What I felt like after a good conversation tonight:
Like wildfire, her words spread through his mind and down to his muscles, lighting every single nerve long the way with blistering, uncontrollable power. His breath quickened, but not as fast as his pulse, throbbing like the drumbeat from some ancient ritual. The words, none in particular, but instead, the thought that they conveyed, burnt something primal in his soul that brought the first glimmers of tears to his eyes and convulsions to his limbs.
He couldn't sit still. He sprang up from the chair and paced back and forth in the sparsely decorated dorm room. The walls, usually so wide and open, now seemed prison gats, triggering claustrophobic panic. He needed to release it somehow, or he'd burst. He knew it. Thoughts flew through his brain - images of push ups or exercises that he could do to relax and calm down, but each one slipped from the pyroclastic explosion in is head. After an eternity of failed instants, he turned and hurled his fist out, smashing it into the wall so hard that he heard a snap; might've been the drywall, or perhaps he'd hit a stud and broke a finger. It didn't matter. The pain was secondary to the relief of doing something.
A chime sounded, and the back of his mind - the reptilian part that handled instinct - screamed to turn him about. He read the next words, and the flames rose anew. Never had he been so sure of anything in his entire life, and never would he be again. It was this - this conversation, these words, this moment - that would define his life in it's most integral sense. His fingers thundered into the keys as he sent a response - and he felt agony with every instant he had to spend thinking about spelling or syntax. Why couldn't this pathetic technology just transmit his emotion? Why couldn't man have developed a way to just send the lightning he felt igniting his mind and body?
Collapsing back down into the chair, he swallowed his saliva, but still felt like he was choking. He felt like a black hole, draining in the surrounding air, and heat, and energy, in some never ending need to draw everything into him and force it to experience himself.
His brow furrowed with fever, and his back poured cold sweat in bullets. The shakes were getting worse, and the drumming only rose in tempo with every passing second. His skin broke out with goosebumps, and chills ran wind sprints up and down his limbs.
Hours passed by like years. And eventually, the fires faded, having burnt everything that could be ignited. The poor college student grasped at the locks of his hair, hanging limply and wet with exertion before his eyes. He felt spent, weary to the bones as a marathon runner. Sleep couldn't solve this. The emotional dead zone between his ears could never recover from it. It was perfect, somehow, in a destructive way that couldn't be qualified or measured. He was finished, and he only knew it in a vague sense that something was missing.
Broken from the madness, he stumbled out of his chair and collapsed into bed. In the morning, all the problems, all the cares and troubles of the world would be back. But until then, the night was, perhaps, perfect.
He couldn't sit still. He sprang up from the chair and paced back and forth in the sparsely decorated dorm room. The walls, usually so wide and open, now seemed prison gats, triggering claustrophobic panic. He needed to release it somehow, or he'd burst. He knew it. Thoughts flew through his brain - images of push ups or exercises that he could do to relax and calm down, but each one slipped from the pyroclastic explosion in is head. After an eternity of failed instants, he turned and hurled his fist out, smashing it into the wall so hard that he heard a snap; might've been the drywall, or perhaps he'd hit a stud and broke a finger. It didn't matter. The pain was secondary to the relief of doing something.
A chime sounded, and the back of his mind - the reptilian part that handled instinct - screamed to turn him about. He read the next words, and the flames rose anew. Never had he been so sure of anything in his entire life, and never would he be again. It was this - this conversation, these words, this moment - that would define his life in it's most integral sense. His fingers thundered into the keys as he sent a response - and he felt agony with every instant he had to spend thinking about spelling or syntax. Why couldn't this pathetic technology just transmit his emotion? Why couldn't man have developed a way to just send the lightning he felt igniting his mind and body?
Collapsing back down into the chair, he swallowed his saliva, but still felt like he was choking. He felt like a black hole, draining in the surrounding air, and heat, and energy, in some never ending need to draw everything into him and force it to experience himself.
His brow furrowed with fever, and his back poured cold sweat in bullets. The shakes were getting worse, and the drumming only rose in tempo with every passing second. His skin broke out with goosebumps, and chills ran wind sprints up and down his limbs.
Hours passed by like years. And eventually, the fires faded, having burnt everything that could be ignited. The poor college student grasped at the locks of his hair, hanging limply and wet with exertion before his eyes. He felt spent, weary to the bones as a marathon runner. Sleep couldn't solve this. The emotional dead zone between his ears could never recover from it. It was perfect, somehow, in a destructive way that couldn't be qualified or measured. He was finished, and he only knew it in a vague sense that something was missing.
Broken from the madness, he stumbled out of his chair and collapsed into bed. In the morning, all the problems, all the cares and troubles of the world would be back. But until then, the night was, perhaps, perfect.