Tied down with burning sheets.
Her cool hands are excruciating relief; soft flutters of calm; gentle bulwarks against the storm I can feel swelling once more, drenching the linen and washing me away. My wife shush-shushes me as I am tossed between lucidity and patterned blindness. In the distance I hear someone crying for their wife, my wife. My wife is long dead. I am seeing everything and too much and none of it makes sense. My limbs writhe of their own accord, seeking some form, some sigil that is free from these panic-laden eddies.
Drowning in my own mind.
When The Boy was 4, he had a really high fever, to the point of hallucinating. He enjoyed it. I should have known how that would turn out…
ReplyDeleteI once thought I had become unstuck in time, unable to find my way back to the linear time stream... =/
ReplyDeleteDark and emotive, very much poetic.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the rhythms of the second sentence. Like the concept of drowning in one's mind... especially for writers who are always concocting new realities.
ReplyDeleteThanks all. =)
ReplyDeleteI think I would drown in all the ideas I have, if they didn't evaporate so quickly! The notebook has become such an essential part of my life, kind of like expandable memory... ;)
Very heady short, John. The mind spins, and at the same time the language captures the feeling of feverish confusion.
ReplyDeleteThanks, John. =) I keep trying to play with what I can manage in the 100 words and I really enjoyed getting stuck into the contradictory, 'feverish' imagery in this one.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the RT too. =)