Post by Downfall on Jun 1, 2022 16:45:13 GMT -5
The cool metal presses against my sweaty, feverish head... I close my eyes, and there is a flash of light. I open them... and I see myself, as a child, sitting cross-legged. Even separated by an ocean of decades'-worth of trauma, when I see that little cornsilk headed frame lit in a flickering corona of pale blue light. I look over the little boy's shoulder, as if in a dream and I'm entering the room, and I see the sketched out cartoon figures capering on a painted background...
and I blink, and when I open my eyes, I see the ring of light as I am on my back inside of a coffin, a ring of light around my head... and I blink again, and when I open my eyes, I'm walking, walking towards the crossroads, and there is a hitch in my breath as it fogs iceblooms in the cold February (November?) air, and I feel like I have been running for so long...
and I am sure to keep my back to the woods, because I can hear the growls of the hellhounds, coming closer...
and I blink again as I am being pulled out on the slat out of the crown of light, and a kindly, wizened face lined with jowls peers down into my perspective, takes two fingers and opens my eyes up wide... and I am done flashing back, as I come up, sitting on the metal table. The doctor tells me that the lab will be back with my MRI results, soon, and just to wait and stay put, but I'm already shrugging into my shirt.
It's been a long week since CanadaClash, and even longer since those few weeks ago when I the police found me, wandering, on the side of the road, feet bare and black with earth, sweating and trembling.
"Are you still having headaches? Missing time, like you described?"
I pursed my lip, looking up at the popcorn ceiling of this shitty little doc in the box in Jacksonville... one of those terrible little BetterMeds that take up one end of a strip mall; it was the only hospital I felt like checking into, in fact. Stubbornly, I'd resisted every bit of meds, even at the exhortion of Dion. But, yes, I had been losing time. Even more concerningly, I was sleep walking, in a direction I didn't know, and seeing things. But I thought of my partner... and how, in the end, Dion may be the last person in my life that gives a shit about me enough to stay, and how he deserves more effort from me.
So I admitted it. "Yes, I've lost a little time."
"When the mind enters a fugue state, the subconscious can record what the awake mind is blind to. When you lose time, Daniel, where do you go? What do you see?"
"I see..." so many things and various intersecting timelines... sometimes I think I'd be confusing anyone coming in cold or making them get frustrated by the switch in perspective. But, if I felt anything in my heart of hearts, it would be that all of the flashbacks had a common theme, and my wandering in the night was leading me to a conclusion.
Rubbing my temples I could feel the last vestiges of feverish heat underneath my fingertips. "I'm... running... sometimes walking... down a... crossroads I came to a long time ago... and I feel - no, I know, that I'm being chased... and I feel like my time is running out, but I keep walking... And I can't be sure if it's a dream or if I'm awake. And then I find myself where it led... and hours have gone."
"Mmm-hmmm," the old doctor said, tapping his teeth with the edge of a short, badly manicured nail. "And do you know what time it is now? What part of the day?"
"It's fucking - " I'm blanking, and that's not good, and then it comes to me, rushing with a wave of mixed obligation, annoyance, and deep, deep relief at the answer. Because if I know, then obviously that beats back the cuckoo theory for a little while. But my disdain shows through. "It's Wednesday. Tomorrow, my partner and I were driving to some prison to see his incarcerated uncle, before we have to fly in for Evolution."
"Day job. Got it." The old doctor is paid too little to care about this, his wrinkled face says, making notes, "And Evolution is - ?"
How do I explain the fact that ever since January I've been running myself this hard, while simultaneously feeling like I'm disjointed, not running at capacity... going full speed only to trip right at the finish line? How do I convey this feeling that I've never been able to put into words that something bad will happen to me if I ever just let myself take a breather? Shit, how do I explain that for a year, me and a guy I came into this fed hating have learned to deal with each other's shit, and we -
Seeing the angst written on my stormy brow, the doctor levels the next bullet straight between my eyes. "Those dreams where you're walking on the crossroads... what do you think happens if those creatures in the woods catch up to you?"
I'm taken off guard. "I - I don't know."
Curtly, this little, shriveled Yoda who's been working at a Florida Everglades doc-in-the-box installment for thirty years snaps the clipboard shut on my paperwork, folds his hands, and looks up at me with a cut-the-shit lip moue. "You don't see... any correllation. No connection between a man of your age and these feelings of running out of time."
Affronted, I stand. Still weak, but gaining strength. "I'm better now than I ever was when I was younger."
He nods his head to the side, taking it into consideration. "Ayuh. But you're still here on my table, getting tests done."
He makes a triangle with his hands. "It all ties together. Mental, physical, working in concert. Trust me on this."
I roughly shrug my leather jacket on.
"You don't consider that, consider this... you're walking towards something on this crossroads, but you're also walking away from another thing. Is it the things growling at you that you're running from?"
I tip him a look, then shake my head.
"Don't you at least want to wait for the results of your scans to come back? - " I can hear him say, but I leave his office, and enter the lobby.
And maybe it's the leather in the heat of the Florida day; maybe it's the just-broken fever that sapped my muscles for a week straight; maybe I'm tired just because I'm tired... but I sink into a chair in the lobby, and cover my face with my hands... and I blink, and I'm standing in my old living room, in a shitty little duplex cluttered with my grandmother's tchotchkes and bric-a-brac, the yellow wallpaper running and peeling in places and everything in this environment so brown that I see it vividly in my mind's eye;
and I'm standing there, on that ugly shag carpet as an adult, squeezing into a narrow door-frame and looking at the living room covered with all of the gauche adornments and mementos of a house and family long gone - no pictures of mom and dad together, no pictures of dad in his prime, but pictures of a family I never knew - I'm here, and I'm there, malnourished touchstarved boy sitting lonely, the television set his baby-sitter, as his elderly dementia-ridden caretaker dozes and snores in her rocking chair
and I blink and I'm standing behind Danny... he is, of course, watching wresting, absorbing it like a religion, this Sunday morning Bible school of catching a local show on cable access at 11 am, just after the televangelist programs sign off but before an afternoon of golf there is this block and he sits transfixed, transported to their world, and that's where it started
But as I blink again I see Danny, young, long length of bare arm undersized due to neglect and now the wrestling show he stares at has changed into Looney Tunes, and he is watching a very old Chuck Jones cartoon... I smile, fondly, despite everything, as I watch it with him, and I see an animated squirrel's eyes grow large as it fixes on the largest nut it's ever seen -
And I open my eyes, and see Dion standing in front of me.
I have many questions, beginning with how he found me here and not at home, but I'm groggy and out of sorts and not able to form them. My partner, however, sits down next to me, concern written on his face.
For starters, he asks, "And you didn't want to go directly to a hospital?"
Stoically, I straighten my leather jacket on my lapels, "I didn't need a full hospital, just a script for some antibiotics... it's just a little pneumonia thing, it's FINE, Dion, it's - "
"Danny..." he sighs, then sits back.
I flip my hands out, "What? Dion, what, say what you wanna say."
"Danny, listen... we haven't had the easiest year. I know that. But the lesson we should have come away from, out of all of this, is that we're better when we listen to each other. When we get on the same page."
"I know that, I - " I sigh.
"That means trust."
"I trust you, it's just... " I sigh. "I feel like I'm running on borrowed time."
"Until what?"
I can't answer. Somewhere, the beating, pounding heat in my head is still present. I wipe the sweat from my upper lip.
"I was coming to find you because I have to make this trip to see my uncle before Evolution. If you aren't up for it, I'll go alone..."
"No, Dion," I reach out for him, "wait..." And, some part of me doesn't want him to go, because he may just be the last positive relationship I have left in my life. "We ride together. I have a feeling you'll need me for this trip."
Dion slaps his knees, standing. "I'll bring the car around." and then he looks at me, gaugingly. "I feel like it'll be good, as we have a lot we can talk about."
I nod, slumping in my seat a little...
I blink, and somewhere off in the distance, I can hear the growling and snarling of dogs... I shake myself out of it with urgency, sitting up straight, and looking, anxiously for Dion to bring the car around... that feeling of those baying hound chasing me, staring at me from the woods as I bumble down the crossroads in that feverish dreamscape lingering.
But, as I see Dion wave for me to get in the car at the front door, I think of the vision I'd had... of the little boy, sitting cross-legged in front of the television, eyes five inches from the screen, as he took in what he did not know could be a formative mantra in a fight back against the dark.
Thinking of that long-ago cartoon, I felt a little bit bolder, and the feverish pressure in my head felt farther away... even if I could still hear the baying of dogs off in the distance.
It was long after I'd gotten in the passenger seat and Dion had begun driving us away, that the doctor in the BetterMed doc-in-the-box was on the phone. He pulled out a magnetic resonance image of a brain, tutting a little as he cradled the phone against his chin. "Hello, Doctor Elbrook? This is Doctor Fremd with BetterMed again... I wanted to fax you over the results for Mr Fehl's MRI... in the period he's been describing, he was fighting the worse case of encephalitis I've ever - yes, that's right. The missing time and the sleepwalking... and the fever. Well, I don't know, I can say that it may have caused some of his - right, the... well, unexplained stuff... anyway, I just thought you wanted this for your files..."
Right. Thank you."
and I blink, and when I open my eyes, I see the ring of light as I am on my back inside of a coffin, a ring of light around my head... and I blink again, and when I open my eyes, I'm walking, walking towards the crossroads, and there is a hitch in my breath as it fogs iceblooms in the cold February (November?) air, and I feel like I have been running for so long...
and I am sure to keep my back to the woods, because I can hear the growls of the hellhounds, coming closer...
and I blink again as I am being pulled out on the slat out of the crown of light, and a kindly, wizened face lined with jowls peers down into my perspective, takes two fingers and opens my eyes up wide... and I am done flashing back, as I come up, sitting on the metal table. The doctor tells me that the lab will be back with my MRI results, soon, and just to wait and stay put, but I'm already shrugging into my shirt.
It's been a long week since CanadaClash, and even longer since those few weeks ago when I the police found me, wandering, on the side of the road, feet bare and black with earth, sweating and trembling.
"Are you still having headaches? Missing time, like you described?"
I pursed my lip, looking up at the popcorn ceiling of this shitty little doc in the box in Jacksonville... one of those terrible little BetterMeds that take up one end of a strip mall; it was the only hospital I felt like checking into, in fact. Stubbornly, I'd resisted every bit of meds, even at the exhortion of Dion. But, yes, I had been losing time. Even more concerningly, I was sleep walking, in a direction I didn't know, and seeing things. But I thought of my partner... and how, in the end, Dion may be the last person in my life that gives a shit about me enough to stay, and how he deserves more effort from me.
So I admitted it. "Yes, I've lost a little time."
"When the mind enters a fugue state, the subconscious can record what the awake mind is blind to. When you lose time, Daniel, where do you go? What do you see?"
"I see..." so many things and various intersecting timelines... sometimes I think I'd be confusing anyone coming in cold or making them get frustrated by the switch in perspective. But, if I felt anything in my heart of hearts, it would be that all of the flashbacks had a common theme, and my wandering in the night was leading me to a conclusion.
Rubbing my temples I could feel the last vestiges of feverish heat underneath my fingertips. "I'm... running... sometimes walking... down a... crossroads I came to a long time ago... and I feel - no, I know, that I'm being chased... and I feel like my time is running out, but I keep walking... And I can't be sure if it's a dream or if I'm awake. And then I find myself where it led... and hours have gone."
"Mmm-hmmm," the old doctor said, tapping his teeth with the edge of a short, badly manicured nail. "And do you know what time it is now? What part of the day?"
"It's fucking - " I'm blanking, and that's not good, and then it comes to me, rushing with a wave of mixed obligation, annoyance, and deep, deep relief at the answer. Because if I know, then obviously that beats back the cuckoo theory for a little while. But my disdain shows through. "It's Wednesday. Tomorrow, my partner and I were driving to some prison to see his incarcerated uncle, before we have to fly in for Evolution."
"Day job. Got it." The old doctor is paid too little to care about this, his wrinkled face says, making notes, "And Evolution is - ?"
How do I explain the fact that ever since January I've been running myself this hard, while simultaneously feeling like I'm disjointed, not running at capacity... going full speed only to trip right at the finish line? How do I convey this feeling that I've never been able to put into words that something bad will happen to me if I ever just let myself take a breather? Shit, how do I explain that for a year, me and a guy I came into this fed hating have learned to deal with each other's shit, and we -
Seeing the angst written on my stormy brow, the doctor levels the next bullet straight between my eyes. "Those dreams where you're walking on the crossroads... what do you think happens if those creatures in the woods catch up to you?"
I'm taken off guard. "I - I don't know."
Curtly, this little, shriveled Yoda who's been working at a Florida Everglades doc-in-the-box installment for thirty years snaps the clipboard shut on my paperwork, folds his hands, and looks up at me with a cut-the-shit lip moue. "You don't see... any correllation. No connection between a man of your age and these feelings of running out of time."
Affronted, I stand. Still weak, but gaining strength. "I'm better now than I ever was when I was younger."
He nods his head to the side, taking it into consideration. "Ayuh. But you're still here on my table, getting tests done."
He makes a triangle with his hands. "It all ties together. Mental, physical, working in concert. Trust me on this."
I roughly shrug my leather jacket on.
"You don't consider that, consider this... you're walking towards something on this crossroads, but you're also walking away from another thing. Is it the things growling at you that you're running from?"
I tip him a look, then shake my head.
"Don't you at least want to wait for the results of your scans to come back? - " I can hear him say, but I leave his office, and enter the lobby.
And maybe it's the leather in the heat of the Florida day; maybe it's the just-broken fever that sapped my muscles for a week straight; maybe I'm tired just because I'm tired... but I sink into a chair in the lobby, and cover my face with my hands... and I blink, and I'm standing in my old living room, in a shitty little duplex cluttered with my grandmother's tchotchkes and bric-a-brac, the yellow wallpaper running and peeling in places and everything in this environment so brown that I see it vividly in my mind's eye;
and I'm standing there, on that ugly shag carpet as an adult, squeezing into a narrow door-frame and looking at the living room covered with all of the gauche adornments and mementos of a house and family long gone - no pictures of mom and dad together, no pictures of dad in his prime, but pictures of a family I never knew - I'm here, and I'm there, malnourished touchstarved boy sitting lonely, the television set his baby-sitter, as his elderly dementia-ridden caretaker dozes and snores in her rocking chair
and I blink and I'm standing behind Danny... he is, of course, watching wresting, absorbing it like a religion, this Sunday morning Bible school of catching a local show on cable access at 11 am, just after the televangelist programs sign off but before an afternoon of golf there is this block and he sits transfixed, transported to their world, and that's where it started
But as I blink again I see Danny, young, long length of bare arm undersized due to neglect and now the wrestling show he stares at has changed into Looney Tunes, and he is watching a very old Chuck Jones cartoon... I smile, fondly, despite everything, as I watch it with him, and I see an animated squirrel's eyes grow large as it fixes on the largest nut it's ever seen -
And I open my eyes, and see Dion standing in front of me.
I have many questions, beginning with how he found me here and not at home, but I'm groggy and out of sorts and not able to form them. My partner, however, sits down next to me, concern written on his face.
For starters, he asks, "And you didn't want to go directly to a hospital?"
Stoically, I straighten my leather jacket on my lapels, "I didn't need a full hospital, just a script for some antibiotics... it's just a little pneumonia thing, it's FINE, Dion, it's - "
"Danny..." he sighs, then sits back.
I flip my hands out, "What? Dion, what, say what you wanna say."
"Danny, listen... we haven't had the easiest year. I know that. But the lesson we should have come away from, out of all of this, is that we're better when we listen to each other. When we get on the same page."
"I know that, I - " I sigh.
"That means trust."
"I trust you, it's just... " I sigh. "I feel like I'm running on borrowed time."
"Until what?"
I can't answer. Somewhere, the beating, pounding heat in my head is still present. I wipe the sweat from my upper lip.
"I was coming to find you because I have to make this trip to see my uncle before Evolution. If you aren't up for it, I'll go alone..."
"No, Dion," I reach out for him, "wait..." And, some part of me doesn't want him to go, because he may just be the last positive relationship I have left in my life. "We ride together. I have a feeling you'll need me for this trip."
Dion slaps his knees, standing. "I'll bring the car around." and then he looks at me, gaugingly. "I feel like it'll be good, as we have a lot we can talk about."
I nod, slumping in my seat a little...
I blink, and somewhere off in the distance, I can hear the growling and snarling of dogs... I shake myself out of it with urgency, sitting up straight, and looking, anxiously for Dion to bring the car around... that feeling of those baying hound chasing me, staring at me from the woods as I bumble down the crossroads in that feverish dreamscape lingering.
But, as I see Dion wave for me to get in the car at the front door, I think of the vision I'd had... of the little boy, sitting cross-legged in front of the television, eyes five inches from the screen, as he took in what he did not know could be a formative mantra in a fight back against the dark.
Thinking of that long-ago cartoon, I felt a little bit bolder, and the feverish pressure in my head felt farther away... even if I could still hear the baying of dogs off in the distance.
It was long after I'd gotten in the passenger seat and Dion had begun driving us away, that the doctor in the BetterMed doc-in-the-box was on the phone. He pulled out a magnetic resonance image of a brain, tutting a little as he cradled the phone against his chin. "Hello, Doctor Elbrook? This is Doctor Fremd with BetterMed again... I wanted to fax you over the results for Mr Fehl's MRI... in the period he's been describing, he was fighting the worse case of encephalitis I've ever - yes, that's right. The missing time and the sleepwalking... and the fever. Well, I don't know, I can say that it may have caused some of his - right, the... well, unexplained stuff... anyway, I just thought you wanted this for your files..."
Right. Thank you."