Breathing

Breathing

Breathing. Billy did this constantly. Hell - ever since he could remember he’d been doing it. Flapping his lungs about – whiffing at this and that. If you could count on Billy doing any one thing, it was breathing.

To put it bluntly, Billy thought he would continue to breath for the rest of his natural born life (It was so very dear to him).

That filthy liar.

    On the seventh of December 1941, Billy died. Reports didn’t specify whether he had drowned during the sinking or suffocated from the fumes, but in either case, one thing was for certain. Billy had abandoned a childhood occupation only moments before his death. Billy was a fake.

There were others like him, of course. People who had once openly professed their wanting to breath only to later give it up - cold turkey. Many were from the Navy. It was a disturbing trend.

“How dare they?” the breathe-lovers would cry, flapping their air bags this way and that, “And to think, seconds before death?”
Frauds, they called them, fakers – because, as everybody knew, near death experiences always showed a man’s true colors. And oh, did they show.

    Stuart didn't understand it either…

    Stuart was a staunch breathe lover. He sniffed and he bellowed and he panted like the best of them, respiring just for the sake of it. He flaunted his huff and he flaunted his puff and he didn’t give a damn about who knew, because nobody did it better. Deep gusts flowed from his guts – like porridge.

    He had found himself at a recruiting station ten miles South of Pewter and seemed to rather like the idea. The walls were choked with posters of thick, square jaws.

“I’m Joe,” one spoke to him, “and I’m smiling.”

The smiling man gazed triumphantly at the ceiling.

Overhead supertitles suggested that, besides breathing, his heart yearned for war bonds and blowing up Japanese people - but Stuart wasn’t convinced. He seemed too happy. Stuart smiled. Stuart was happy, too, but serious. He curled his brow prudently. It was time to do what the smiling man had to do.

Buy war bonds and win the war the American way. By winning.

Soon a recruiting officer waltzed from his office to Stuart’s feet (he was a habitual breather, too, Stuart could tell).

Next they were both in chairs – Stuart facing the smiling man, now animated. The door was closed.

Words were spoken, documents were revealed. Stuart spied the pen of manhood resting neatly in its well. Hell yes, it was.

He signed. Quickly.

And before he could even feel any manlier, the papers were whisked away to a pile of smudged signatures and other man hoods and he was sent on his way to boot camp with a misty smile and a handshake. – Stuart the breather was on his way, and he smiled. And the smiling, breathing men smiled back.