I gaze across at the trees.

Brittle branches blurred by the breeze, leaves coalescing into a swirling, suppurating soup in front of my aching eyes. You couldn’t make it up. Could you? Or maybe you could. Me, I don’t know. Don’t really know much right now.

I feel pressure in my eyes, darkness enveloping me. That old cliche. Gets them every single time. When I try to describe it to them. The feeling. Hell, I can barely describe it to myself. So how to them?

My fingers feel numb. My ever present and faithful companion (not the bumblebee this time), the pain in my back, ebbs. Hey, that’s good, don’t knock it. There has to be some positive side to all this. No? No, probably not. But I digress. I flow.

My companion’s voice drizzles away. The bumblebee moving on perhaps. No pollination opportunity here. Not right now. Maybe never. Pollination, I just made that up. Must remember that one for my next session. Could soak up the whole 50 minutes. Maybe I will try that. Just To See.

Panic welling up inside me. Nausea. Bile. Acid. I need to get away. Sit down. To breathe. Every single step seems just too damn much. I will never make it. Am I describing this well? That papery thin feeling. Heard that one before too? Oh we’re all plagiarists here, no? Or, as that man King had one of his nastier characters say ‘they all float’. Makes no sense to me. None of it makes sense. Does it?

I feel a hand on mine, cold fingers pressing, not soothing. The bumblebee back.

Now more insistent. Buzz, buzz, buzzy, buzzy, buzz.

The pressure inside my eyeballs now too much to bear. It’s all too much to bear. I might even explode. Now that would make ‘em sit up. A change from the usual bland response?

Voices, why won’t they go away?

Leave me be!

My fingers don’t hurt any more.

It’s so dark.

Inside my mind.

And I’m lost.

Floating. There I go again, Mr King.

I don’t want to think. Still less remember.

It is too hard, too late, too difficult, too just, too whatever. Make it go away!

I know they think I am ill. Perhaps crazy, insane, a lunatic perhaps, borderline. A psychopath.

Maybe all these things. So, that’s why I’ve spent so much time trying to learn, to understand. To know mine own enemy?

The bumblebee reminds me a bit of one of those who tries to help me. Tries to help me get it out. The gentle voice. A susurration of warm milk.

It. Never. Works.

In here. Deep down. I don’t need milk and honey, kind words. Honey ripped platitudes. Maybe I don’t know what I am, or why. Does it matter? Do I care?

Sometimes I wonder, do you know that feeling when you wake with a start? When your leg spasms, and for one single, dazzling, moment, you know everything.

And then, it is lost.

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The second dark offering from my new serial story.

Each new offering, comprising just five hundred words, will be published here, just before midnight each Thursday, for the next 52 weeks. Want to come on over to the dark(er) side? Why not write something dark and tag it darkersidethursday?

Interested in what came before? Check out my darksidethursday story.

See you on the other side…