MOSAIC

Chapter 8: Meandering

I stared down at the small digital clock in the top left corner of my phone and watched another minute flick by, one of many I'd watched skate past my tired, swollen eyes in the last hour. They appeared to fly past quicker than normal. It would soon be daylight.

​I chewed my lip and tried to take in a proper full breath of air, but the pain in my chest where Carson's fist had lodged itself was too much, and I let out a stifled sputter of agony as my lungs contracted to cough. I quickly muffled it into the blanket as though something was listening for me outside of my bedroom door.

​I looked back down at the phone. Two more minutes gone.

​"This is fuckin' crazy," I murmured into the darkness of my room as I swiped a hand down my face, wincing as I grazed over sore areas from the previous night's conflict.

​The lights in my bedroom were all off, only a small pool of milky moonlight seeping in through the glass of my half open window, vaguely illuminating the dark space as it mixed in with the glow of my phone. I wiped again at my forehead right beneath the hairline, and then down my cheek towards the back of my neck. I was sweating. A lot. My head felt wet from the inside, simultaneously buoyant yet hefty, carrying the weight of two sloshy, engorged eyeballs that couldn't seem to stop thumping in unison with my heartbeat. ​

The thought of trying to sleep again was nauseating, but the thought of continuing to stay awake just breathing, existing, and enduring my state of discomfort was nearly unbearable.

​"I don't wanna..." I slurred quietly, trying to repel the incoming feeling one gets before getting out of bed to go to work. Five o'clock in the morning was coming like a locomotive, bearing a collision course straight for my already pounding head. Going in to work today would be brutalizing. I wasn't even sure if I could make it to the car safely.

​My guts sloshed and turned as I slowly crawled my body out from the damp bedsheets, balancing my heavy head precariously atop my body like a liquid-filled bowling ball. I was careful not to move too quickly or breathe too sharply out of fear that the upper left side of my chest would just completely crack apart.

​I was going to try and head to work. I knew I would too. No matter how fucked up, tired, or grey I felt. And it wasn't out of some form of burning motivation or rock-solid discipline. I simply got up for the sake of getting up.

​I sat in the darkness of my kitchen, breathing hard for several minutes with my head down on my forearms, the sweat still beading at my temples and on the back of my neck. Then I did the same thing in the car ride to work, and the same thing in the parking lot at work. I moved through my day like I had a spear embedded in my chest.

​When I got home early that evening I slunk back into my crumpled bedsheets, still arranged in the same furrowed manner as when I had left that same morning. I avoided the sight of any clocks and stared at a spot on the wall. My whole chest was a mess of heavy, splashing pain, my head sweltering and enlarged like a hot-air balloon. But my mind felt oddly good. No, not exactly good. Simply un-agitated. Almost completely unbothered.

​The realization that an entire work day had just rolled past my eyes gave me a peculiar feeling. Did all that shit just happen? I felt as though I didn't actually do anything today. I could have sworn I woke up from that dream in the boiling heat and just sat upright in bed staring at the spot on the wall all day. The spot on the wall. Where did it go? My eyes narrowed as I scanned the blank wall in a jagged sweeping pattern, searching for whatever it was that I had been focusing on. My eyes went flaccid from lethargy and released their grip on the wall across the room, staring with empty disorientation at the air in front of my face.