Tommy Carpenter

He stared as the life was siphoned out of him. From where he stood he could feel the world turning about him, using him as an axis for it's own purposes. That's how it had always been. Tommy Carpenter wasn't the fighting type.

Until he felt the urge to breathe. Churning up from the very pit of his stomach, the need to suck in sweet oxygen took his body forward towards the air in front of him. His heart rang in his ears as the plastic formed its seal around his mouth; the condensation took shelter around the bridge of his slight nose, behind his round ears, and inside the dark mediterranean circles under his brown eyes. If he had hair, it would have been drenched with sweat, but as it was, his pale head just glistened with moisture and regret.

His mind clashed with his body. There was nothing else outside of these two unimaginably powerful titans fighting for dominance over him. The veins in his arms pulsed, muscles contracted, eyes blurred, lungs burned, toes gripped, and legs gave out. He didn't feel his body hit the floor, he couldn't feel the gray-blue rug rub against his pale skin, all there was was the urge to breathe, the fear of breathing, and the plastic bag wrapped around his shimmering pale head.

His fingertips found the area where his open mouth should have been and began their desperate assault. Digging, tearing, ripping. His hands flew to the back of his head and grasped the edge of the plastic as his vision began going black. His muscles ached. His hands moved on their own around his skull until finally the plastic peeled off, the air filled his lungs and then left in a coughing fit.

He remained on the floor on all fours breathing for a full minute as the tears ran down his red cheeks to join the pool of sweat and saliva collected on the gray-blue rug of his bedroom. For the rest of the night, he wept like a lost child.