. Attention is distracting, but nothing can tear you away from your imagination, which is almost a reality, because you swear there are hands gripping your neck.
Then, it just comes. But it comes slowly. It makes its entrance like a shy debutante walking the red carpet. Asphyxiation dances with a gentle smile, with the laziness of wax slithering down a candle, like a transparent snake turning opaque when cooled, or with the halo of a nebulla and supernova remnants. That is why you choke. Suddenly, you become conscious of every breath you draw from your lungs, to your nose, inhale exhale, release, suck in, blow out. Thus breathing becomes a chore, and not an effortless function. Vision of plants refusing oxidation-reduction reactions, the death of photosynthesis. The Death, you could say, of Breathing. Vision of every living thing refusing to exhale in order to prevent you from inhaling. Paranoia sets, and it becomes more complex to breathe.
And then it hits you : I’m choking, you realise sadly, Im choking. And you rush out into the night, imitating the sound of sobs, but you aren’t crying because there aren’t any tears : just dryness, just emptiness, just confusion, questions, and the search for somekind of elucidation. A mean biological trick.
When choking, you are at science’s apogee; the farthest distance from the center of the earth.
