Contrast.

“Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.” -William Shakespeare, "Richard III"

She screamed. She could not free herself from the confinement of her own mind that left her feeling alone and cold. So cold. Her entire being shivered. She clawed at the weight bearing down on her heart with an invisible intensity beyond measure until her nails peeled from her skin and fell to the ground, shriveling and wilting like the decaying roses she so often saw in her restless sleep, as soon as they bounced onto the white floor. 

She could feel the familiar warmth of blood running down her fingers, cascading into her hands and pooling in her palms. A red lake.

She was a single fragment of who she once was, trapped beneath this white ceiling, between these cold white walls. 

Cold. So cold.

She shivered and dipped her head into her hands. Her own personal pool of tranquility. She drank fervently. Red lips red teeth red tongue red lips red eyes. She couldn't see, blinded by the dancing white walls around her. Her throat burned, ached. She licked her dripping teeth with the tongue of a snake. Saliva mixed with blood mixed with blood mixed with BLOOD. Battery acid and candy, the kind her mother gave her when she was little, red and small and round and red red RED. When she was little. When the fragments of her sanity had not yet been shattered like the bottles she ran along her flesh. 

her eyes rolled back; she could see the dull grey of her brain. She was on the floor, the cold floor, the floor that was cracking and crumbling beneath her. She could feel herself slipping, she could feel the flames lap at her back. 

She was cold.

The heat beckoned her.

Foam. It rose from the pit of her stomach and bubbled from her mouth. With it came the sea. She was on the cold, white floor, slipping into a fiery abyss, the sea pouring from her mouth and bringing life and motion to fish, sharks, turtles, whales. They all laughed at her. She couldn't see them, but she could feel their bulging eyes burning holes into her skin and she could hear the echos of their laughter bouncing from wall to wall. Se didn't fear them because she knew they awaited the same fate as hers. 

The floor crumbled, crumbled, crumbled. The ocean encompassing her rippled like satin, like the flames that were inching their way to her shaking body. She welcomed both with arms spread wide. 

She convulsed as a shark chuckled and bit into her skin with teeth like thumbtacks, teeth like needles. Her blood seeped into the water and tinted it red red red. Fish with hands like God reached into her mind through her ears and nose, wrapping their cold, spindly fingers around the last splintering root of her sanity. They tore it from her, all she had left, laughing as One with the joy and innocence of a child. A child. She had been a child once. Or had she? Was this all she had ever known? Was she plucked from the cosmos, fully matured, and borne a midst the white walls that had penetrated her soul for so long? Had she ever felt the warmth of a mother's womb, the security?

She felt secure now, enveloped in the flames.

Tears poured from her eyes, a waterfall of tears. Tears red red red with blood and arsenic. Fingers slid across her cheeks, caressed her lips. Fingers that painted her bones red. War paint. Red dots red lines red arrows. 

Pain moaned and shimmied his hands up her thighs. His long, pointed tongue hung from his mouth and dripped, dripped, dripped saliva that stung like hornets onto her face. Hope extended her delicate fingers and slapped her on the cheek, her damp red cheek. Fear screamed a blissful melody into her ear, nibbled on her earlobes, licked her throat. 

She could feel the skin and flesh and muscle and organs of the sharks raining upon her, soggy and thick. She could smell their heart's being cooked, boiled by the flames that protected her. 

She could not feel.

Pain, Hope, Fear; they were dead. Dropped like flies from the exertion of their work, twitching into nothingness. The ocean was gone. The foam was gone. The fish, the sharks, the turtles, the whales; gone. She was alone with the inferno roaring in her ears, smoothing her hair, dancing like a wild gypsy around her naked corpse.

She was warm. 

Reviews

[Teresa Elde]

That was really wonderful, it was in a way calming and yet terrifying. Thank you.