Building 28 “The Stillness of the Lungs”

“As time passes, I have tried to put it all behind me. I have been told that if you want to find peace, you have to first be willing to let the past go and simply focus on the present. I do that most of the time, but there are moments late at night when all of it comes back to me like a storm surge, and I am caught up, trying to surface.

Trying to get myself to breathe.

Breathing is an odd practice to have to do consciously. It is one of those things that the body automatically does, and so to wake up and realize that you stopped breathing altogether makes something so small seem like something so big.

Some days I sit and let myself let go of that voluntary action, let myself drift away and let my chest rest in stillness. It is in those moments that I truly start to lose myself, and though it is so much easier to not breathe, it is so much more dangerous. To fake living is a talent, but to not live, to let the appearances fall away and let myself sit in that place is to welcome oblivion.

Though so much of my time is spent out in public, most people don't seem to notice when I lose track of my breathing. But some of my closest friends notice, and I have to assure them that I am alright, that the urge has lessened with time, even if it has gotten worse.

I stopped going to doctors, since so much of it is based on blood pressure and listening to your lungs and heart. I haven't met any that I trust with it, with this state I am sitting in. A heartbeat is far harder to replicate than breathing, and I have considered getting a pacemaker just to keep up appearances.

I need to find ways to create believable excuses if I am going to really be able to pass along in the world.

My digestion still works somehow. It is merely my heart and lungs that seem to have lost their function. My blood still flows in my veins and my muscles still ache when I work them too hard. But the heart and lungs simply have lost the need to function, and on more days than I would care to admit, I lose the need to function too.

Laying in my bed, the shutters closed and the drapes drawn, I stare up at the ceiling for what feels like hours at a time, watching the fan spin on and on but hardly feeling the sensations it brings upon my skin. I have to drag my nails across my flesh, sit in ice water some days just to feel anything.

I try to limit my time outside lately. When I am outside, I need to breathe, and for the last two weeks my breathing cases me to cough and hack; dry, heavy, wracking fits that tend to result in me coughing something up. I sent one of the bigger pieces to a lab, run by one of my close friends. It was lung tissue.

It had been dead for weeks.

I am writing to you directly. I don't think you will understand or hear me if I were to try some other way. Even if I met you in person, it is still hard to understand even with the smell of rot lingering on my breath.

It is all coming to an end. I am not the only one with symptoms like these, and there is no science to explain this away. Some people have started losing livers and kidneys, but the lungs and hearts are by far the most common. All of theses people, people like me, have no explanation for what is happening to us.

When the choice comes to you, and it will, please don't try and resist. It won't stop until you stop fighting. Until you accept things as they are.

Only then will the rot stop.

Only then will I stop losing fingers and toes and teeth.

Only then will things improve.

When it all ends, there will be nothing left to rot.

There will be nothing left.

Like a still heartbeat or lungs that won't breathe. It won't be a mercy or even an act of conscious will. By then it will be less a call to action and more a calling. A way to make sure the dead stay dead.”

I got this sent to me as a letter that was sent to my house. The locals...people like me tend to still write letters even though there are quicker ways. I had to work up the nerve to write them back, though I hope this won't seem to act as a sort of call to action for the weird here.

I said that I would meet with them, but I am not sure when I am willing to make that happen, or even why I think I should. There is a pandemic still going on, and meeting with anyone, especially a stranger, is risky.

But their tale/story is simply too close to my fears for me to ignore. For months (I am not proud to admit it but here we are) I have been worrying about that story my uncle told me about, the one about the deer that they shot that seemed to have been dead for weeks. The stories about that old farm that I shared with you recently seem to share a similar theme.

Maybe I am just being overly curious, but wouldn't you be? If what they say is true, then maybe it is all connected.

Maybe none of it is connected.

I can't know for sure, but they contacted me directly, as others have in the past. I need to know why. I need to understand what it is that keeps making people reach out to me.

Maybe it isn't safe, but what should I do? There aren't experts in this field. There aren't really any people who could possibly shed some light on this. Whatever is occurring, it is happening here on Wellington Street. If that is the case, then this place I have called home for most of my life has the answers.

And maybe, if I know what questions to ask, I can seek out the answers through the people who will likely have the best idea.

Namely my work.

The museum houses records of strange occurrences here.

I can only hope they would be willing to help me seek out what may well be the ravings of eccentric uncles and the mad.

We will see.

All my love. Please stay safe.