Unpublished short fiction

Almost every memory I have of Grandma Jo, going back to when I was a little boy, is of her choking. And I don’t mean that in a euphemistic way; I mean Grandma Jo was always choking—wheezing and struggling to breathe, turning blue in the face, waving her arms to get the family’s attention at Thanksgiving or at Carrabba’s Italian Grill, or whatever meal we were at. She choked so much that when I was four years old and finally old enough to understand what death was, I started having panic attacks at night, while I was trying to sleep, where I thought I was choking and dying, or, more often, that Grandma Jo was choking and nobody would be there to give her the Heimlich and she would turn bluer and bluer until her tongue bulged out of her mouth, and in my nightmares she would vomit the dirty blue out of her whole face until the whole floor was thick and shiny and poisoned with it, and it was a blue that suffocated you with your own fear so you were never safe around her. Grandma Jo choked at every meal and during teatime and snacks but she choked other times, too, like in high school when my basketball team almost made it to the 2A finals, and she came to the game and every time I looked over at my family in the stands, Grandma was choking
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2,482 words