Hello All:
Bizzaro is a genre that delights in the absurd and revels in defying logic and normalcy. The best bizzaro stories take everyday situations and twist them into something grotesque or nonsensical, blending the mundane with the utterly strange in unpredictable ways. It’s about challenging the very fabric of reality and asking, “What if the world just… didn’t make sense?”
In this particular story, we’re going to explore what happens when the very air we breathe becomes a currency, and the concept of a "bad breath day" takes on a whole new, horrifying meaning.
Vile Breath
In the world of Aeolus, air was everything. Not just a necessity, but the only currency. Every breath you took was a credit to your account, and every breath you spent—whether talking, singing, or simply sighing—was a debit. The most valuable breaths were pure and clean, while breaths tainted by food or emotion were worth less, sometimes even drawing a penalty.
Wallace’s job was a testament to the system’s bizarre logic. He was a professional mourner, a "Sorrow Siphon." His clients paid him in high-quality breaths to come to their homes and sigh deeply, expelling their emotional waste into his account. Today's client was Mrs. Eleanor Higgins, a woman whose late husband had just been awarded a posthumous lifetime achievement award for his invention of the self-tying shoelace. Her grief was a rich, pungent sorrow, and Wallace knew it would be a profitable session.
He sat across from her in a meticulously clean parlor, and she began to cry. Her breaths, heavy with loss, left her mouth as a thick, gray vapor. Wallace took a deep, controlled breath and then let out a slow, mournful sigh. The air left his lungs as a swirling, purple mist, and he felt a satisfying thrum as the credits transferred to his account. A few more sighs, and he was a wealthy man. The work was emotionally taxing, but it paid the bills.
He left Mrs. Higgins's house feeling rich, the weight of her grief now a tangible asset in his digital wallet. On the way home, he decided to splurge. He stopped at a "Breathery," a high-end cafe where patrons could purchase expertly curated breaths. He ordered a “Mountain Breeze,” a breath harvested from the highest peaks, and inhaled it with a long, contented sigh. It was a perfect, pristine breath, and he felt his spirits lift.
But as he walked out, something felt wrong. A strange, metallic taste lingered in his mouth. He took a small, test breath, a hesitant puff of air, and watched in horror as it materialized. It was not the crisp, white sphere he expected, but a sickly, green-tinged lump that sputtered and fell to the ground with a wet splat. His stomach churned. It was a “Vile Breath,” the rarest and most feared affliction in Aeolus. It was a debt, a negative asset that would drain his account with every single breath he took. He had heard of such things—a rumor, a whisper—but he never thought it would happen to him.
He ran home, a frantic, desperate rhythm of gasping and gagging. His digital bank account was a sea of red, the numbers plummeting with every panicked inhale. He was hemorrhaging money. He tried to hold his breath, to trap the vile air in his lungs, but his body rebelled. His stomach gurgled and churned, and he could feel the rotten air festering inside him.
He slammed the door to his apartment and collapsed on the floor, panting. He had to get rid of it. But how? He couldn’t expel it without losing his fortune. He couldn’t keep it in without going insane. He looked at the window. The thought of letting a single vile breath escape into the city air, contaminating the lives of others, made him retch. He was a plague. A walking, breathing biohazard.
He crawled to the kitchen and grabbed a vacuum cleaner, a relic from a different age, a strange, forgotten machine designed for sucking things in. He looked at the tube, then at his own gaping mouth. The idea was absurd. It was grotesque. It was Bizzaro. He took a deep, shaky breath, the vile air a sickening weight in his lungs. He put the vacuum cleaner tube to his lips and flipped the switch.
The machine roared to life, a hungry, mechanical beast. He gagged as the foul air was sucked from his mouth, a putrid, gray mist spiraling into the vacuum bag. He felt a profound sense of relief as his lungs emptied, but it was short-lived. A new, terrifying sound filled the room. The vacuum cleaner, a machine designed to contain, was now groaning, struggling, and expanding. The gray mist had somehow become… alive. It pulsed, it throbbed, and then, with a wet pop, the vacuum bag burst, and the sentient, vile breath rushed out.
The breath, a seething, intelligent gas, now swirled around the room, forming a grotesque, cloud-like shape with two hateful red eyes. It pulsed toward him, its sickening odor making him dizzy. He had tried to contain the contamination, but he had only given it a body, a soul. It was a monster made of his own foul air, and it was angry.
The last thing Wallace saw before the vile cloud enveloped him was his digital bank account, the numbers finally settling to a zero. The last thing he felt was the horrible, suffocating emptiness of his own lungs, as the cloud inhaled, and a new, purer credit registered.
No comments:
Post a Comment