Tʜᴇ Pᴀᴛʜ Tᴏ Hɪɢʜɢᴀᴛᴇs

Lᴜʟʟᴀʙʏ Oғ Tʜᴇ Lɪᴀʀ

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 61

You fell back.

The ceiling above opened its mouth— wooden teeth of moulded bark spread wide, dark chambers of palates, gaping and slick reaching down with jaws locked— its breath on your face as you hit the bed with outstretched arms.

Your soul soared towards the gaping mouth of desire— growling in the night, you were higher than a kite, your body no longer a part of itself. Mind and soul detached, lost to a deficit of something you called for, yet couldn't hear amongst the crowning of the ceiling miles above your head.

The room was empty— it was you and you alone. Exhausted beyond all sense of the word yet the sickening spinning wouldn't relent in your head. You felt as though you were jumping through bodies, you were no longer you, your soul had taken the form of whatever it could find and replaced yourself— becoming a husk as you tossed and turned atop the covers. Giggling at the sound of the ceiling screaming— jaws wide, dripping void down unto you, a paranoid disconnect running down your spine, an endless tube of time spinning in its portal. A clock face laced with numbers you saw and heard, felt and tasted yet couldn't, by any means, comprehend what it was you were seeing.

Time slipped by, childishly fresh eyes met yours in the dark— time misplaced again and again and again, you saw it turn in seconds as they left your body. A ticking unheard by ears but felt as you sat in the dwindling night. Alone and uncared for, stomach upset and reeling— drawing up and up towards the mouth of the ceiling, toward where your soul had found shelter.

The walls began to speak— loud and clear like footsteps beyond. You giggled more, your body heaving, stomach near throwing up. The banging from behind you careened and caterwauled. Louder and louder and louder— it went, over and over like a broken record.

Sounds scratching at your ears, the ceiling's jaws opened wider, cracking as its wooden bones stretched, the footsteps in the walls came closer. Your eyes shut, the world turned fast— wishing you throw you off. Your body lurching without even moving. Everything around you shook wildly, the elevation of sounds exploding in your ears, crackling like static, unyielding in time that marched unknowingly from you.

The banging grew louder— it shook your body with its steps, as though someone was near. Arriving to push you onto your side, to stop the growing sickness within, to shield you from the jaws of the gaping ceiling— the banging in the walls.

You pulled at your hair with reckless abandon, your follicles snapping— you felt none of it, you couldn't hear yourself scream over the screeching of the wood above, the night open wide unto your quivering body. Your fingers pulled and pulled, your hands shaking, hair straining as your scalp was yanked up and up, head aching through your outburst.

You cried aloud for something, for just an instant, to quell the shaking and sobbing, the noises— the footsteps. Anything at all to end the spinning of the world around you, the disconnected shatters of your mind, blackouts between each moment. You felt nothing, you heard everything.

You cried aloud. Time forgot you entirely.

A knock came at the wall where the footsteps ceased.

You rolled onto your stomach, your head high— eyes opening and closing. The wall blinked as you followed, taunting you as you lay shaking, head ablaze, shifting and twisting in your eyes. Shattered amongst the confusion, mind unresponsive— eyes deceiving. Yet you stared and stared, every image before you shuddering and shaking, broken in tiny pieces, frozen between the frames as you struggled in desperate vain to gather a single cohesive thought alongside the congestion of pictures that made you sick.