Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

“Is it not good?” Elise asked.

“No, I’m just not feeling great,” Sean said.

Andrew chewed on the meat and softened carrots. The flavor wasn’t the best, but it was better than some other recent soups. It seemed to warm his whole body and tingle in his throat and chest. He cleared his throat and took another bite, but the tingle returned. He cleared it again.

“Something wrong, buddy?” Michael asked with a smile. “It’s kind of insulting to groan about the food, especially when you’re the one who made it.”

Andrew smiled and swallowed. The tingle intensified. A knot of phlegm filled his throat, and he forced it down. A dizziness rose to the top of his head and settled into his body in waves. He coughed up a gob of snot into his sleeve and set the bowl down on the coffee table. He ripped another forceful cough, but when he tried to recover, the action felt strange, like he was trying to breathe through a straw.

He swallowed again just in time for his windpipe to seal shut.

ANDREW TIPPED FORWARD, planting one hand on the coffee table before his body collapsed onto it. The spoons and bowls rattled. Hot broth shot over the edges of the bowls. Everyone jumped, startled. It took a few seconds for the stimuli to register. Andrew dropped to the ground, grasping at his throat and rubbing it. He rolled onto his stomach, his legs bending and straightening in a struggle.

“What’s going on?” Kelly shouted.

Michael shot out of his seat and tossed his bowl onto the coffee table, the bowl sliding across the wood and wobbling to a stop. He dropped to his knees and turned Andrew around, holding him. Andrew’s eyes expanded wide, never blinking. His mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled out of water, and he held his hand over his Adam’s Apple.

“He’s choking,” Michael said.

The room watched in shocked silence. Gurgling sounds rumbled in his throat and spit dripped from his lips. Elise uncovered her mouth and yelled, “Do the Heimlich Maneuver.”

Michael grunted and pulled the boy against himself, oriented a fist onto his diaphragm, and thrust it into his abdomen. The boy groaned and waved for Michael to stop. Michael thrust again.

Sean stood rigid and pulled his son’s face into his chest so he wouldn’t see what was happening. “Take him,” he yelled, pointing to Kelly. She stared at him, her mouth open. “Take him out of here!”

She rushed over to Aidan, picked him up, and shielded his eyes with her hand. They disappeared into the kitchen.

Andrew grabbed at his throat and sank his nails into his skin, clawing into it as if he could make a hole to breathe. Blood trickled at first and then poured. Michael kept doing the maneuver, but Andrew thrashed, and Michael let go to avoid being head-butted in the face.

“Do something,” Elise shouted at her husband.

Sean seemed stiff, paralyzed. His jaw was locked, and the muscles in his cheeks pulsed. He never stopped looking at Andrew. His chest scarcely rose or fell. “I don’t know—”

“Help him,” she yelled.

“What am I going to do?”

“A knife.” Elise sprinted toward the kitchen.

Michael tried to pick up Andrew again, to keep the maneuver going, but Andrew rolled to the side and slipped his grasp. Andrew’s thrashing slowed. His fingers were wet with blood and his neck was scratched in bloody strips like he had been whipped. His chest jumped, and his body convulsed, his eyes never closing—just staring, staring up at him for relief that would not come. After a few more jerking motions, the boy grunted, grasping for nothing in particular. His head dropped back against the floor and his body became still.

Elise came into the room, a knife in hand, and stopped midway. The room hung with silence as the shock sunk in. The boy stared at the ceiling, one eye wide open and the other half-closed. His limbs were loose and unmoving. “Holy shit,” Michael said, standing and lacing his fingers around the back of his head.

Elise took in a rapid succession of breaths while covering her mouth. Tears ran down her cheeks and between her fingers. She set the knife, shaking in her hand, on the coffee table. She reached her other arm behind herself without looking, searching for a place to sit. When her hand met a cushion, she lowered herself onto it. “Is he dead?”

Michael reached out and pressed his fingers onto Andrew’s bloody neck and felt for a pulse. Nothing. He nodded and sat on the backs of his legs. “There wasn’t anything in there big enough to choke on,” he said.

“It could have been a big chunk of meat,” Sean said.

Elise said, “The Heimlich should have worked.”

“Holy shit,” Michael said, wiping his bloodied fingers on a nearby napkin. “He’s really dead.” The kid wasn’t even eighteen, and he was laying on the floor in front of him. No more life. No more dreams. There was nothing in his eyes but a cold, distant stare. He closed the kid’s eyelids and bowed his head. “What just happened?”

Sean hadn’t moved a muscle. “Maybe he was allergic to something.”

Elise looked beside herself. “I didn’t put anything new in the soup.”

“At all?” Michael said.

“I’ve made the same soup half a dozen times by now.”

Michael caught Sean’s eyes, but Sean looked away. The sudden shock gave way to an emerging boiling in Michael’s chest. He had no evidence, and he couldn’t prove it, but a feeling so powerful he couldn’t deny struck him in the gut. “Sean.” Sean looked back at him and blinked a couple times. Then he knew. Shit. The kid was dead, and it was all his doing. “Did you—?” Michael said.

Sean looked confused.

But Michael knew better. “Sean,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t try to back out of this.”

“Back out of what?”

“How did you—? Why?”

Sean shook his head. “Will you calm down for a second?”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“It was. Holy shit. It was you.”

“What was me?” he yelled.

Elise jumped up from the couch and put her hands out toward Michael. “Stop it.”

Michael shot a look over to his sister. “Stop it? What do you think just happened here?”

She waved both of her hands. “Whoa, let’s back up.”

“Think about it. He’s always hated the kid.”

“Are we really having this discussion right now?” Sean said.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Stop, Mike,” Elise said.

“Couldn’t stand that Molly actually loved him? And that he got to stay in your house?”

“Come on.”

“You thought you’d make things even.”

Elise shouted, “Michael, stop it!”

Michael turned and paced, rubbing his scalp with his palm. He pointed at the body. “Elise, for God’s sake, the kid’s dead.”

“We don’t know what happened,” she said, crying.

“Yes, we do. The one day that Sean serves the food, someone eats it and dies. How does that not register with you?” His hands returned to his head. “Ah, shit,” he said. “No, no. Shit.”

“I didn’t cook the soup, Michael,” Sean said.

“Just because I can’t explain it, doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”

“Listen to yourself.”

“You must have,” he pointed at the bowls, “you must have put it in the bowls or something. You must have—” Michael froze, his finger pointing at Andrew’s bowl, his thoughts lingering there. Like the teeth of a gear catching into place, the thought clicked in his brain. He covered his mouth and rubbed his lips. “You put it in the bowl.”