Maria turned her bronzed face up towards the sun and shook loose her thick, black hair so that it sparkled in the summer air. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes, savouring all the aromas that drifted up from the warm land around her; the earth, the farmyard animals padding softly around their pens, the fresh hay cut and ready for storage. It was the dying days of summer, a time for harvest and preparation for the long winter months ahead.
As the only daughter of a hardworking farmer, Maria could not expect to get out of all the labour a farm demanded. She rose early when her father woke her, milked the cows, fed chickens and helped the hired labourers in the fields. She had no siblings to confide in, and an absent mother who had left them for a life in the city when Maria had been just eleven.
Maria had grown up resourceful, happy with her own company. She had developed into a voluptuous, beautiful young woman, protected fiercely from the attentions of men from a father who needed her both as a reminder of the family he had lost, and a worker he could trust.
Only this summer, there was a problem. The labourers had left, and the hay lay uncollected in the fields, for they were afraid. Several farms in the area had suffered misfortune – a roving band of bandits were making raids upon farmers, making off with their hard-grown crops and leaving them destitute as winter came upon them. In fear for their lives, the labourers had vanished leaving Maria and her father to fend for themselves.
Standing in the morning sunlight, Maria suddenly was suddenly reminded of another problem which was troubling her this year. Namely, she had started to suffer from chronic allergies. She had always prided herself at not succumbing to such weaknesses, but this year when she had been working in the fields the smell of the freshly cut hay in her nose had sent her into explosive fits of sneezes. She could easily sneeze ten to fifteen times per session: real screamed sneezes that came roaring up from her belly, leaving her bent at the waist, utterly out of control.
Her eyes watered, and Maria placed her wrist under her nose. It was so undignified, so unladylike. She looked up, eyes half-closed, gasped and sneezed.
The sneeze bellowed across the farmyard, sending animals jumping in shock and clouds of birds took to the air from the surrounding trees. Maria shook with the building of a second sneeze, sharply breathed in and sneezed again, even louder than the first time, the explosion echoing off the surrounding hills like a shotgun blast.
Angry with herself, Maria clamped her petticoat around her nose, determined to stifle the fit from progressing any further. After a few desperate hitches, she managed to take the edge off her need to sneeze. Tentatively she removed her hastily improvised handkerchief, prepared in case a third came rushing up on her. She had got off lightly.
She stomped petulantly across the yard, sniffing, trying to chase the tickle away. Once inside the large wooden barn, she looked around for the pitchfork, eager to impress her father by shifting a good quantity of hay into the loft by the time he returned from his chores on the other side of the farm.
Maria paused, light reflecting off the thousands of tiny dust motes drifting in the air, stirred up by the gentle movement of the cattle, penned along one side of the barn. In the past, she had suffered some truly cataclysmic sneezing fits in the barn. Something about the dust, hay and stuffiness seemed to trigger her most uncontrollable sneezes. It made her nose twinge at the very thought. Ever so slowly she could feel her body starting to prepare for another fit. Her knees felt weak, her breath started to get deeper and deeper. She desperately did not want to sneeze in the barn because it scared the cattle so much, but it was too late to escape now – she could barely see, let alone find her way to the door.
Maria sneezed violently into her hands, trying as best she could to muffle the scream. The sound tore through her hands, echoing through the rafters, even dislodging further dust which drifted down through the air. Dimly she realised that this was going to be one of her more spectacular fits and she just let them go, each one sounding like a small nuclear bomb had been detonated inside her nose. She prayed they would stop soon. Her hair flew in her face, her body shaking with the force of each explosion. Each one threw more dust into the air, the cattle becoming more and more restless until eventually, with a final back-breaking sneeze, the attack ended and Maria gasped for breath. She had not been counting, but the fit must have been approaching her record for both volume and quantity.
She pinched her nose to make sure it was not concealing any stubborn sneezes and climbed up the ladder to the hay loft, found the pitch fork and started to shift the hay, annoyed at her sneezing session and anxious to get as much work done to make up for her loss of control.
Suddenly she became aware of someone shouting her name. It was her father. She walked to the big open window in the side of the hay loft and looked out. Across the fields her father was running, waving his arms. He gestured wildly, pointing out towards the road, and following his outstretched arms, she saw with a stab of fear a group of men on horseback coming around the stand of trees and trotting down the final stretch of road to their farm gate! She thought se could just catch her father’s words ‘Maria – hide!’
She retreated quickly from the window so as to be invisible from the yard outside and lowered herself to her hands and knees, creeping forward again so that she could peer out. She watched as her father reached the farm gates and stood waiting as the riders approached
Maria knew of the stories, of how these men would not only steal food but also they had been known to kidnap woman who they found on the farms. She could not let them find her, or even know that she was there. She would have to stay quiet and hidden until they were gone.
A thought crept insidiously into her mind. What if she started to sneeze again? She had never been the sort who could in any way control her sneezes. When they came upon her, they took control of her entire body, leaving her at their mercy until they chose to depart. When she had been working in the fields, the labourers had laughed at her and said she always had to be ‘sneezed out’ before she stopped, and it was true. They had amused themselves by counting her sneezes aloud.
Outside, the men had come to a stop before her father and she felt a shiver in her chest as their voices drifted thinly up to where she hid. They did want food; they were prepared to take it by force. They asked if there were anyone else on the farm – her father denied it. Their leader dismounted, boots crunching heavily in the grit. He cast a piercing gaze over the buildings, critical. He said something low and mocking to her father, which made her tight with rage inside, while her father just shuffled his hat in his hands and looked at the ground. The bandit pointed at some sacks of grain, and without a word two of his companions slid to the ground and started to load them across the backs of their horses.
Maria tried not to see the dancing dust motes. Her hair hung down in front of her face, moving gently to her breath. She tried to make her mind blank, to convince herself that she would not - could not – sneeze. And then she knew that what she most feared was inevitable. Slowly, oh so subtly, there was a tiny itch trembling at the back of her nose. Her breath hitched ever so slightly.
Maria estimated that she had roughly a minute until she began sneezing. She looked around frantically, looking for something, anything that she could use to muffle her coming attack. She bunched up her petticoats in her arms, creating a large bundle of cloth that if the worst came to the worst could serve to slightly lesson her screaming sneezes. Maria cursed the fact that her sneezes were going to spoil everything, and were going to put her and her father in danger, but the very sight of the bundles of hay piled up to the ceiling made her want to explode.
Suddenly she looked again at the bales to hay stacked across half of the hay loft. There were gaps, gaps just big enough for Maria to squeeze through. She crawled frantically across the boards, trying to breathe through her mouth until she reached the wall of bales. The proximity of the hay made her nose pulse, and she prayed that she would not lose control.
Voices below told her that some of the men had entered the barn – it would only be a matter of time before they decided to explore the hay loft. Maria knew she had to act now. She held her breath and pushed her head through a gap in the hay bales and began to wriggle her way in. It was a tight fit but she squeezed her way into the dusty darkness. The cave she had entered widened out, filled with loose hay and Maria turned onto her back, spread-eagled on the soft, downy grass, her head tilting back with the beginnings of a sneeze. Her face took on a trembling, sneezy expression. Through her tearing eyes, she could just make out two men entering the hay loft, but she was hidden in the darkness, a silent observer.
Maria’s sneeze was almost upon her. All that she had to stand between her and an explosive bout of sneezes was a thin cotton petticoat bunched up. She knew it would be like trying to stop a hurricane with a dishcloth. Her whole body went slack, the trembling sensation in her nose taking over completely, her mouth involuntarily making barely audible falsetto squeaks. She was about to utterly lose control.
At the back of her mind a voice implored that her life may depend on this one moment of weakness; that this sneeze could mean the end of the life that she had known and loved.
Maria sneezed! Her head came rocketing forward to be enveloped in her petticoats with a pre-sneeze shriek…but she managed to stifle the full explosion! Her head felt like it was going to pop, her body arched forward, denied the release to a sneeze, and the itch felt just as strong as before but she had stifled it!
The men in the loft started, unsure of where the sound had come from. They looked down at where the cattle moved listlessly, unsure of what they had heard. They shrugged and continued their search for loot, leaving Maria with her head buried in her petticoats, amazed at what had just occurred and terrified of what was yet to come. Already there was another sneeze coming upon her, and this one she was not hopeful of stifling. It was roaring through her chest like a tornado, a force of nature trapped within her nose. She buried her face into her hands, and sneezed a sneeze that she felt almost lifted the roof. All shred of control was gone; Maria had become a sneezing machine! Almost instantaneously after she sneezed a rapid-fire double which bent her so violently that her head and shoulders collided with the bales stacked in front of her. They yielded, swaying outwards. The whole front stack tumbled outwards, toppling to reveal Maria in the throws of yet another titanic explosion, and voluptuous frame shaking with the force of her latest allergic eruption.
The two men were unaware of what was happening until they lay trapped under several tonnes of packed straw. They had not had time to cry out for help.
Despite her good fortune, Maria knew she was not safe yet. An experienced monster sneezer like herself knew that the resulting cloud of dust and hay was already winding its way up the passages of her nose. Many times she had assumed a fit over only to be surprised by a horrifyingly large sneeze lurking deep inside her. There was only one end to this, and that was to sneeze and sneeze until her sinuses were totally clear. Lying helplessly on her back, the long series of hitches and gasps began again. There was no stopping this.
Outside, the bandits were gathered below the barn window, staring to where they had heard the commotion. Above them, Maria scrambled across the floor, desperately seeking another hiding place in the remaining bales. She reached a hole and dived headfirst into the darkness, planning to bury her head into the hay within and release the sneeze as quietly as she could. It did not go according to plan. Halfway into the hole, the sneeze became too big to contain. It was too big for one sneeze even, and burst out as a triple before Maria could even hope of getting her hands up to contain it.
Straw flew. Maria convulsed, trapped between two bales, forcing another tower of bales to collapse. They crashed down, smashing though the flimsy wall and cascaded down the side of the barn. Through her sneezy haze, Maria was dimly aware of the cries of shock and pain. All she wanted to do was lie in the straw and sneeze without caring who heard her. She had given up.
After a seemingly unending barrage of sneezes, Maria opened her watery eyes. She expected to be seized and dragged from the barn at any moment, but there was a strange peace. In the distance she could hear the sound of hooves fading. She looked around her, at the hole the bales of straw had torn in the barn wall. She became aware of her father calling her name, and weakly called back to him. He climbed up to her, and told her the story – about how the cascade of bales had buried the bandit leader, and the others had lost their nerve and fled back to the hills. Maria’s sneezes had saved both her father and the farm. She lay back in the hay and sniffed contentedly.
Hope you have enjoyed it
. One of my many fantasies. 
