Hoarse-play

Right now, I sound like a man approaching eighty years of age, suffering from emphysema and athsma, being strangled with a telephone cord. That is, of course, if I can get anything past my throat other than my ragged breath. My windpipe feels like there is a cactus growing inside it, sprinkled with pepper and set ablaze. I can whisper, so yeah.

I have a presentation tomorrow, something that has been bugging me for the past week or so. I don't quite know how that will turn out, seeing as how I now possess the vocal aptitude of a newborn kitten under a blanket. Whispering won't do. No, no, no.

I'm not sure how this came about, really. Today was spent pointing out the flaws in grammar and the fallacies in attributing joy to the short-lived lives of poultry, followed by a long, arduous journey home which was largely uneventful, save for a weird man who stared at other people in the hope that his glassy eyes would eject them from their seats. That and I discovered a little shop that still sells Vanilla Coke. Yay!

Then I got home, and like a parent who just knows his child is gone, or like Luke, I had a very bad feeling about this. My mom asked me to sample some of the things she baked on her day home, and when I opened my mouth to speak, my once-lovely voice had deserted me. The toneless murmur that I just barely managed to exhale conveyed little but my own shock at my new-found muteness. Dumbly shaking my head, I trudged up the stairs, shut my room door, and stared at my neck in the mirror, for reasons beyond my immediate comprehension.

No, no marks indicating surgery to remove my larynx or vocal chords.

How, how, how?

I have even resorted to suggesting protraying a mute person at the presentation tomorrow.