Taking Up Space
Predator Press
[LOBO]
I can only describe it as analogous to being shot from a gun.
There is nothing, not even the sense of movement.
First the whites, then the blues. And at that point, as if only now drifting into ranges of the human ear, a high-pitched sound gradually increases in the distance. It lowers steadily. A dissonant roar, now a thousand voices.
Some are conversations.
Greens.
Reds.
I can gradually pick out comments, see glimpses of faces in the violent, spinning storm. I try to speak, but by the time I do they are long gone.
My perceptions fight to right themselves in the gale, but I am slammed hard.
It is the Earth.
From a vertical horizon a snaking aperture reaches me, and I vaguely realize it is my own arm. Using it I leverage myself on my back, thus allowing the Sun to sear mercilessly into my aching skull. Crying out soundlessly, palms now flat to the ground, I can make out the hot, rough concrete.
It burns.
I sit up in confusion, squinting at my lap, my torso. I am bloodied, and unmistakably smell perfume and what I assume to be my own drying vomit.
Comically large heads circle overhead, blotting out the sky.
“Jesus mister,” cries a towering boy. “Are you alright?”
I’m not sure he is real. And when I open my mouth to speak I realize I’m not breathing. Wobbling to and fro, I heave my chest in effort to force my lungs to work.
My lungs explode to life as if I had been undersea for hours, and I agonizingly choke the scorching oxygen in. My own heartbeat -absence previously unnoticed- thundered rhythmic and mighty in my ears.
“I'm fine,” I wheeze almost laughing. "Why do you ask?"
[LOBO]I can only describe it as analogous to being shot from a gun.
There is nothing, not even the sense of movement.
First the whites, then the blues. And at that point, as if only now drifting into ranges of the human ear, a high-pitched sound gradually increases in the distance. It lowers steadily. A dissonant roar, now a thousand voices.
Some are conversations.
Greens.
Reds.
I can gradually pick out comments, see glimpses of faces in the violent, spinning storm. I try to speak, but by the time I do they are long gone.
My perceptions fight to right themselves in the gale, but I am slammed hard.
It is the Earth.
From a vertical horizon a snaking aperture reaches me, and I vaguely realize it is my own arm. Using it I leverage myself on my back, thus allowing the Sun to sear mercilessly into my aching skull. Crying out soundlessly, palms now flat to the ground, I can make out the hot, rough concrete.
It burns.
I sit up in confusion, squinting at my lap, my torso. I am bloodied, and unmistakably smell perfume and what I assume to be my own drying vomit.
Comically large heads circle overhead, blotting out the sky.
“Jesus mister,” cries a towering boy. “Are you alright?”
I’m not sure he is real. And when I open my mouth to speak I realize I’m not breathing. Wobbling to and fro, I heave my chest in effort to force my lungs to work.
See what's left of all you've known
through tearful mists of blood and bone;
fearful, hear them beg for death
through broken teeth and borrowed breath-
My lungs explode to life as if I had been undersea for hours, and I agonizingly choke the scorching oxygen in. My own heartbeat -absence previously unnoticed- thundered rhythmic and mighty in my ears.
“I'm fine,” I wheeze almost laughing. "Why do you ask?"
Comments
-My shrinks'll be pickin this one apart for years.