The Gas Breather

So, I was almost a victim of The Gas Breather. Nowadays, The Gas Breather is common knowledge and the deaths caused by it are minimal. My experience was the first recorded visit that The Gas Breather had made, so nobody knew how to protect themselves.
I remember the day it all started very clearly. It was one of those cold and foggy mornings; The dew was covering the grass and it was relatively quiet besides the sounds of an occasional car or truck. I woke up at about 8:30 AM and texted my cousin about a crazy dream I had that night, something we would often do. I waited for a response for about five minutes before I went to go make myself some breakfast. I assumed that maybe she hadn't woke up yet; which was odd because she was the early bird type, the kind that likes to wake up at 5:00 AM.
I ate scrambled eggs with some bacon that I accidentally burnt to a crisp as I sat and watched the news. There didn't seem to be anything interesting on the news, so I just flipped through channels hoping to find something to keep myself entertained. Then, I heard my phone go off; it was my cousin replying to the text I had sent earlier. 
"Lol your dreams always have hilarious plot twists while mine are always so serious and intense," she said, following the message up with a laughing emoji. 
That's when out of the blue, the TV began filling with static and started making a wretched screech. I tried turning it off but the controller wasn't working, so I had to resort to unplugging it. I texted my cousin telling her about what just happened and waited for her response. 
A few minutes go by and she sent a reply, "that's kinda creepy, mine did that just a moment ago." 
We kind of brushed it off as a coincidence and continued on with our day, not thinking much of it.
It was getting close to noon and I was starting to get hungry again, so I tried to warm myself up a frozen meal. I popped the tray in the microwave and waited a few minutes before pulling it out and accidentally burning my hands in the process. I sat down and turned on the news again to see if anything had changed, oh boy it did. Hundreds of people were dying from suffocation, all at different locations with no prior medical complications. The city was going into lockdown and everyone was ordered to wear ventilators and stay indoors as the cause of the deaths was unknown. As if it couldn't get worse, all the local air raid sirens were malfunctioning and going off by themselves, sending everyone into an even worse panic.
I checked my phone to see why it didn't notify me of this major threat only to see that it was completely dead, as dead as a door-nail. Like any reasonable person would be, I was a bit scared of what might happen to me, mainly because I didn't have a ventilator. I put my phone on the charger so that I could text my family to check on them, but for some reason, I couldn't get any service. That's when I hear the air raid siren a few blocks down the street start going off. I have never in my entire life been more scared than I was at that moment, I felt completely vulnerable and hopeless. 
I had the idea to try to leave the city because no other cities seemed to be having this issue, just the one I lived in. I left the apartment complex and walked through the empty parking lot over to my car, I put the key in the ignition in an attempt to start the engine, but it wouldn't start. I decided to try to ride my bike to my cousin's house to see if her car worked. On my way there, that's when I started getting this really bad cough. I thought it was just a small cough but it soon began to get painful and my voice started getting raspy real quick.
I finally reached my cousin's house and rang the doorbell; nobody answered. I rang the doorbell a couple more times with no answer before I decided to just let myself in; we were pretty close after all. I took a step into the house. It felt cold and empty like nobody had been there in a while. I walked into the kitchen and that's when I saw the worst thing I could have imagined, my cousin was lying lifelessly in the floor with a small pool of blood around her mouth. She had become just another victim. I sat there in complete shock, hoping this was a dream or maybe some kind of messed up prank, but it was reality. I promised myself that I would make it out of this for her sake, at all costs.
I left the house with tears streaming down my face, remembering all of our fun times together. I remembered the time that we got yelled at for spraying silly string all over the inside of our grandma's car and the time that we wrecked our bikes into a ditch while trying to race each other. My reminiscence was cut short when I spotted a tall shadowy figure standing in the middle of the road. It was starting to get dark, so it was a bit tough to tell who or what the figure was. I called out to them, hoping for a response, but it didn't do anything. I walked up to the figure, close enough so I could make out the details and recognize that it was a man in a black jumpsuit wearing a gas mask. The man turned his head and looked at me and as soon as he did, I started violently coughing. I coughed so hard that I started to spit up blood. The man just kept staring at me the whole time. I knew he was the cause of this; I just didn't know how. I became weak and fell to the ground while closing my eyes; I was ready to accept death. Then I stopped coughing, and when I opened my eyes, the man was gone.
The air raid sirens stopped going off and it was completely silent for the first time in what felt like forever. I still felt weak and couldn't pedal my bike, so I decided to try to walk home. I was found by some random guy who drove me to a hospital in another city. The doctors said that there didn't seem to be any reason for me to have coughed up blood and said it was a complete mystery as to what caused it. After a night's rest at the hospital, I was taken home by the same man. The city was a mess, bodies being taken away at every other house, blood puddles littering the roads and crashed cars all over the place. It took a couple of months for the city to finally recover from that day, but sadly, I will never truly recover from the losses I experienced.
Category:Cryptids
Category:Lovecraftian
Category:Places