Kairos

The story of a lying, thieving, lonely number 8 on its side

The doctor asked me what was wrong when my mother brought me in. I stared down, staring blankly at the way the laces of my shoes tangled more and more with every additional jostle I gave my feet against the bed of the office.

 

"Daniel. What's going on? Are you feeling sick? How about your throat, does it hurt to talk?" .

 

I looked up for a second, glancing intently at the doctors light eyes against her dark skin. The kind of eyes that are described to be "too beautiful for words" or "staring into your soul" or possibly "placid".

 

"Daniel speak to her, tell her what you told me, about your stomach", my mother said this touching my knees critically, shards of her nails getting caught in the threads of my jeans, pinching the skin beneath it. They had started to rip between her biting them and picking at them.

 

"How do you feel?", she said in a misty haze of white noise erupting from my phone speakers.  

 

To say how I felt wouldn't be possible because moving myself in a way that was different from kicking my feet against the bed was unappealing, unwanted, I could have lived without moving, if I lived forever. Leaving the office would not be an option without a response, I know, but with my feet in time with second hand on the clock, a sound muzzled itself out from the speakers of my phone while I soaked into my pores the feeling of feeling without feeling anything, vibrations  the sound was white noise.

 

That's how I felt. I felt like white noise.

 

As the minutes passed and the questions from both my doctor and mother rolled in on repeat, the sound of the noise strengthened and numbed every part of room, nothing and no thing and no one could feel boundaried without being the boundary itself. With an anger that came in reds and purples for the frustration she felt, my mother palmed the phone from my hands and they did not resist for harm a noticeable amount and neither did my shoulders as she pressed her thumbs into them.

 

"Tell her something. Say something. Move some part of yourself!"

 

And she used her knees, bent to prevent my gaze from remaining on the laces which were now virtually untieable.

But then I stared at her bracelet that shined and swayed at the smallest breath that seemed so insignificant at the time. The light cascaded down the golden heart pendant and onto the chain and I took note of the little scratches on the heart as my head grudgingly tilted upwards.

 

"I've.." And their back turned around to look at me, both with a cracked impression of this patients sanity.

 

"I've got this feeling in the pit of my stomach from the time I wake up through my dreams and then the cycle starts again"

 

The one with the placid eyes suggests there's something further to be discussed,

"what kind of feeling"?

 

"It started when baby steps ended."

"It started when I came to the realization that.."

"When I came to the realization that, yes, I've been a slave to fables."

"Ones that tell you fairies fly and never die and. It's possible to live forever and."

"It started when I came to know"

"When I came to know that forever does not exist"