“Have you spat your bubblegum out?” Louis' mother demanded as he sat himself down at the dinner table.


“Yes, ages ago,” he lied.

“Good boy. Remember, you must never swallow bubblegum, always spit it in the bin.”

Louis did remember, she had told him often enough. But he had never really understood why. Gum tasted nice, like strawberry ice cream and he was allowed to swallow that.

“Mum,” the eight year old quizzed, “why shouldn't you swallow bubblegum?”

“Because it'll get stuck in your throat and you won't be able to breathe properly.”

Louis' eyes glazed over as he heard her reasoning. He spun his spaghetti hoops on his fork and concentrated suddenly on his breathing, trying to establish whether it was different from before. Usually he wasn't even aware that he was breathing, it just kind of happened silently. But now all off a sudden it was much louder, more difficult. He had to concentrate on sucking air in and pushing it out again, as if it was somehow not natural.

“But as long as you spit it out, you won't have to worry about that,” she reassured him.

Louis' mother was not keen on her son chewing gum. It created a bad impression of a child. She didn't want him to become a teenager on a street corner, chewing and smoking and swearing at passers by. Besides, children were clumsy with food. They would talk with their mouths full and spit half-devoured pieces out.

Cleaning chewing gum from the furniture was a chore, sticky reminders would always be left to cling to her new skirt when she sat down. But more importantly she remembered the story of how the daughter of a friend of her mother's had nearly gagged on a piece, and had been rushed to hospital to have a tube pushed down her throat to force it into her digestive system.

He wanted to tell her then. Wanted to cry and tell her how he had been wrestling with Sam upstairs and how Sam had pinned him to the ground and held his nose. He hadn't meant to swallow his gum but he couldn't help it. Sam was older than him.

She would be angry. The amount of times she had told him not to swallow his gum and now he had done exactly that. They would have to go to the doctor and who knows what would happen then? Maybe Louis would need an operation in the hospital, and no-one would bring him presents because he had been naughty.

“What's the matter Louis? You've gone very pale. You did spit your bubblegum out, didn't you?”

“Yes mum,” he lied again. “I'm not really very hungry.” The boy prodded the centre of his egg with the fork, piercing it and causing the yolk to dribble out onto his plate.
“Don't be silly,” his mother scolded. “You haven't eaten since breakfast.”

Louis imagined that the sticky sweet had probably gone down his throat and got stuck at the end. There had been a man in the hospital where his Grandma died, with a tube coming out of his mouth to a big plastic bag, which would expand and contract like a balloon as he breathed. Mum had called him “the man with the plastic lung.” Louis supposed that the bubblegum stuck inside him was doing the same thing, but in reverse.

He would have to be careful. He knew that bubblegum bubbles popped when they got too big, so he would have to make sure that he didn't take any deep breaths. If his lung popped inside him it would stick to the end of his throat like when a big bubble bursts all over his face, and then he would definitely choke. But he was good at blowing bubbles, he always beat Sam at that.

“Come on son, stop playing with your food. Eat your dinner.”

But if he were to eat the food it would gather in his bubblegum lung and stretch it. He would really have problems breathing then, and if he ate too much then the weight would burst the bubble. Louis could not risk eating his spaghetti and eggs until he had decided how to get the gum out without suffocating himself.

“I'm not hungry mum. I don't feel very well.”
“What do you mean you don't feel very well? What's the matter with you then? You've been well enough to play with Sam all morning.”

“I feel sick.” Louis would have to stop telling all these lies. That was something else his mother told him never to do.

“Well you'd best go to bed then, son.” He never wanted to go to bed. That would catch him out and he would grudgingly eat his dinner.

“Yes, I think I will,” replied Louis. His mother was dumbstruck, and said nothing as he wandered out of the dining room.

The boy with the bubblegum lung sat on his bed, taking short and deliberate breaths and letting them out in the same manner. His chest was starting to ache and he thought that the balloon inside him was pushing against it as he took in air.

He wondered how long it would be before it burst and he wouldn't be able to breathe anymore, and considered going back downstairs and telling his mother that he had, in fact, swallowed his gum.

But then she would know that he had been lying as well. She would be angry twice with him, or twice as angry whichever was worse. She wouldn't accept that it was Sam's fault, however Louis explained it. But to be honest, she was going to be even angrier when she came into his room and found him dead on his bed. The doctors would know he had swallowed his gum because they would cut him open when he died, like they did to his Grandma, and they'd tell her. Then she would know that he had lied anyway, so really there was no point in not telling her.

Louis' mother pushed her foot down on the pedal of the kitchen bin and leant forward to empty Louis' untouched meal into it, and as the spaghetti and eggs hit the bottom of the bin, she noticed the absence of chewed gum.

Louis stood up and walked over to the mirror, being very careful not to make any jerky movements or bend over too far as he climbed down from his bed. He didn't want his bubblegum lung to compress under his own weight, so that the edges got stuck together and stopped him breathing straight away. He would die if he stopped breathing, like Grandma did. Mum had told him that Grandma died because she couldn't breathe anymore, and that that was what happened when you got old. But Louis wasn't old, he was only six and three quarters, nearly seven. His Grandma had been about ninety seven when she couldn't breathe anymore.

He opened his mouth wide and stretched his neck forward, opening his gullet as wide as he could force it, and peered down his throat in the mirror. He could see nothing past the dangling bit at the back of his mouth, so took the mirror down from the wall and placed it on the floor. Taking a careful breath he slowly raised himself into a handstand, his face directly over the mirror looking down into it. Again, he opened up his mouth and tried to see the gum inflated inside him. Still nothing visible past the back of his throat.

In the kitchen, his mother raised her head and tutted. “Naughty boy,” she said, as if talking to Louis through the ceiling.

But it was Sam's fault, after all, he thought to himself. Sam held him down on the floor and pinched his nose so he couldn't breathe properly. Just because he could make bigger bubbles than Sam, he had made him swallow it.

He was jealous of Louis because he was older than him and he couldn't blow bubbles like Louis could. But then again, Louis was the best at bubblegum bubbles. At school he was the playground champ. That was why he was still alive, because he could control the gum.

She walked upstairs silently. The mother wanted to catch the naughty little gum swallowing fibber. Outside his bedroom door she could hear nothing, so wrapped her fingers quietly around the handle and prepared to rush into his room, to catch him in the act of not being sick.

Louis pushed two fingers deep into his mouth, and wiggled the ends feeling for the end of his throat tubes. He could feel nothing save the slimy interior of his mouth, but the forceful fingers mad him gag and he snatched them away before he wretched. If he vomited the bubblegum lung would immediately contract.

It was no good. Louis couldn't reach it himself. The gum would remain inside him, expanding and contracting with the rhythm of his breathing until it burst and stopped him doing so anymore. That was not a problem whilst he was awake, he could control the gum, but sooner or later he would fall asleep, and his body would take over. He would have no control over it whilst unconscious.

As Louis sat back down on his bed he wondered if he would see his Grandma in Heaven.

His mother burst into the room, startling him. He looked up at her with glazed eyes. Louis wasn't actually crying, but his concern had caused his pupils to widen and the whites of his eyes to redden. She thought he looked frightened.

“Mum,” he began, “Grandma died because she couldn't breathe anymore, didn't she?”
She wondered why he was asking about her mother, that was three ago and they had rarely discussed her demise since. “Yes,” she responded, “that's right,” and sat down next to him on the bed.

“Did she swallow some bubblegum?”

“I don't believe so,” she answered her son. “Why do you ask?”
“Because that's what happens when you swallow bubblegum. You can't breathe properly and when it bursts inside you can't breathe at all. Like Grandma.”

She picked a piece of gum from the half chewed pack on the bedside table and popped it in her mouth. As she chewed she asked him again “Louis, you did spit out your bubblegum, didn't you?”

Now was the time for him to stop lying, he knew that. He must tell her that he had swallowed it and how it had become his bubblegum lung. She would be able to do something, get it out of him before it burst, so that he would be able to sleep comfortably without nightmares. She wouldn't be angry. She might even be pleased that he had told the truth.

“It was an accident mum, I didn't swallow it on purpose.” Louis continued to tell her everything as she listened intently. He told her about wrestling with Sam and his bubblegum lung and how he couldn't reach it and how it was making his chest hurt.

“Let me have a look,” she told him. “Maybe I'll be able to see it.

He opened his mouth as wide as it would go and she peered inside his throat.

“Yes, there it is,” she said, “I can just see it. Close your eyes and hold your breath.”

Louis did as he was told. He felt her fingers inside his mouth and knew that in a few seconds he would be safe.

When he opened his eyes his mother stood before him, a chewed sweet sitting in the palm of her hand. Louis was free of his bubblegum lung and his mother wasn't angry at all. He had been right, she was positively happy.

“Thanks mum,” said Louis, happy to be able to breathe normally again. His mother smiled at him as she pretended to continue chewing.

“Can I go and call for Sam, mum?” asked Louis. “I feel okay now?"

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