New Writing Challenge - I Dare You!

[scheherazade_79]

So here it is -

Write about an occasion when you were taken ill in a public place.

It needn't be based on reality, but vivid description is paramount.

 

[scheherazade_79]

The Episode at the Posh Restaurant in Barcelona


I was already on my third glass of sangria when the food began to arrive in dribs and drabs. Sommer, my peroxide blonde Californian friend and I had ordered the seafood tapas, which comprised no fewer than twenty separate dishes. The first four to be delivered all contained either tuna or prawns in a glutinous mayonnaise base. We were hungry and devoured them in next to no time, stacking the empty bowls in order to hasten the waiter’s return. When the second batch was placed before us, I was disappointed to see it consisted of much the same fare. Once again, we worked our way through it in the belief that eventually we’d be offered a little salad or some fries to balance it out. But it proved to be in vain.

By the time the fourth selection of dishes arrived, I was feeling nauseous to the hilt. There are only so many variations on a theme of fish and mayonnaise that a stomach can take, and I’d reached that point quite a while ago. As the minutes dragged on, we picked at the food with a growing despair. I noticed Sommer crumbling a breadstick onto her plate and copied her, in the hope that it would break the monotony of the meal. But all it really did was stick in my throat, resulting in a fit of coughing that threatened to bring it all back up.

The sangria certainly didn’t help matters. I’ve never been the kind of person who enjoys getting drunk over dinner. While some might claim that a stomach full of alcohol aids digestion, I’ve always found that it blunts my appetite and makes me feel sick as a dog. After a while, my entire body began to protest and I was forced to push both plate and glass away from me.

When the fifth and final selection of tapas arrived, my stomach gave an ungainly lurch, forcing a belch of protest from its depths. A nearby couple looked up, startled by the noise, and I felt a sharp kick from underneath the table.
“KATE!”
“I need to go for a walk…” I muttered, my voice suddenly thick with the effort of keeping my dinner inside me. My discomfort must have been obvious, because for once there wasn’t a murmur of protest from Sommer.

By now the world was starting to spin, and I groped my way through the chairs and tables like a blind woman possessed. When I reached the low wall at the edge of the premises I swung my body over it and headed for the sea. I’d hoped that the cool air would do me some good, but instead the rippling of the waves sent me whirling into a deeper gastronomic crisis.

There were people all around me. In fact, most of the other outdoor diners had now stopped to watch in concern. I tottered away as far as possible, but with every step I took was assaulted by a new onslaught of seafood smells. It was getting too much to bear.

No sooner had I reached the bay’s perimeter fence, I knew that I was fighting a lost cause. The blood vessels were pounding in my head, and a cold sweat was coating my brow. I tried not to think about it, but with the saliva building up inside my mouth and my stomach on rinse cycle, it was virtually impossible. With one sharp retch, everything that had been put into my body suddenly left it.

 

[ChilledVodkaIV]

Blood. No blood. That's ok. *cough* Blood. Not ok.

Foetal. 911. Not 911, 999. No, 911 is ok they still put you through.

"Pillow please." Coat, jumper, anything, let me rest my head. Pillow? "Thankyou." Where the hell did you get a pillow?

Grind.Foetal.Cramp.*cough*No blood, not quite so bad.

*Cough* More blood. GodJesusChrist. Scrunchfoetal.

"Can you move back please. You can gawk from over there just as easily. FUCKING MOVE BACK."

Thank fuck for that. Glad I'm not a claustrophobe. claustro·phobe n. [Latin claustrum, enclosed place; see cloister + -phobia.] Ohfuckinghellshitfuck.nnnnnn.

"Ok mate. I've called an ambulance. Do you know what it is? Can you tell me where it hurts?"

*cough* more blood. This isn't good. At least it's easing a bit. "Yeh. It's..nnnn"

fuckingfuckingshitfuckbastard.

"You're coughing blood mate." tell me something I don't fucking know already

"Cominginwaves... Might.. be an.. ulce....nnnnnn" black

 

[scheherazade_79]

I like it. Very gritty. Is it a true story, CV4?

 

[ChilledVodkaIV]

 

[Quiet_Cool]

It was surreal. I guess that's the best word to describe it. In all the action movies I'd seen, I couldn't think of one, not a single scene in one to be truthful, that could have prepared me. The sound came second somehow, or maybe it came first but didn't register until after. Either could have been the case.
The woman was a little younger than me, maybe twenty-four, or twenty-five. With blonde hair that framed her face and the small shadows of bangs hanging onto her brow. Pretty blue eyes below them that reminded me of the sky on a clearer afternoon than this one. A summer afternoon, when the outer garments we wore now to stay warm would have been locked away in closets and trunks for months yet, and we might have met on the beach instead of here in the park by the old statue of William Shakespeare, pearched at top the fountain. The air was chilly, and she hugged the cardigan tighter over her, but didn't complain. We had been talking for nearly a half hour, two strangers who'd decided they enjoyed each other's company. And I'd glanced her over more than once. Relaxed fit blue jeans and a cardigan, and what beneath? Love handles perhaps? And what did it matter? She was pretty, and nice, and smiled in a way that made you glad you were there to see it.
Half and hour, and then she asked.
Did I have a girlfriend?
"No," I replied, suddenly too aware of what was going on around me. I hadn't expected her to ask. I'd thought I would be the one to begin that line of questioning. And she smiled, blushing and glanced down. She had to go, she explained. It was getting on in the day, and she and a friend (just a friend, she'd explained) had plans for later. I smiled, and suggested that we make our own plans for another day then, so we can continue to talk.
She blushed again and stood, nodding. Saying yes a couple times and blushng more. I smiled, went to stand, debating diercely in my head whether to hug her, or kiss her, or to merely shake he hand. What was appropriate in such an instance?
But I didn't stand up in time, luckily I'd think later, but not then. Then I was watching, seeing (and not hearing).
She was smiling, blushing, then in the center of her chest, a spot the size of a quarter at most if any bigger than a dime, erupted in a sudden burst of blood and she jerked backward, her expression not changing. Then the sound came, a sharp crack from far off. I didn't notice in which direction, hardly even knew what I'd heard. She jerked back again, another eruption souting forth from her neck and she fell backward following this one, her arm trailing out above her like the tail of a kite as the air beneath it died down and left it sinking to the ground. SHe settled down witha soft thud, her head actually bouncing some on the soft grass, and lay still. I crept closer, turned her face to mine and saw her lips twitch, eyes still open, staring but not recognizing. She inhaled in heavy, choked breaths, blood bubbling out the corners of her mouth and her ostrils as she exhaled. Blood pooled, not squirting or bubbling, but simply seeming to appear, on her chest in steady rhythm with her heart, darkening the blue fabric as it spilled down her sides. Pooling up, spilling, then seeming to grow still,then pooling up from underneath again, reminding me, in some distant part of my brain that was still working on a rational level (a frighteningly rational one at that), of the way way flows upward into a toilet after flushing it.
I glanced around, trying to make heads or tails of what to do next. People had been everywhere here, but now most of them were gone. no, wait. They were going. Running away, looking back over their heads at something behind me, and high in the air.
The gunman I thought, calmly. Someone's killing people. And he's that way, somewhere behind me.
People wee shouting, and a woman was waving toward me, asking me something. She was only three or four yards away, and yelling, but I couldn't make out her words, couldn't get my mind to focus on them.
I looked back to the girl on the ground. She was still staring, the blood on her lips and chest was still wet, but she didn't inhale. Blood didn't pool up on her chest now. How long had I been kneeling there since the first shot was fired? I wasn't sure. But everything had changed in that short period of time.
The girl who'd been yelling at me was there then, next to me, grabbing my shirt. At first, I thought she was trying to tear it off of me, like some odd thief who desperately needed clothing, then I realized she was trying to get me to move, to run with her.
I didn't move at first, was carefully lowering the dead girl, whom I hadn't realized I'd lifted from the ground, back down to it again.
Then I moved with her, letting her lead the way. As we ran, her in front, still pulling on the sweatshirt as though I'd stop and sit down if she didn't, and me behind her, things began to slow down more, somehow. People's faces seemed to freeze in a singular expression, horror mostly, or confusion. Some had stopped altogether, hiding behind cars or standing out in the open, just watching. I could hear more shots being fired, and could hear the sounds of sirens approaching.
The police were here, maybe that's why those people felt safe enough to just watch. Or maybe they were simply in shock, like I realized later I had been. Had it not been for the girl who'd grabbed me (she'd tell me her anme several times over the next weeks, but I'd never remember it) I would still have been sitting on the grass near the fountain, holding the dead girl, possibly waiting for her to decide to start breathing again.
She drug me behind a small brick wall, and as I dropped to the ground, I banged my knee on the last of the concrete steps and smacked my head accordingly on the metal rail built into the brick wall. We settled there, sitting back against the brick, the shooter somewhere distant on the other side of it. The latter didn't matter. By now, the shooting had stopped. Why I wasn't sure, but it had. I'd later find out the marksman had taken his own life before authorities had even reached him.
The girl reached over and pulled herself against me, hiding her face in my shoulder and crying into the thick fabric of my sweatshirt. I leaned there, breathing deeply, the world around me spinning some. My head was light, everything was distant.
After a moment or two (or a lifetime, for all I knew) my stomach turned, a feeling I hadn't experienced so strongly but once in my life, when I was seven and had been given leave to ride a rollercoaster I wasn't ready for. The world beneath had me had been gone in an instant, and in the same instant, I was too sick not to vomit.
Except this time, when I leaned ot one side (away from the girl, luckily enough) the muscles in my stomach clenched and heaved, the back of my throat overcome with the coating for what was to come. I wretched twice there, not managing a single drop of anything. My stomach ached, the pressure from inside, causing a sudden pain to erupt into my chest. Then, on the third involuntary stomach spasm, my stomach finally gave in and lt loose a mixture mostly of water, which I'd been drinking all day after a night of too much alcohol and a hangover that fought hard to survive the morning. Mixed in with it, making the mixture red and yellow, but not a blend of the two, were sauce from the pizza I'd had for lunch and the mountain dew I'd had to wash it down with, not to mention the small chunks of red that somehow were still in fair sixes pieces (Swedish fish, my favorite in-class snack) and soggy chunks of pizza dough.
I leaned back, still sick, noting the girl behind me then, now with her face hidden in the fabric covering my shoulderblade, and waited for another heave, one my still aching chest and stomach hoped would be another successful one. None came, but that sick feeling remained.
After a minute or so, I leaned back and reached over to the girl, pulling her close and holding onto her until someone came to tell us it was safe to come out.

Okay,it was morbid and long, expecially considering the actual throwing up was a minor part.

Q_C

 

[scheherazade_79]

So much blood and gore...

Wow! I think I created a monster thread!

 

[ChilledVodkaIV]

Enjoy

 

[TheeGoatPig]

Oh, I thought Zade was back again