Stuart Cavet
Listen to Stuart read his story
The purpose of the heavy metal cylinder beside his bed is perfectly plain at first. But it yields nothing but shards of rust and iron filings. You can hear him helplessly sucking them down, hear them strafing the soft tissue of his mouth and throat, loading his lungs with shrapnel and fine ferrous scurf. It’s a poor exchange. For with each passing day the cylinder boasts of holding more oxygen than the day before, its gauge giving an ever more ironic and emphatically angled smile, like a malevolent emoticon. It seems to siphon every airway, extort every last bronchiole and blood cell, suck out whatever exists in those minute honeycombed spaces within his bones. With each of his exhalations, the cylinder puffs itself up and swells contentedly, sheds its sombre ferriferous demeanour, assumes an air of levity and contemplates its release, either, it fancies, by floating right out of the window to go commune with the birds or by bouncing straight out of the room arm in arm with the nurse.
Stuart Cavet lives in London. His flash has been placed or listed in numerous competitions. His debut novel, Something Kind Of Strange, is published by Amazon.
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Read more from Stuart:
Free Flash Fiction (Comp. 30) – ‘Sap‘
TRASH CAT LIT 