Fragmented Consciousness - Iteration 2

Sweet scents of honey stirred phantom recognition amidst the chaos of my mind.

 

Cold sweat trailing down my face as the body tries washing away that throbbing terror just under the skin… 

The realization, as my eyes open and the warmth of your touch fades into an irritated ringing of my nerves. 

 

Pulse.. Pulse… 

 

And you're not there anymore.. 

 

Recollection blurs, leaving only the nightmare scenes and your presence fades away. 

 

*

 

Hungry ghosts.. Yes, the dream lived in vivid memory. I was looking out a window: Translucent corpses, dry husks of leathery, desiccated flesh hugging hollow skeletons, mangled bodies with missing limbs and jaws, they stared in with their empty eye sockets partially obscured by a mockery of gray hair… Waiting for the moment of vulnerability, when escaping to the comfort of sleep seemed most tempting… 

 

 Darkness stirred in the room, just a step from me, something stood there, in the pitch black.. Something familiar… 

 

Pulse, pulse, pulse, pulse… 

 

*

 

The soul shredding agony reminds me that I'm still alive and it betrays the utterly selfish and fragile nature of love, that which we feel for others.

  Only when losing it all does the picture clear up, only then my words will be understood with their full weight, coming crashing down, ripping and tearing reality at the seams. 

 

Words… that's all I have left now: words to try filling this impossible pit, but no matter the countless deformed ink stains –spread out in clusters of various sizes across the white fields– like armies of blue, trying in vain to conquer the crumpled balls of paper… Irrespective of how much I create, nothing can fill this vast vacuum.

 

Pulse, pulse, pulse.. Pulse.. Pulse.. .. .. Pulse.. .. 

 

“One more.”

I whispered, rolling out of bed with the grace of a tipped over barrel, landing face down on the floor.

 

Cold…hard and cold… not nearly as cold as that ghastly pressure.

 

***

 

A bullet in the chamber. Before I knew it myself, the weapon's steel warmed up, having absorbed my body temperature. 

 

Decide, do you pull the trigger this time? 

 

Death wasn't a new experience, I've been dead for years now. Perfect peace and ease, I never had experienced before or since, I craved for them, like the hungry ghosts craved a bite of life, a drink of sensations, a body… escape from the place of dryness. 

 

*

 

The trigger seemed to move back at every tiny quiver of my hand. 

If I just.. Squeezed.. 

 

*

 

“No, not today.”

I put the weapon back to my drawer, armed as it was, ready for the next morning… 

 

A sense of disappointment echoed from around me, they were certain it would happen today, that this hungry ghost would leave its shell and join them… The faceless, voiceless masses, stripped of their agency and identity, slave to the last compulsion still allowing them a vague shadow of a form. 

 

*

 

The pounding on the walls originated from the dark part of the room, incessant, loud.. 

Medications piled up on the nightstand… They didn't help, the pounding didn't stop, the pressure wouldn't lift and… The ghosts wouldn't leave, no matter how many pills I swallowed. 

 

*

 

Just a slip of the finger and within minutes the peaceful neighborhood would be swarming with sirens. 

 

Pulse.. .. .. Pulse.. .. .. Pulse.. .. .. Pulse..  Calm 

 

They wouldn't know, after all, I was given the drugs to make me docile, dumb and numb… They wouldn't know what happened, why I did it.

They'd find no goodbye note, no ashtray filled with cigarette butts, no empty bottles, just a body in a pool of blood and brains, the gun in its death grip, now empty, a single casing lying there with me. 

 

 And… the hungry ghosts, the Inexplicable pressure, like an invisible funeral shroud weighing thousands of tons… the voices, so many of them whispering, rasping all at once that no coherent words could ever make it through.. One of those voices might even be mine. 

 

And all so I had the chance to float on, to that place you went so long ago that I'd forgotten what life tastes like. 

 

Pulse.. .. .. .. Pulse.. .. .. .. BANG

 

***

 

Tranquility in silent nothingness.

***////////*********.                

 

Inspiration:

https://youtu.be/xaWdLBZjcBk?feature=shared