Mircea Pricjan

I'm hot. I'm sweating. I can feel a drop of sweat making its way from the temple to the left corner of my mouth. I try not to breathe too much. Although it's difficult. My heart beats so fast and my lungs seem to scream so greedily for air, that breath regularization is now perhaps the most tormenting exercise. But I have to do it. I have to breathe more rarely. Not only because this way the temperature would get lower, but also because this would set me at ease. And ease is what I crave for. And ease is what seems to be the most difficult thing to achieve.

My heart stopped. And so did the breathing. I think I heard something. Maybe it's only my imagination. I hope so. Look, slow, but steady, the heart beatings start again, more and more frequent. Breathing I don't let go for now. Because it I can control. The heart, on the other hand, I can't. For a fraction of a second I think I heard a scratching at the door. That kind of sound a woman makes when caressing a smooth surface with her nails. A sound neither acute, nor muffled, a sound at the border of audibility - frightening.

I would wipe my forehead, but I can't move. One of my hands went numb under my head and the other I don't even feel. It might be somewhere lower, keeping a grip on the blanket. No thread of air enters here, under the blanket. It's made of heavy, beaten by usage wadding linen - I think I'm using it since I was fifteen - and, if you'd want, you could happily use it as a rain tarpaulin. Neither rain nor air has any way of getting through it. And this is what worries me. What'll happen when there won't be enough oxygen? What am I going to do? I would have to set the blanket aside. To expose myself! No, never. Better die hear of asphyxia. No way setting the blanket aside.

A drop of sweat has entered in my eye. Maybe I'll go blind. Maybe...