Coma  by Don Bernal

   Night hovered generously over the street, peeking between buildings, resting over the road on both ends.  You don't dare look up, fearing an eternal blanket over your head, one that keeps out the vast emptiness.  Without that blanket you die, because beyond that blanket is oxygen-less, gravity-less stuff that would kill you.  The blanket above you protects, like most blankets do, but sometimes, in clear, windowless nights like these, where the black between the stars are brighter, more overwhelming; that when you go outside, out there in the open, where all the oxygen and gravity you want is kept in by the blanket above, your bones are struggling to carry more weight.  Even the air above you weighs you down, resting on you mind.  That's when you want to go.  To leave.  To lift that blanket a crack.  A tiny hole up there, just big enough for you to sneak through.  Just to get out.  No more blanket for you.  You just want to breathe.  Because its so heavy.  So much.  So inescapible.  Take a breath beyond the blanket.  A mouthful of nothing; no oxygen, no weight, no weight.  You gaze longingly, frightfully, restlestly into the still night sky, before it is too much for you.  The weight, collapsing over you.  Too much.  Too heavy.  No one could carry the whole blanket of sky.  Not even you.
 
     You lay down on the cold, unconcerned street.  A concrete bed to the dark blanket.  Crumpled like a fallen rag doll, you feel your lungs still forcing air through your body, but nothing else moves.  Not your agape mouth.  Not your unwavering eyes, frozen on a store window on a building.  Not your voided mind, held still, an engine caught in rest.  There is no more you.  There is your body, but that isn't you.  You're gone.  Your name is still there, but that belongs to your body.  But the personality behind that name, that's gone.  Everything about you that can be touched is still there, but you're still gone.  That stuff you can't touch isn't there anymore.
 Eventually a sound comes.  A light stops.  A touch on your body.  Then followed by more of each.  A person passes the vision of your eyes, there are ten more, all looking at the fallen rag doll on the street.  Someone speaks, falling into your ear, they say that your body is fine.  Your heart still beats, your lungs still push air, your eyes still see.  They take your body, unresistant, and put you away.  They say your body is light.  They don't know that it has been crushed by the sky.  The knowledge of the sky's weight set it free, and your body has suffered.  You weigh less because your mind is gone.  But you don't care.  About any and all of that.  You're already heading up, looking for that hole in the sky.