Morning

 

                As the world was a blinking shimmer of moonlight, fading back and forth across perhaps 6 hours, what came to Felicity’s mind and stayed there for a long time was a turtle. Not a nice one at all. It was pasty, and its mouth was a snarled crack. She thought of it drifting dead across a cold sea, blood escaping its phallic neck. She thought of the turtle, alone in the dark. She could feel very little, and what she could feel was scaly and dry. Her nose was stuffed with heated gunge, her eyes were painted with the crunchy gauze of dried tears. Her mouth and jaw felt raw, mistreated and limp. She had dry swallowed 3 pills, 3 more were consumed with a gulp of fluid, perhaps water, perhaps coffee. It felt like a distant memory, her jaw being cracked open while on the brink of consioucness by a suited man, framed by the light of the hallway. He left her with the door closed, to sit and sleep. She had the company of none but herself and the dead turtle.

                It was a dream, or maybe it wasn’t. Her perception of dreams and reality intercepted. She was as numb as a sleeping body but never lost track of the branches of an old Oaktree, tendrils wrapping in in the cold wind of night through the half open window. The space blue was the swirling ocean in which a turtle died, it was cruising a wave and one day it would fall ashore. Her dream of the turtle was laced with the cold, dead reality of the world around her. The chill through the veil-curtains stung the mound of her thigh, but it was a refreshing sting.

                The floor was dabbed by speckles of red, (probably paint, right?) and the door was huge, the handle gleamed like a golden eyeball. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even try to move. Like the air itself was thick dough, her flesh was numb and shivered vehemently. She was cold, but she could hardly notice. The bitter chill bounced along her useless, tight skin. She was broken, in all senses. Her skin didn’t work, her head didn’t work. Her ears presented nought but the occasional kra-kroom, kra-kroom of footsteps along the hall. Every single time this would initiate a rising, pitful fear in Felicity which would deflate as the sound would descend to the seemingly infinite trail of hallway. Where are they going, what are they doing? Who are they?

                Felicity decided with ignorance that they were some kind of gatekeepers . As if. She wasn’t going anywhere and anyone who saw her mangled chair-ridden blood-painted body would know that without paying a second’s notice. Maybe they were children hurrying for a glass of water. Children in really thick, metallic boots.

                Rubbish. Children, no, nobody puts shoes on from bed to grab a glass of water or let out a piss. Now, coming to think of it, Felicity drew attention to the hot kneading of her bowels. Like a heated baby in the womb wriggling out an arm, trickles of urine began to flee like boiling water along her thighs. She could hardly feel it, but she knew, and that was punishment enough. She didn’t know how long she let herself drain, maybe the full load. She couldn’t function, if it wanted to release it would and she would be none the wiser.

                What day was it? What time of year�"month was it?

                She could only assume, hope, that she had been taken into account. She wasn’t left to die in this room, after all. Regardless, all she could do for the time being was stare like a blank corpse across to the windy Oaktree, hoping that her mind would pull her out of the pain. She tried clenching, ticking her eyelids to tire them out. Everytime she was close, her body pulled her back to the joy of gruelling concioiusness. Like a childish clap in the sleepy eyes of a dying hospital patient.

                I need… *CLAP*

                To wriggle free…

                *CLAP*, *CLAP*, *CLAP*.