Life in the Sneeze Center

[Kiaory]

Hello everyone. This is my first time posting a story (nearly my first time posting on the forum, really), so any feed back/constructive criticism/questions/etc. are very much appreciated. Creative writing is a skill I’m trying to improve at, so I’d love to hear anything you have to say.

Credit for the basic concept behind this story goes to Blah!?, who first posted it here (It’s the first concept discussed). I would also like to give credit to Blah!? for his excellent story Immediate Expulsion, which I stole the main character from was a major source of inspiration. 

 

Now, without further ado…

 

—Part One —

 

The light was dim inside the Sneeze Center. Half the bank of florescent lights had been turned out. It was late, and Pollen had already turned in of the evening, leaving Dust and Colds stuck manning the center until Melody went to sleep. Dust had just finished her second crossword puzzle, and she was officially bored out of her skull. Heaving a huge sigh, she looked around the Sneeze Center one more time for something, anything, to catch her interest. Up on the main screen was the view from Melody’s eyes, currently showing her reflection is the mirror as she brushed her teeth before bed. With the sped-up time in the Sneeze Center, from Dust’s perspective the entire process would take over twenty minutes. It was the same thing they saw every night, and Dust desperately wished that something would happen to break the monotony. If something would just do her the immense favor of getting up Melody’s nose, then at least she might have something to do. She cocked her head to one side as a thought struck her. Now there was an idea…

Dust half turned in her chair and looked over at the other personification in the room. “Hey Colds, wanna make Melody sneeze toothpaste all over the mirror?”

Colds looked up from her video game device, and the stream of dings and tinny sound effects filling the air trailed off. She frowned.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that,” Colds said warily “You’re only supposed to make her sneeze if she gets dust up her nose.”

Dust rolled her eyes “I’m within my rights. There’s tons of dust on top of the medicine cabinet, her mother hasn’t cleaned up there in months. Besides, the only one who cares about those stupid regulations is Pollen.” She paused, considering how to get the other personification on her side.

 “C’mooooon Colds, I’ll even let you do the snot.”

Colds’ face screwed up in an agony of indecision for a moment, then relaxed. “OK!” she agreed, succumbing to the temptation to exercise her best talent. “I’m not sure how much mucus I’ll be able to make before she finishes brushing, but I’ll do my best.”

 

Colds got up from her beanbag chair and walked over to the control panel, smiling cheerfully. Truth be told, she had been nearly as bored as Dust, although she wouldn’t have dared to stir up mischief on her own. Her misgivings forgotten, she began to work.

As Cold’s fingers danced over the controls, The millions of square millimeters of mucous membranes hidden away inside Melody’s small, upturned nose oozed to life and began working flat-out to produce clear, sticky mucous. 

As Melody’s nose began to slowly fill, Dust permitted herself a small pang of an old, familiar jealousy. Try as she might, She would ever be as good as Colds at getting Melody’s nose well and truly stopped up. They all had their special talents, she knew. No one rivaled Pollen in itchiness, and Dust herself was responsible for the most spectacular of Melody’s sneezes, including her magnum opus a couple months ago which had launched a glob of snot forty feet to land in another girl’s hair. Still, it was galling to watch Colds do with such ease what she would never accomplish.

“Be careful what you’re doing.” Dust snapped “If Melody realizes something’s up too early the whole thing’s wasted.”

Even if she had ulterior motives for voicing it, the concern was valid. Already Melody’s nose was beginning to flush slightly pink in response to the increased blood flow. Melody hadn’t noticed any of the effects yet, but there was no guarantee that that would remain the case.

Colds, however, just smiled serenely under the abuse. “It’s ok. I started the membranes up slowly, so she won’t get that weird prickling sensation. It might start to drip eventually, but it won’t get further then the inside edge of the nostril in the next fifteen minutes.” Colds explained in a lecturing voice “I set it to cap out at 60% full, so she won’t stop being able to breath through her nose either.”

Dust blinked. That hadn’t been what she expected at all; she hadn’t even known some of those settings existed. That, she thought with annoyance, would be why Colds was so much better than her at snot. She really ought to subcontract more. 

 

From here on in it was really just a waiting game. The two personifications watched the numbers indicating mucous tick higher, waiting for the last possible moment. Dust flicked a few switches in preparation for the coming sneeze, tweaking setting for the most rapid and spectacular explosion she could. Apart from the tiny resultant clicks, the Sneeze Center was silent. 

The moment Melody removed the toothbrush from her mouth, Dust struck, slamming the lever marked ‘Irritation’ as far into the red as it could go. Up on the view-screen Melody’s eyes widened as a monstrous tickle welled up in her nose, before her eyelids began to droop heavily as her reflexes took control. The floor of the Sneeze Center shook as Melody’s chest heaved, her breath hitching. Melody had never been good at holding back or covering her sneezes, something Dust put down to a deplorable reluctance on Pollen’s part to trigger the damn things. Well, Pollen wasn’t there right now. She was. Grinning like a maniac, Dust pushed the Big Red Button marked SNEEZE. 

The view on the main screen cut out as Melody’s eyes squeezed shut, but the numbers and readouts on the walls told Dust the story as well as any image. Melody’s nostrils were flaring out, becoming round, dark holes to the center of her head. Melody’s lungs sucked in air through a snot-filled nose and a foam-filled mouth, expanding and pushing her chest out, stretching her pajamas. Melody’s  head tilted back, almost as if she was raising her face to the sun. And then…

Melody’s entire body jerked, expelling a blast of air that splattered the mirror in front of her with a mixture of mucous and foamy toothpaste. Melody had just sneezed, uncovered, directly onto the mirror in front of her. Inside Sneeze Center, Dust and Colds shared a high-five as Melody let out a groan of embarrassment and frustration. Their evening had turned out to be not so boring after all.

 

(So what does everybody think? I have a couple more installments planned out if people like this one...)

[kushamisukii]

oooh I love it!! hehe, Thats a fun perspective >:) So mischievious. Awesome build up=)

[Kiaory]

Thanks! I'm actually super nervous about people reading this because it's the first creative thing I've posted online.  I'm really glad you liked it!

I'm still brainstorming ideas for later parts, is there anything you'd like to see?

(PS: Yeah, the build up was fun to write)

[snuffles]

Oh man, this is how Inside Out SHOULD have been written! 

[M214186]

I enjoyed this a lot. It would be interesting if cold, dust and pollen somehow got sneezy......

[zneeze]

That was a really fun story! Cool idea as for future installments, I suppose we'll want to meet Pollen and have a bit more background on Melody!

[animegirl13]

I really liked this, it was well done!

[Balmora]

That was really cute and unique, and I especially liked the descriptions of all their different talents. I'd love to see where you go with this!

[Via]

This was a really great idea, and you executed it wonderfully! I'm really looking forward to see more. As for requests, I would really enjoy seeing Dust coax out more of those big, uncontrollable sneezes, as well as a firsthand view of what happens in the Sneeze Center when Melody suffers from allergies. In any case, though, keep up the awesome work.

[Blah!?]

Wow, I can't believe I totally missed this until now. I'm really glad an idea I had was able to help you make something this much fun. Heck, I'd say you pretty much own this thing now anyway, so I don't want to get in the way of your own creative vision. I'm looking forward to seeing what else you have in store.

[Timberlane]

That is a really cute story.  Very unique and the characters was very funny!

[Kiaory]

Hey, everyone. Thank you all so much for all your feedback and encouragement. ^u^ It really means a lot to me that people out there are enjoying my work. I get a little sure of happiness every time I see a new person had commented on my work. (is that normal?)

Anyway, I'm posting this to let you know that part 2 is in the works. It seems to be turning out a little longer than part one though, so I don't know how soon I'll be able to get it done. Hopefully soon.

[poiub]

Love this! Original and v. well written indeed. Please do continue!

[ThatSneezyGirl]

This is so creative! Please continue

[SneezeloveronGirls]

Awesome story. I hope that you continue this. I wonder if Melody will discover the existence of tiny people in her head? I wonder what other sneezy shenanigans Dust and Cold will get up to?

[Kiaory]

Well, it's finally here. I may have gotten a little over-ambitious with this one (It turns out that writing dialog is not my strong suit). Hopefully I managed to pull it off. 

As always, thank you all so much for your feedback and support. It honestly brings a smile to my face every time I see a new comment. Knowing you guys enjoyed the last one was a big part of what help motivate me continue. Feedback, INCLUDING CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, is very much appreciated.

And now, without further ado...

 

[Warning: this story contains mess. Also spiders. Viewer digression is advised]

 

— Part Two: Things That Go Bump in the Night —

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday night, and the Sneeze center was dark and silent. It was the middle of the night, Melody was in a deep sleep, and the center was correspondingly deserted. After a few minutes, a low, mournful alarm broke the silence of the the darkened Sneeze Center. The sound of the alarm echoed off main screen, reverberated down the attached hallways, and made its way bit by bit into the personifications’ quarters. Muffled by several doors it reached, at last, into the ears of a sleeping Dust, who rolled over in her bed. The alarm repeated, claiming a little more sleep each time until finally Dust attained sufficient wakefulness to groggily pull her pillow over her head. This strategy seemed to work for a few minute, until the wily sound called upon an unlikely ally: a rapid knocking at her bedroom door. 

Dust met this new assault with a mumbled sound that may have been intended as “let me sleep.” Then again, it could just as well have bee “llama sheep.”  She wasn’t very coherent at the moment.

What exactly this rejoinder was meant to say seemed to be moot, however, as the knocker proceeded to open Dust’s door anyway and flick on the lights. As the light of the overhead bulb seared into her eyes, Dust was treated to an unusual sight. Pollen stood in her doorway, her blond hair mussed from sleep, clad in a pink nightie rather than her usual impeccably pressed uniform. (What exactly it was the uniform of Dust had never been completely certain). Behind Pollen stood Colds, her childlike frame clad in an equally unusual but somehow less surprising set of footie pajamas. She looked nervous.

“Dust, honey?” Pollen said to the mound of blankets piled on the bed. “There’s something wrong in the Sneeze Center. We need you up and mobile in case it’s something serious.” 

Dust let out an enormous groan at the sheer unfairness of her existence and slid out from under the pile of comforters, revealing the rumpled black turtleneck and jeans she had worn to bed that evening. 

As she trudged after the others down the corridor leading to the Sneeze Center, Dust began a muttered tirade against being woken up at god knew what hour when Melody herself was still asleep. What could even happen without Melody even getting out of bed? It was probably just some runny snot in Melody’s nose that had shifted in the night and landed on a nerve ending, or something else completely stupid and mundane that didn’t require getting anyone up for, much less her. What the hell could be so urgent that Melody could’t just sneeze it out when she woke up in the morning, anyway? Dust had helped keep Melody’s nose safe for years, and did she get any respect? No. She’d kept out makeup powder when Melody had decided to join a play, ejected flour when Melody tried her hand a baking, worked with Colds to expel chlorine at several swimming pools, and bravely defended against pepper when the creepy little boy from apartment 5B had tried to… well, she never had been completely sure what exactly the little weirdo had been trying to accomplish, but that was beside the point. The point was, she was practically a veteran by now, or some kind of professional sneeze artist, and she shouldn’t have wake up in the middle of the night for…

Dust’s complaints died on her lips as they finally reached the Sneeze Center. Flashing orange letters stretching across half the center spelled out a three word warning Dust hadn’t seen in years:

 

ALERT: FOREIGN OBJECT DETECTED

 

The three Personifications shared a glance.

“Oh. Oh dear.” Pollen said in a quiet voice. “Melody hasn’t had one of those since-”

“The lego incident, yeah.” Dust interrupted “God that was a pain in the ass. I still can’t believe Mel didn’t realize it would be a bad idea to stick a giant chunk of plastic up her nose” She said, walking over to the console.

“She was only four years old” Pollen said, placing a hand on Dust’s shoulder “You can’t expect her to…”

“It took us four hours to get it out, Pollen.” Dust shot back “I think I’m entitled to be a bit annoyed.” 

Dust took a deep breath and shook her head, trying to push away the aggravating memories. “Anyway. So how’re we going to deal with this?”

Pollen followed Dust over to the control panel and punched a few buttons. The  alarm and flashing warnings abruptly cut out and were replaced by a crude wireframe model of Melody’s nose on the main screen

“Well,” Pollen said after studying the readout “this one looks a lot smaller than the” she grimaced “Lego.” She pointed to the glowing orange nimbus representing the irritated area “I don’t think it’s big enough to block off anything important, and there’d be a lot more alarms going off if it were sharp or made of something dangerous. Much as I hate to say it, we should probably just let Melody have her beauty sleep and deal with it in the morning.” She paused. “Also, I’m not sure what the regulation say about sleep sneezing.”

Dust rolled her eyes. Pollen wasn’t quite as annoying as she seemed once you got know her, but her deferring a sneeze and worshiping the regulations ranked about number three on Dust’s personal list of least surprising things ever, right between ‘Melody’s mom forgetting to dust’ and ‘the sky being blue’.

“Well, I’m onboard if it lets me get back to bed faster.” Dust said “We can set up some fireworks to go off when she wakes up.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page for once” Pollen said with a small smile, which turned to a frown as she turned to look at Colds. Colds was still standing back at the entrance to the center, and she was staring at the display like she had just seen a ghost.

Colds swallowed. “Um, maybe it just me, but does it look to anyone else like the foreign object thingy just… moved?

 

*    *    *

 

In the near total darkness of her bedroom, Melody slept soundly. The night would have been very much like any other night, except for one thing: she was not alone. Nearly four hours ago, Melody’s little sister Karen had shuffled up to her bedroom door, knocked quietly, and asked if she could sleep with Melody, please, because she’d had a nightmare and she was scared. Melody had been dead to the world after a long night of cramming for a test, so after a couple minutes of waiting Karen padded over to the bed and climbed under the covers next to Melody. The warmth of her sister beside her was comforting, and Karen soon fell into a peaceful sleep listening to the slow turning of the ceiling fan, her nightmare forgotten.

 

Unfortunately, at this point things began to head downhill. Both girls were very… active sleepers.  Melody usually woke up either ensnared in a cocoon-like tangle of sheets and blankets or entirely exposed, the covers having been kicked or thrown away during the night. Karen, by all accounts, was even worse. With the two girls sharing a bed, the effect was compounded. Over the course of the night, the two managed to work themselves into a gordian knot of limbs, sheets, comforters, pajamas, and one pillow. The whole mess settled down only when the sisters became to entangled for their random sleeping motions to produce further movement.

The resulting tangle was both silly looking and deeply undignified in many ways, and both of them would have done their best to escape immediately if they had been awake.There were a couple aspects in particular, however, that the two girls would have found unpleasant. Both girls were lying on their sides, with Karen’s back against Melody’s stomach.  Consequently, Karen was lying awkwardly across both of Melody’s arms, guaranteeing pins and needles for both of them when they woke up. Furthermore, the tight embrace of the tangled blankets around them meant that the two girls heads were pushed close together, so that Melody’s face was nearly buried in Karen’s hair. 

Normally, this would not have been a problem. Karen’s fluffy, shoulder length brown hair was soft and clean, and smelled faintly of her shampoo. It would have completely inoffensive, had it been presented to any part of Melody’s body other than her nose. It was just pure bad luck that Melody’s sleeping nose was forced up against her sister’s wafting, tickling tresses.

 

Even so, the freckled organ remained stoically unresponsive longer than most people, knowing Melody, would have dared hope. It took nearly half an hour before the teasing strands of Karen’s hair brushing against it’s outer walls became too much and triggered an ancient, automatic, reflex. Melody’s nose twitched once, scrunched up, and gave a loud snort.

With the snort, things began to go from bad to worse. The implosive burst of air grabbed a handful of Karen’s hairs and carried them deep into the trackless depths of Melody’s left nostril. There, they fluttered in the wind of Melody’s breathing, brushing up against delicate inner membranes and hidden, out of the way crevices.  Every time either of the girls shifted in their sleep, the hairs were pushed or pulled to a different part of Melody’s nose, causing an entirely new set of sensitive nerve endings to cry out distress. It took less than a minute for an automated alarm to be triggered in the Sneeze Center, waking Dust and the others.

 

*    *    *

 

Slowly, as if mounted on swivels, Dust and Pollen’s heads turned towards the protection on the screen. Now that they were looking for it it was unmistakable: every few seconds, the object irritating Melody’s nose would shift slightly to a new position. Colds was the first to speak. “Do… do you think it’s alive?” she said in a sort of nervous awe.

“What? No. That’s absurd.” Pollen said, but her words lacked the easy confidence they had had when discussing the problem before. “How on earth would something alive go up Melody’s nose? It’s probably a crumb of food from the last time Melody had a little snack in bed.”

“Nu-uh. Melody’s always super-neat when she eats, you know that. Besides, if it’s not alive, then how’s it moving?” Colds asked. “It could be an ant, I bet.”

Pollen looked less certain than she sounded “Colds, sweetie, ants go after” she paused “…honey and potato salad and things. Melody doesn’t have any of those up her nose, we’d know.”

“Ok, not an ant then. A spider.” As soon as she spoke of the idea, Colds’ face lit up with a sort of horrified fascination. 

“A big spider with long hairy legs crawled up Melody’s nose looking for somewhere dark and warm and safe so it can lay a million billion eggs. There’s going to be a million billion baby spiders living inside Melody’s nose.” 

Her voice dropped to a low tone that wouldn’t have sounded out of place telling ghost stories around a campfire “They’re going to eat her brain”

As Colds outlined her theory, Pollen gradually grew paler and paler as her imagination supplied images to go along with Colds’ words. As her fellow personification conjured up a million pail little bodies swarming through the cavities of Melody’s head and devouring her from the inside out, it suddenly became too much for Pollen to stand.

“S-stop it!” Pollen practically shouted. She was shaking. “It’s not a spider! There is not and never will be a spider in Melody’s nose! And there are definitely not going to be a million s-spiders eating her brain!” 

Pollen took a deep, shuddering breath. “Here’s what we’re going to do! We are going to get Dust to whip up some extra big sneezes so we can get whatever it is out of the nose and go back to bed! Understand?”

 

Colds looked shocked. Even Dust raised an eyebrow.

 “Wow, Colds, I think you broke Pollen.” Dust said. “I didn’t think that was even possible” 

 

“Anyway, Polls, there’s a bit of a problem with that idea” Dust continued, holding up the Manuel of Regulations she had been flipping through. “It says here that we can’t make Melody sneeze while she’s asleep”.

Pollen hesitated “Dust, I applaud the sentiment, but don’t you think that given the” she shuddered “situation it might maybe be in Melody’s best interest to break the regulations, just this  once?” She resisted adding “please”, but only barely. 

Dust responded with a truly epic eye roll. “Seriously, Pollen? I thought you knew me better than that. You’re the only one who cares about those stupid rules” Dust said. “When I say we can’t make her sneeze, I mean we literally can’t make her sneeze. According to this, the right neural patterns are shut down for maintenance while Melody sleeps. Until they come back online, there’s nothing we can do.

“What?” Pollen blanched “What are we supposed to do then?”

Dust shrugged. “The regulations say to increase nasal irritation until it wakes her up. That’s your department, chief.”

 

Pollen stepped over to the control and panel got to work. The various sensations that filled Melody’s nose in response to irritants were her specialty, and with good reason. It had always seemed much more sensible to her to encourage Melody to stay away from various nasal dangers in the first place, rather than simply blast them out of the nose. With skillful application of the proper itch or tickle, she could alert Melody to to the presence of dangerous contaminates in the air, and give her a strong incentive to remove herself from their presence all at once. Of course, that isn’t exactly what she was trying to do now.

Looking over the list of saved  settings she usually used for such tasks, Pollen wondered which would be most likely to wake Melody up. First on the list was the light, feathery tickling sensation that she used to alert Melody to the first traces of pollen in the air. Not that Melody usually listened to her and left, but it was usually worth a try. Unfortunately, that one probably wouldn’t be strong enough to wake Melody up. Better to use something she would typically hold back on at first, then. Pollen’s usual last resort was a sort of breathy about-to-sneeze feeling that she had developed align with Dust. It rarely failed to send Melody running for the nearest box of tissues or, failing that, place to sneeze privately. It would have been perfect, except that Pollen was pretty sure it wouldn’t function properly with Melody’s ability to sneeze offline. That left her mainstay: a deep, crawling itch that she used to encourage Melody to leave situations the triggered her hay fever. But would it be enough to wake her?

Unbidden, the image of a million baby spiders swarming up the inside of Melody’s nose appeared in Pollens mind’s eye. She hadn’t been able to get the horrible thought out of her head since Colds had suggested it. She really, really hoped it wan’t true, but for all that Colds’ ideas were fantastical, she had to admit that she was having a hard time thinking of what else could be moving around Melody’s nose at 3AM. 

Besides, if there was even the smallest chance that Colds was right… Pollen shivered, thinking about what it would mean for Melody.

No, she couldn’t afford to do things halfway. Pollen whispered a silent apology to Melody as she began dragging every slider in her program all the way to the right. 

 

*    *    *

 

In the dark of night, Pollen’s custom sensation began to grow in Melody’s nose. The sleeping girl tried to raise one of her hands to her face in order to scrub at the itch in her nose, but her sister was sleeping on top of her arms, and she was still caught in the tangle of sheets and blankets created by their tossing and turning. Instead, in her sleep Melody began to rub her nose against the only surface available to it: Karen. Unfortunately, pushing her nose deeper into her little sisters fluffy brown hair only pushed the cluster of it’s treacherous, teasing strands already inside Melody’s nose deeper into even more sensitive parts of her nasal cavity, making the sensation worse. All she could do was lie there and squirm slightly as her nose erupted in a million crawling tickles. In the near-total blackness of her bedroom, hidden behind the curtain of Karen’s hair, Melody’s nostrils FLARED.

 

*    *    *

 

“I found it! It’s right next the altimeter!” Colds shouted excitedly, pointing to a spot at the far end of the control panel. Under her finger was a small analog dial the size of a postage stamp, helpfully labeled ‘Sleep Level’. Currently the dial pointed all the way to one side, but as she watched, the indicator began to tremble slightly and then to slowly rise. The other personifications clustered around as the slender needle lifted away from ‘Deep Sleep’.

“Ten percent awake…  fifteen… twenty… twenty-three percent…” Colds read out.

A sigh of relief swept through the Sneeze Center. Even Pollen, who had spent most of the night acting tense, seemed to relax as Colds reported their plan’s continued success.

 

Unfortunately, their relief was short lived.

“Forty…”

 “Forty-one…”

 “Uh, forty-one-and-a-half, I guess…” Colds announced “I think it’s slowing down.”

 As the needle passed 40%, the number marked as the boundary of light sleep, the needle had slowed to crawl. Pollen’s tickle had turned Melody’s deep sleep into a restless dose, but the teen stubbornly refused to wake up any further.

“No-no-no-no-no!” Pollen muttered to herself “She’ll never wake up at this rate!”

Dust just glanced over at her, frowning.  “I don’t get it” said Dust. “Melody’s always been a heavy sleeper. Can’t you just make her nose itchier?”

“It’s not that simple!” Pollen said. “I had everything turned up to maximum already! I’m good at what I do, but there’s limits to the what the equipment can accomplish.” She growled in frustration ”The only way we could make her nose tickle more is if we physically put more electricity into the nerves…”

As Pollen spoke, a huge grin spread across Dust’s face.

“So what you’re saying is:” Dust said, and when she next spoke her voice held a bad fake Scottish accent “she needs more power cap’n?”

“Er, I guess?” Pollen said nervously. 

Dust just grinned wider. “I always wanted to do this.”

 

A little while later, The Sneeze Center had undergone a startling transformation. Nearly every piece of machinery in the center, up to and including including the light switch, had had its front panel unscrewed or pried open. From the resulting holes issued an intestinal tangle of power cables, adapters and extension cords that snaked across the grey linoleum of the Sneeze Center floor. Pollen couldn’t make heads or trails of bewildering array of cables, but she has been assured that they all ultimately led to once place: the section of the control panel that controlled Melody’s need to sneeze, and the itches and tickles that went with it. 

Banging and muffled cursing could be heard as Dust’s lower torso emerged from one of the new holes in the wall. Soon it was joined by one of her arms, held palm up. “Could somebody hand me a screwdriver?”

Pollen stepped acre the wire-strewn floor to hand over requested tool, being carful not to trip. “You know Dust, I never knew you were so mechanically inclined.”

A couple of muffled bonking noises later, Dust’s upper half emerged, covered in a thick layer of her namesake. She wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve. “Honestly, neither did I until just recently. I think maybe it’s a thematics thing? Like, the insides of machines are usually full of dust, so I’m good with em’.” Dust brushed a few layers of the grey powder off herself, creating a cloud that would have set Melody’s nose twitching on sight had she somehow been there. “As you can see.” 

She looked up at Pollen. “You know, you’d probably be good at gardening if you tried it.” Dust said. “Same logic.”

If Pollen had a response to that last statement, it was cut off by Colds returning from the hallway that lead to the personification’s quarters.

“I had to unplug Dust’s arm clock and Pollen’s sun lamp” she said, trailing an armload of extension cords nearly bigger than she was behind her “but I’m pretty sure we’ve finally got every outlet.”

Dust grinned and got to work. Under her hands, the new cords were quickly, if inexpertly, added to the thick bundle heading into the Sensations panel. According to her recently acquired electrical skills, with the addition of these last few cables, every spare scrap of power in the Sneeze Center was being diverted into the itch in Melody’s nose. Out of the corner of her eye, Dust saw the Wakefulness-Meter begin to move…

 

*    *    *

 

As the tickle in her nose expanded beyond all reason, the immovable wall of Melody’s sleep began to crack. Melody had always slept like the dead, but the sensation filling her nasal passages was simply too much. If her nose had been on fire before, now it was a blazing sun of itchiness, burning away the mists of sleep. Gone was the peaceful, blank expression that had been on Melody’s face throughout the night. Melody’s eyebrows arched and met, crinkling her forehead between them. Her mouth, formerly closed, yawned open to admit the gasp of air her body knew was coming. Tears squeezed their way past Melody’s tightly shut eyelids and collected in droplets on her lashes as Melody’s closed eyes began to water. In the middle of it all, her nose twitched and scrunched up and squirmed, trying in vain to escape the feelings created by the hairs inside of it. 

 

As her face began to show signs of the impending sneeze, Melody’s chest shuddered as the steady, even rhythm of her breathing became feathery and irregular. Melody was still asleep, but she wasn’t going to stay that way for long…

 

*    *    *

 

As the final few numbers ticked away on the Wakefulness-Meter, Dust got to work setting up Melody’s sneeze. Although her attempt at diverting power had officially been to wake Melody up, privately Dust had also wanted to see exactly how far she could push Melody’s nose. Melody’s biggest, most spectacular sneezes had always com from Dust, and  What she could do with the supercharged control panel behind her would be indescribable. 

Dust giggled to herself as she manipulated the controls, instructing Melody’s lungs to stretch to their limit, her chest to spasm violently, her poor freckly irritated little nose to explode, blowing away whatever nasty, tickly, foreign thing had found it’s way into Melody’s inner passages. 

With practiced skill, Dust tweaked every setting and checked every box she knew to make the impending sneeze bigger, more explosive, harder to stop. Even without her cheating with the wiring earlier, this would one for the record books. With it… Dust didn’t know. But she wished she had some popcorn to eat while she watched. 

As she prepared to hit the button that would send her instructions skittering down Melody’s nerves, a final bit of mischief occurred to Dust. Pollen had asked her to make completely sure that the totally-not-a-spider was gone, hadn’t she? Well, there was one more thing she could do. As Colds called out that Melody was finally awake, Dust brought up the setting marked ‘Fit Size’. She rarely bothered to use this one, but why not? This was a special occasion. Dust entered ‘3’, hit ‘ok’, and pressed the button to set the whole thing in motion. This was going to be good.

 

 

There was a pause. 

Dust just sat there, looking like the cat that ate the canary, burned down the vet, and bought fifty-one percent stock in the global cream distributor. After a moment, Colds spoke up.

“Shouldn’t something be happen–“

 

And then Melody’s buildup started.

 

*    *    *

 

Melody woke up. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know what was going on. What she did know was that the biggest sneeze of her life was brewing in her nose. 

Melody didn’t even have time to open her eyes before her head tilted back as her body began the wind up to the biggest sneeze it had ever known. Her mouth opened wide and her nostrils flared enormously as she compulsively inhaled.

Melody was not a stranger to long, over-dramatic buildups. An overly sarcastic friend with a stopwatch had once timed one of her episodes of hitching at nearly a minute. But what her body was doing now wasn’t her usually breathy hitching. These were outright gasps; each one felt  like it could to give birth to a sneeze entirely on their own. With each one, more and more air was funneled down into Melody’s respiratory tract. The tangled cocoon of blankets over the two sisters strained, shuddered and bulged as the teen’s lungs inflated until Every single iota of air that could possibly fit inside Melody’s body was trapped there, waiting for the event that would set them free. For a moment, Melody hung hung on the precipice. 

Then she exploded.

Karen moved her head slightly in response to some dream, and the tickling, teasing trends of her hair buried inside Melody’s nose suddenly became too much for Melody’s body to stand even a single second longer. Melody’s head snapped violently forward as her entire body curled into a C shape. A wave of spray blasted out of Melody’s nose and mouth, carrying the offending hairs with it, backed by an enormous “HAAESHEEEW!!!” loud enough to wake the dead.

 

There was a loud, painful sounding clunk.

 

*    *    *

 

Inside the Sneeze Center, the three Personifications stood in silence.

“Clunk?!” Dust demanded, shock giving way to confusion “Why was there a clunk?”

The main screen flickered to life in front of them as Melody opened her eyes, revealing a wall of dark brown hair. A loud, girlish voice filtered through the speakers.

“OWWW! That hurt!”

“Uh-oh.” said Colds quietly “That doesn’t sound like Melody…”

 

*    *    *

 

“OWWW! That hurt!”

Melody blinked as the passing of her sleep and her sneeze finally allowed her brain the spin up and remember where she was. That voice sounded awfully familiar…

“Karen!? What are you doing here?” Melody asked.

“I was sleeping and something hit me on the head!” Karen answered, sounding alarmed “What happened?”

“Oh, I, uh, think I sneezed” Melody answered. “Why were you in my bed in the first place?”

“I came to sleep with you cause I got scared…” Karen trailed off. “Wait, huh? How does you sneezing make sense?”

“Well, it was a big sneeze. It made my head move. I think I bonked you” Melody said, guessing based on the stinging in her forehead “and… and I t-think I’m gonna do it again…”

Melody realized to her horror that the tickle was back again, stirring up reflexes in her nose and chest. Melody’s eyes watered, her nostrils quivered, and her chest jumped inside the thin fabric of her pajamas…

“No, stop! Melody, don’t sneeze!” Karen struggled with the tangle of blankets around her “You’re gonna hit me again!”

 

Melody tried. She really, really did. But Melody’s body was acting of its own accord, and it had better things to do than listen to a self-important little girl that thought she knew what was best. Ancient reflexes set in stone millions of years ago drew air into Melody’s lungs, squeezed her eyes shut, flared her petite little nostrils open for all the world to see…

 

Karen couldn’t crane her head back far enough around to see what was going on behind her, but from the sounds her sister was making it couldn’t be anything good. Karen closed her eyes and prayed Melody could hold it in. She heard her sister give one last long, desperate gasp, and then…

 

“HAKTSHEEEEW!!!!!”

 

Melody’s neck screamed in protest as she desperately held it strait against the overpowering urge to smash her head into the back of Karen’s. Somehow, barely, she pulled it off. But,  even though Melody was able to suppress this aspect of the sneeze, she could’t protect her sister from the other ones. A torrent of wet mucus escaped from Melody’s flared nostrils and onto her sibling. A fine mist of droplets settled into Karens hair as something gelatinous splashed against the skin of her neck.

 

“EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!” Karen shrieked. “Ew-ew-ew-ew-ew! Melody, why?”

But Melody couldn’t answer. A third sneeze was building up in her nose, to fast for her to talk. All of her attention was focused on the tickle blossoming in her nose. Karen waited for an answer for a few seconds before her eyes widened in realization “Wait, are you going to…” Karen said. “Stop! Don’t you dare!”

But it was no use. Dust had programed in three sneezes, and that was exactly what she was going to get. Try as she might, before to long Melody’s ribcage expanded, her head tipped back, and her eyes closed, exactly as they had two times before. 

In the last seconds before the eruption, Melody managed to turn her head to the side, pointing the deep, dark, perfectly round holes of her flared nostrils up at the ceiling. They seemed to stretch even wider for a brief moment before Melody’s third and final sneeze blasted it’s way through the poor girl’s body. Instead of spattering onto Karen, the spray formed a vertical could of droplets that slowly drifted down onto the two sisters like a perverse dew in the ensuing silence. 

 

When the spray settled and everything was quiet for a few moments, Karen spoke in a small voice “Is… is it over?”

Melody gave a congested sniffle, and sighed. “Yeah Sis,” she said after a moment. She sounded tired. “It’s over.”

 

A few minutes later, Melody stood outside the bathroom in the hall, lit only by the light seeping around the edges of the doorframe. The sound of running water told her that her sister was busy inside. As soon as the two had managed to get themselves untangled, Karen had insisted on “Washing Melody’s sneezes out of her hair.

To be honest, Melody couldn’t blame her. She wasn’t the type to place enormous value on refinement or decorum, but the had just been… Disgusting. Also awkward and humiliating. Melody had not ideal what could have made her sneeze like that. Could it have been as simple as a grain of dust, in exactly the right place…? Whatever had caused it, Melody sincerely hoped it never happened again.

 

Her train of thought was cut off as Karen stepped out of the bathroom, rubbing the rapidly developing goose-egg on the back of her head with one hand. She yawned. 

“Uh…” Melody started to talk to her sister, her tongue tied by the sheer cheek-burning bizarreness of the situation. “Um, maybe we shouldn’t tell any one about this.”

The look Karen shot her was sure venom. “Sure, Sis. By the way, don’t you have a test tomorrow?”

 

Melody banged her head against the wall of the hallway, reminding herself of the bruise on her forehead in the process. Then she just slumped. 

Her finals were tomorrow. Of course. And here she was, up at 3:30 AM instead of getting a proper night’s sleep.

 

“F***”

 

—Author's notes:—

So apparently the Sneeze Center operates on Star Trek technology: the solution to any problem is just to give it more power. Presumably this also means that if Melody gets a nose full of pepper the console shoots sparks and knocks people over. I have surprisingly few problems with this. 

In other news, I was re-reading the old Sneezing Olympics threads, and was wondering if it might be cool to do something similar here, and open the thread to anyone to write  story with the same premise but different characters. Would anyone even be interested in writing something?

PS: I'm still talking suggestions, especially of causes and situations. I can't promise anything, but I'll try to include your stuff eventually.

[GTSsneeze87]

This is very creative and very impressive. Well done.

[ID2006]

This is AWESOME! Very well written and great concept. 

Ps. ROFL at the Star Trek technology concept

[Kiaory]

Thanks! Is there any part you liked in particular? 

[poiub]

love it!

[ID2006]

I tend to like mess and embarrassment and desperation; that realization of oh no, I'm going to sneeze especially if inconvenient (except for while hiding fics, don't know why, but not really into those). I also like inability to keep the sneezes quiet or well controlled. Usually I'm more interested in colds, hurt/comfort and male slash, but these hit so many buttons for me. I do have a thing for dust sneezes/scenarios, so dust being in control has been helpful.

[Blah!?]

Wow, that was a great followup to your original story. It's hard to pick a part that I liked most. One thing I always worry about in my own stories is that I take too long to get to the sneezing, but the entire first half of yours, before any sneezes happened at all, was just so much fun to read. The anticipation was killing me.

Like I said before, I don't want to interrupt your own creative process, but I did have one idea that I suppose I can share, just to see if it inspires you further. I think it would be interesting to see if there are any consequences caused by "rewiring" the sneeze center. Maybe Melody starts sneezing when she's not supposed to, or she becomes allergic to something new. I'll leave the details up to you, but maybe that could be a place to start.

Thanks for sharing!

[poiub]

22 hours ago, ickydog2006 said:

I tend to like mess and embarrassment and desperation; that realization of oh no, I'm going to sneeze especially if inconvenient (except for while hiding fics, don't know why, but not really into those). I also like inability to keep the sneezes quiet or well controlled. I do have a thing for dust sneezes/scenarios, so dust being in control has been helpful.

Totally agree with this!

[Kiaory]

On June 6, 2016 at 7:45 PM, Blah!? said:

Wow, that was a great followup to your original story. It's hard to pick a part that I liked most. One thing I always worry about in my own stories is that I take too long to get to the sneezing, but the entire first half of yours, before any sneezes happened at all, was just so much fun to read. The anticipation was killing me.

Like I said before, I don't want to interrupt your own creative process, but I did have one idea that I suppose I can share, just to see if it inspires you further. I think it would be interesting to see if there are any consequences caused by "rewiring" the sneeze center. Maybe Melody starts sneezing when she's not supposed to, or she becomes allergic to something new. I'll leave the details up to you, but maybe that could be a place to start.

Thanks for sharing!

I'd just like to thank you for leaving this type of comment. I really appreciate that you took the time to sit down and to some extent think about the story. Not only are these types of comments really fun to read, they also help give me some idea of how people are reading my story. (To ickydog2006: the above applies to your comment as well. Thanks to you to).

In response to what you said: To be honest, whether the first half of the story would come off as boring was one of the biggest things I worried about writing this, right behind making the dialog sound natural and whether it would be clear to the reader what was going on. I'm glad to hear that I managed to pull it off at least for you.

Regarding your plot suggestion: This idea threw me a little at first, because I'd intended for the various installments of the series to be more-or-less independent and capable of standing on their own. Upon reflection, however, there's no reason why I couldn't set another story as a sequel to this one sometime down the line, possibly even set during Melody's test. That leaves the question of what the messed up wiring actually does. I probably wouldn't have it give Melody a new allergy, largely because that seems more like the result of adding a new personification. I thinks there are really two ways to handle this. My first though is to take some relatively common sneeze-related phenomenon, like sneezes getting stuck, vanishing at the end of the build up, or being triggered by light, and saying that it's actually a crossed wire or glitch from the Personifications' perspectives. On the other hand, though, there could be lots of fun to be had with Melody sneezing due to something completely random, like the color blue, or having her left elbow touched. (Maybe this is why some people always sneeze at the same time of day?) You've definitly given me something to think about.

(PS: For what it's worth, I don't recall ever feeling bored or impatient while reading your stories.)

[Blah!?]

I think stuck sneezes could be an interesting way to go. Again I don't want to tell you what to do, but it might be interesting to think of things in terms of how the characters in the sneeze center would react to them. So something like the color blue would still be totally random, but stuck sneezes and photic sneezes are solvable problems that they have to deal with under their own rules.

Or another funny side thought: stuck sneezes could be a glitch, but photic sneezes are purely the result of Dust being lazy. Like whenever the sun is in Melody's line of sight it gets too bright in the sneeze center, so Dust makes her sneeze so she'll close her eyes, if only for a few seconds.