"What have I done?"
Patterns intruded first. Not sounds or touches or lights, but they could have been all three. Something rose and fell with uneven regularity, something filled him and left him, something pressed him in on himself and let him free. Things alternated and could be predicted and in realizing that, Simon reattached himself to time and space.
He knows this space, this void he occupies. His mouth is empty this time, but the taste of plastic lingers, every breath he takes stinging with it. His throat his sore, his mouth loose, and that's the first part of his body he knows again.
Next come his ears. The pressing pulse again them is sound, the tiny flinchings of his eardrums some signal that his brain recognizes, but hasn't decided to understand yet. There's a chill on his face, the movement of air across his exposed cheeks, and the absence of it against his scalp, his body. Below his neck, he can't tell if he's there or not, not without moving. And he hasn't remembered how to do that yet, either. He floats there, happily blind and nearly numb, and remembering how this felt last time. There'd been pain, then. There isn't now. And there hadn't been the soft touch of air against his closed eyes. And there'd been a taste...
He rejects the memory of that taste, his mouth moving suddenly, convulsively. his tongue feels heavy and dry and bloodless, and his lips part with a startlingly loud sound. And then something around him changes and something touches him and he has a body again. And it's cuffed to a bed, and there is pain.
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It takes him the entire day, from artificial morning to artificial night, to realize what was dream and what is waking nightmare. The cards of memory fall into strange, terrible new patterns. His dad is dead. There were no monsters. His mom isn't there, though a nurse thought he'd met her once.
The dark behind his eyelids terrifies him , full of massive spindly half-remembered shapes and deeper blacknesses. A man with half a face, an angry laughter, a hot white box with scorn for walls. Tight, crushing spaces inside the walls of Hell, and light breaking in like death.
Shifting black and white, twisting silver, red stubble against his fingertips.
Blood in his mouth. His teeth feel wrong, and he keeps biting his tongue, his cheeks, his lips. Accidents.
Blood in his mouth. Throat. Hot and good.
When he throws up, the thin bile is dyed red. He screams for his mother, and doesn't know what they mean when they whisper that she's not answering her phone.
He knows this space, this void he occupies. His mouth is empty this time, but the taste of plastic lingers, every breath he takes stinging with it. His throat his sore, his mouth loose, and that's the first part of his body he knows again.
Next come his ears. The pressing pulse again them is sound, the tiny flinchings of his eardrums some signal that his brain recognizes, but hasn't decided to understand yet. There's a chill on his face, the movement of air across his exposed cheeks, and the absence of it against his scalp, his body. Below his neck, he can't tell if he's there or not, not without moving. And he hasn't remembered how to do that yet, either. He floats there, happily blind and nearly numb, and remembering how this felt last time. There'd been pain, then. There isn't now. And there hadn't been the soft touch of air against his closed eyes. And there'd been a taste...
He rejects the memory of that taste, his mouth moving suddenly, convulsively. his tongue feels heavy and dry and bloodless, and his lips part with a startlingly loud sound. And then something around him changes and something touches him and he has a body again. And it's cuffed to a bed, and there is pain.
---------------------
It takes him the entire day, from artificial morning to artificial night, to realize what was dream and what is waking nightmare. The cards of memory fall into strange, terrible new patterns. His dad is dead. There were no monsters. His mom isn't there, though a nurse thought he'd met her once.
The dark behind his eyelids terrifies him , full of massive spindly half-remembered shapes and deeper blacknesses. A man with half a face, an angry laughter, a hot white box with scorn for walls. Tight, crushing spaces inside the walls of Hell, and light breaking in like death.
Shifting black and white, twisting silver, red stubble against his fingertips.
Blood in his mouth. His teeth feel wrong, and he keeps biting his tongue, his cheeks, his lips. Accidents.
Blood in his mouth. Throat. Hot and good.
When he throws up, the thin bile is dyed red. He screams for his mother, and doesn't know what they mean when they whisper that she's not answering her phone.