Quietus

For all the different days of the year, I had weeks for each stored in my memory. I relived every moment that ever meant a thing to me. I am reliving a moment right now. Tomorrow will feel like today. Tomorrow will feel like last week. All of my cigarettes are gone.

I could hear the synthetic chirping of some kind of machine next to me. First a chirp, then a screech. My eyes shot open. I couldn’t work out where the light was coming from, but it was too bright. I got angry. Who put me here? I began to panic. I needed a cigarette. All of my cigarettes were gone. I turned over in my bed. My cell was high in some compound, the walls reeked of torpidity. Someone died here. Many have died here. This place was mathematical.

I jolted my body off of the bed. I wasn’t restrained, but I was drugged. I felt something dislodge from my nose followed by the familiar scent of a bloody nose. I had an interesting childhood. I was tough. I will get the fuck out of here, I told myself.

A familiar voice interrupted my mental thrashing. I rose from the ground in the arms of an angel of some sort. Brightly colored blue attire, a wedding ring, a very familiar perfume. I could not make out her face. I couldn’t speak to her. My words were seeds for some other season.

As I began to calm, her voice began to stand out amongst the bustle of beeps and alarms and shrieking and sighs.

Mister Vanda, You’ve just woken from a coma. You need to relax and try to focus on what I’m saying.

The illusion was much more amusing. It took many minutes for me to become fully aware of my insignificance. I was paralyzed, unable to speak, and I couldn’t breathe. Perhaps the latter few of those problems were related. In the mess of these thoughts, I feel back into sleep.

I woke to cigarette smoke, the sun no longer an offender of my eyes, not a soul but the woman beside me. She was clearly different from the nurse, her silhouette was lithe and her hair was neat. It was too dark to speak confidently about what she looked like, but the second-hand smoke was beautiful. I could smell it through the tubes of plastic. I began to tilt my head and speak, but as soon as I stuttered out a greeting, another bath of blinding hospital fluorescence ripped through my will. I muscled through. I adjusted. It was my wife, definitely. The last memories I could speak for in my waking life were with her. Wanting to leave her. I can’t remember if I told her. It was an interesting conundrum… but I could not, with any measure of effort, remember much before or after those few days. They seemed only moments away, easily accessible, but lonely in my mind like a few books resting against each other on an otherwise empty bookshelf.

//To re-frame, re-cut, and re-post later. This is merely an outline.