Every time I woke up, another two or three tabs would be down my throat within seconds. But it’s three in the morning now and I, I’m hearing things. I found myself in the middle of my living room, chest pressed against my carpet and my eyes just keep sprinting from place to place. Every corner is moving and I hear my father talking about the five o'clock news.
My tongue is so dry and so is my brain. I faintly remember calling him, my father, in pathetic whispers on my floor. My words had no weight to them, they were stiffened by my saharan mouth and my chattering teeth. The halo emitted by the street lights wafted past the newspapers on my windows and I began growing comfortable in my misery.
I swear I hear him. I can hear him talking I know he’s somewhere near me I can promise you he is. In my hallucinatory safety I crawled to my computer and dragged it down into my lap. It took a while but there I was, flicking through the forums in my temporary numbness with a grin on my face. I was the talk of their blood-soaked little town and in these seconds where I can murder my anxiety with a drowsy axe I felt an eery fame grab me by my shoulders and shake.
My browsing was viciously interrupted by a fictitious pounding on my front door. It sounded so real, so crisp, and so urgent I, in instinct, closed out all of my tabs before I ran in a clumsy hysteria to my door and swung it open once I messed with my locks.
No one.
I didn’t comprehend it at the time but it was such a struggle to even get to my door and unlock it that in its monotony I couldn’t fathom becoming breathless with it. But I had and, everything began spinning. The farthest recesses of my brain could sense, even hear, my panting; although I couldn’t connect my own breaths to myself.
If it wasn’t clear, my debt has brought me to a disgusting ghetto that has been, somehow, passed off as an apartment. So when I lost consciousness and my weight took me forward my head was well in reach of the door of mine. The thud must’ve been disruptive enough to wake the denizen who resided behind it and, if I were awake, I would’ve met her for the first time that early morning.
I violently came to as a form of collateral damage to the fifty-something widow in the process of hopelessly hauling my limp body onto her drab couch. Words damning the lord and all those who roomed with him spilled from my mouth, holding hands with the blood that dripped from my lower lip and nostrils.
I scared her much worse than I assume she scared me; with her bloodshot eyes widening from corner to corner, backwards shaky steps that lead her to fall onto her coffee table and an amplified gasp all worked together to alert me that I had frightened her, too.
“Jesus fucking Christ girl you’d better watch it before you give yourself a damn stroke.” She bitterly uttered in unison with the minor efforts she put into standing up.
My screaming died off the moment I fully came to. With my heart aching with soon to be said apologies and my eyes watering with the pain that had began to assault my skull from the fall. To what seemed to be at her chagrin, she shuffled her minute figure to the dimly lit kitchen to retrieve a bag of ice and the entire roll of paper towels.
“I’m really sorry I don’t know wh-”
“Stop talking, you’re gonna get blood on my couch.” Her hand pressed to my face ended any attempts of speech. The clump of napkins she had against my nose and lips were soon retrieved by my own hand before I extended the other.
“I’m Rose Cunnings.”
“Good for you.”
“Well,” I paused. Despite her care that I was surprised by, I was stuck. I didn’t know if it was my lackluster social skills or just the circumstance, but I sadly tried again. “I don’t think we’ve met, or, talked, ever,”
The woman’s eyes rolled into a blink. I dropped my hand into my lap and stared in another direction, feeling mocked by the silence and the dull buzzing of her refrigerator.
“I’m Susan. Now put the ice over your face before it bruises worse.” I nodded in response, the space being taken up by the quiet sounds of folding plastic over my bare skin. I moaned in pain but I’m certain the bag acted as a silencer to my discomfort. I looked from wall to wall and as I began glancing at pictures I realized that I saw the faces of children but couldn’t hear anyone else except us in the flat.
I, of course, couldn’t know for certain if she did or didn’t have children but, it seemed that every face projected a dismal truth that I couldn’t yet place. Susan looked in the same direction I was and with a quick sigh she stood, waving her hands. “You’d better go. You should rest that off.”
My common form of language became nods with this woman, scared to offend with any vocal trespassing. “Oh, uh,” I tripped and stumbled over my words and continuously felt as if I were saying too much and at once, not enough to express my gratitude. “Thank you, really, I don’t know what would’ve happened if I just laid there all morning,” I said with awkward laughs gone awry within my sentence.
She cracked a dry grin and patted my shoulder as I turned for the door. “If you need anything don’t hold back, I’m glad to have met you,” I took her immediate nods as my loud plea to leave. And, I did.
I stood in the hallway after closing her door and I finally managed to comprehend how lonely I truly was. I was so hungry for human interaction that, if I hadn’t had it with her, I would’ve continued on unaware of how sad I would become even after speaking with a stranger.
The loud feminine laughs and the nearly mute whispers of the collective televisions in each apartment room beckoned me to file back into my world, my tiny world I now lived in, the tiny world I now know that only I populate.
I woke up at noon. I wasn’t all that aware of myself until I checked my computer at five PM, though. On my phone that afternoon, prior to now, I noticed a flood of emails and as hard as I grit my teeth I knew at some point or another I had to open them. That point became now, and through my half-shut eyes I read the first email. “How’s the face? :)”
Almost as if I was finally awake I stood with such force my chair fell behind me. I ran into my bedroom and looked frenziedly for a camera. I assumed that was the only thing that could’ve given them that information and, I couldn’t find a single item remotely resembling one.
I walked with thudding steps to my desk and looked through the rest of mail, all saying the same sentence but all coming from different email addresses. There wasn’t even any form of identification when it came to the accounts; they were all senseless strings of numbers and letters.
I don’t nearly know what to expect, and what, in their plane, is unexpected. What scares me might just be their constant. My fear is beginning to dissipate and I don’t know whether to be happy that maybe, eventually, I’ll become bulletproof. But then, I’m terrified of that in itself. I don’t want to lose what makes me human, and in that pursuit, I’m growing angry. I’m evolving into a loathing, withering mistake. This has to end, and I’m going to be the end. I will be the catalyst.
Submitted April 10, 2017 at 06:22AM by minutedeth http://ift.tt/2nS7dC8 nosleep
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