WARNING: Road Closed A-Head

It seems simple enough: cook rice, add butter, sugar, fork; scoop into mouth, chew, swallow.

It’s a thing so practiced that she lends it no thought as she shovels the first bite. It sticks. Searing pain turns her chest into a heart-explosion...in spite of the fact that she knows it isn’t her heart. Struggling for air, to stay upright, she grabs desperately for the sink. Her world fades into black.

Esophageal spasms wrack her form as seeming volcanic fluid and rice flow out her mouth, her nostrils, down gasping lips into the drain and, grateful for it—she breathes.