Now You See Me

Fifty-Six: A Retrieval

I'm surrounded by water. I'm vaguely aware of a dull pain all over my body, an awful pounding in my head. It feels like all my organs have been liquefied, and every breath seems to gurgle. Oddly enough, though, I don't feel any particular urge to panic.

I'm not sure if I'm drowning, but if I am, this isn't half as bad as I'd always imagined it would be.

I sense movement behind me, but I'm paralysed. I'm not scared; if I'm drowning anyway, what does it matter if I'm in danger? Only I don't feel in danger. I don't even feel like I'm dying. Everything is just...quiet.

I don't mind the quiet.

I see movement, this time. A flash of something reflective in the murk, but it's gone, and I'm just left with a ball of seaweed floating past my field of vision, bobbing lightly with the rhythm of the waves and my breathing. It looks like tumbleweed. I'd always imagined that a train of thought resembled tumbleweed, just a silly cluster of ideas and disjointed meanings that sort of ambled along and absorbed your attention every now and again. Deep thought had once made me drop a vase on my dad's foot when I was little, and he'd locked me in the under stairs cupboard until Mum came home from work. Maybe that was why I didn't overthink things.

Dad didn't like me thinking.

There's music, now, and it pulls me away from that corner of my mind. I'm sinking, and the song makes it blissfully gentle. It's a voice, but it can't be a human one. I'm not sure why I'm so certain, but I am. It makes me want to cry and smile at the same time.

The music stops. I frown; I want to protest. But I don't get the chance, because right at that moment the pounding in my head reaches an abrupt climax, shooting straight through my brain and making me see blood behind my eyelids. I writhe, I choke, and then I see nothing.

-

I woke up with vomit on my chin. My lungs felt desiccated, my throat ached, and I was sore all over. Sweating, I rolled over and spat out a mouthful of bile, groaning as it hit the carpet with a disgusting wet smack. My head felt like the shock had been more than a dream, that someone really had passed a current through my brain. For a long moment I just hung there, staring at the floor with the sour taste of sick in my mouth, trying to arrange my thoughts into something cohesive, but they just kept scattering. Something was different; something was tangibly, uncomfortably different, something so big that it pressed urgently against the inside of my skull.... Only I couldn't put the pieces together, and instead had to lie there with them rattling around in my head uncaught.

I groaned and rolled onto my back, hands over my eyes. When I put my leg in something wet and cold, I gasped, and then felt my face turn a burning hot shade of red.

I wanted to lie there and just cry, but I couldn't do that. It smelled awful in here; there was vomit on the pillow, on my shirt, face, the floor and in my hair. There was piss on the mattress. The sour stench of sweat permeated the miasma.

I sat up. My head felt curiously empty, but full at the same time, as if I was processing something in the background that my conscious brain hadn't been made aware of. Most of all, I was confused. I couldn't remember where I was, or how I'd got into this room. I didn't remember throwing up, even though evidence showed I'd been prolific on that front.

I was just here, filling space.

I looked down, and my hands were covered in a red rash, peeling and incredibly sore; it stretched up my arms and all over my body. Now that I turned my attention that way, the acid began to burn horribly. I looked around the room, spotting a door in the corner which was partially open and offered a promising glimpse of white tiles. I'd run a bath, then – I had a vague notion that this was important. Maybe I'd be able to get my thoughts together a little better in warm water, and while I wasn't covered in nasty crap.