A short story:
The time was one hundred seconds to midnight… And I still couldn’t sleep. Something around me, about me or something inside me, felt wrong. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was but I started feeling sick. A nausea so deep it made my guts churn. In my ears, the ringing was deafening. Pain was the only word my mind seemed capable of conjuring. I try to move my body but it’s completely unresponsive. A bag of bones. Dead weight.
Am I dead? Is that it? Or is it something much more simple that’s causing me this dread? Like the stale toast and watery tea I had for supper. No, that can’t be. I’m used to this new diet by now: the doctor himself said I’d be fine. Healthier.
He was a funny little man with unblinking, dark eyes and daggers for fingers. I thought he’d cut my skin open with those fingers, when he made a move to examine me but his touch was gentle. He explained that he was human in appearance, the strange features I told him I was seeing, were just products of my imagination. An imagination that he would cure for me so I can be part of something he calls a “society”. I don’t know what that is and it sounds horribly frightening.
I’d much rather stay at home with the dog and my best collection of books. Doctor Ezra insists on this wonderful treatment to make me normal: a bunch of pink, fat pills, twenty hours of exercise a day and heavy metal music therapy (and the diet I told you about earlier).
Mum doesn’t trust Doctor Ezra, she says that he’s being discriminative and that there’s no real need to get rid of my hallucinations because they make me special. I have nobody else in my life to ask for an opinion. Mum thinks it’s a bad idea, the Doctor thinks it is and the dog isn’t very talkative. I still haven’t formed a consistent opinion but what I do know, is that I can’t have more nights like these. I’m entitled to a break from all this pain.
If I do get better, I’ll miss the hallucinations and their vivid colours. They make every day of my insignificant, long life; an adventure. I wish those didn’t have to go away. I love watching mushrooms sprout from lamps, hearing laughter from the bathroom, seeing the marble tiles on the floor dance… I wonder if there are other people whose brains are as messed up as mine. Do they belong in “society”? I guess I won’t know until I join them.
I’m going to have to put my pen down now, unfortunately: my legs are awakening so it’s time I try to leave the bed and be productive.
