Excerpt: The Reversible Man

There was silence, except for the sound of breathing. Someone coughed. Marin tried to count the different breaths, but had to stop after three. It was too confusing after that. Footsteps passed by the Dumpster, and all breathing simultaneously ceased. Marin followed suit. There was a limit to how long she could hold her breath after running around two miles at a flat-out sprint, however, and she had to let it out slowly. She opened her mouth wide, so it wouldn’t make any hissing noises, and exhaled quietly, wincing again inwardly as she tasted the smell of the Dumpster through her mouth. It was a bit sulfurous, and a lot of rotten vegetation too. No matter, there was oxygen in it as well, and that was currently the most important thing. The other breaths were silent for a ridiculously long time before Marin heard one high-pitched breath slowly start up. This breather was joined seamlessly by the others, one at a time, until every person was breathing again.
The breaths, for the most part, coincided so that all the inhaling and exhaling was roughly synchronized. This went on for probably around thirty seconds, before Marin noticed that someone was taking advantage of the rhythmic sound to add a little solo of their own. The normal line went: inhaleEXHALEinhaleEXHALEinhaleEXHALEin. In the middle of the fourth inhale, this breather began a little solo going: In--in--in--out, in-in, out. In--in—in--out, in-in, out. Someone else joined in at this point, adding a line that went: In-out, in-in-out. In-in-in-out, in-out. In-out, in-in-out, in-in-in-out, in-out. Marin smiled in the dark. One more breather joined in, and the first one gradually stopped, becoming part of the background again. The third breath went: Out---in. Out-out-in. Out—in. Out-out-in. The second breather gradually became part of the background as well, followed eventually by the third. The normal breathing pattern was restored. Marin wondered if it had been planned that way, or if it had just happened. It’d kinda take the fun out of something like that, to plan it, and there probably would have been signals to start or something. It must have been spur-of-the-moment. These guys must be really familiar with each other. She lay there for a moment, with someone’s boots on her shins and someone else’s arm under her neck, just gathering herself.
About fifteen seconds later, someone made the first sound. Marin was astonished to hear laughing. It was a light, clear--and undeniably happy--boy’s laugh, or perhaps young man would be more accurate. He sounded actually in high spirits, and Marin would not have been surprised if he had been the one starting the funky breathing routine in the first place. He was joined by a soprano giggle and a hoarse chuckle a moment later. It was very contagious; Marin herself smothered a laugh and tried to sit up. This effort was thwarted by the head and shoulders of someone else falling onto her and squishing her down into the muck again.
“We all just went running like that,” whispered a voice. It was drowned out by cackling and chortles of laughter. When it eventually died down a bit, someone else whispered, “Let’s do it all again!” and the laughter began again.
“Do what again?” the first voice whispered. “The jail-breaking bit, or the bit where we squish each other into the garbage?”
“Everything!” the soprano whisperer piped up. “My hair isn’t totally full of trash yet!”
It seemed that the hysteric laughter would never stop. The funny thing was, Marin couldn’t seem to help joining in. Not only was it infectious, but she felt a bit unhinged by the events that had since transpired. Then again, nobody was going to penalize her for joining in. So she did, deciding to temporarily forget about her deplorable current circumstances, the fact that these people were all strangers to her, and that she was sitting in a Dumpster with bits of garbage strewn about and on her clothing and hair.
She was among friends.