Stuff I have written for school.

Basically this person is going to die?

It begins as a minor inconvenience.

Every so often, when she is alone, she hears

a low thumping sound which cannot

be footsteps as it is too rhythmical,

too steady. But, as the days grow longer, and

the air becomes warmer and heavier with

water vapour she hears it pounding, and it is

only in July when she realises what it is.

She is outside, it is evening and midges

swarm around her as if she is carrion and she

does not even try to swat them and the night air is warm,

when she hears it again; louder than ever, louder,

louder, feels blood rush through veins, flood through

arteries, feels chordae tendineae strain and

papillary muscles contract as they struggle to

hold it back, and the atrioventricular valves

slam shut like doors with a resounding thump,

and the blood accelerates and rushes through aortic

and pulmonic valves and they too close with a thump which

rattles through her skull.

And she holds her hands over her ears to try

and shut out that horrid pounding, pounding, pounding

in her skull, behind her eyes, pounding

which leaves her with shaky breath and too warm and

her mouth dry, and when she tries to take small sips

from a glass of water her hands tremble and it

falls to the floor and shatters and still there

is that terrible, incessant pounding, pounding.

It is as if she is hyper-aware, as if her senses are

overloaded, as if she can hear her heartbeat, except

she can. She has crouched down, her hands are

pressed into the soil like it can support her, like

it can drown out the thumping that she does not just hear,

the thumping vibrating though every bone in her body, and

as she fees each and every one of the fibres that

make up the grass she has tangled her fingers in

she closes her eyes as light, dark, movement, anything

that she sees causes her head to spin, she is

sinking under the waves as anger and confusion collide,

and her heartbeat quickens, hammering out a

desperate tattoo, beating frantic.