Round and flat, like a disc is...

Round and flat, like a disc is.  When swallowed, there is no reason why it wouldn’t lodge itself perfectly in the throat.  And that is precisely what should happen, if swallowed right.  What prevents suffocation is the hole in the center of the disc, one-tenth of the disc’s size.  When ingested, the clogging of the esophagus brings on the sensation of choking.  The hole, however, lets in just enough air to sustain the body " and the body, desperate to live, begins sucking frantically through the small space.

 

It is said that the once the body has inhaled enough oxygen to compensate for the nine-tenths of the blocked airway, the body has breathed its rite of passage, and the disc dissolves completely, instantly.  At that moment the body undergoes a first breath at full capacity, so relieving and absolute that the mind is overwhelmed with euphoria.  Each breath thereafter decreases in satisfaction and intensity until at last the body resumes its normal pattern and forgets the struggle and the reclamation.  

 

Rumors had begun circulating that many were being discovered pale, cold, and stiff, with shiny flat discs lodged still within their throats.  What mesmerized the witnesses was the glow said to float just inside the open jaws of the corpses.  They said that that in each glowing mouth was a baby soul, trapped in its escape through the tiny hole of shiny disc to the place that comes after; the folklore said that in each dead mouth there was an entire universe.

 

This was how she died.  She left on a playground in broad daylight with hundreds of people passing by.  We'd sat in the sun cross-legged, facing one another, smiling.  Her lips were unusually red.  The glare made her features look dark, defined, reminded me of something severe and lovely.  We held out two fingers, one each, and their tips blinked like tiny stars and it all seemed very easy to understand.  On the second count we placed them on our tongues, on the third count we swallowed.