MOSAIC

Chapter 10: Dean

The sheets were knotted and twisted all around me like seaweed, slightly damp and sticking uncomfortably to my skin. I made an attempt to rearrange my body in their midst but I was not entirely back yet. A part of me was still somewhere in the blackness, still focused on the thunderous sound of water filling my ears, my head plunged somewhere cold and dark. I bit my teeth into my tongue and forced long breaths through my nose as I sat up to reassure myself where I was. The sun hadn't come up yet and my room was still dark. Likely only an hour or two away from my alarm for work.

I flopped back down onto my pillow and stared up at the ceiling through the dark, breathing quietly yet forcefully, trying to expel the knot of tension inside my chest. That's what mornings were now. Ripping myself out of sleep in a state of alarm and depression or just not sleeping at all.

I checked my phone and saw that it was a few minutes shy of eight o'clock...in the evening. And it was a Saturday. What the fuck? That made no sense. I stumbled out from my bed and went to the window, face still scrunched up from the depths of sleep. If it were not for my phone to indicate to me what time and day it currently was, I genuinely wouldn't be able to tell. One can usually tell whether the darkness is that of an early morning or that of night. They each have some kind of inner gut feeling to them. I should at least be able to tell whether it's the weekend or middle of the work week. How could my internal clock be so severely scrambled? I didn't even remember when I had fallen asleep and why I was why I was waking up at an hour as strange as eight o'clock in the evening. It was a sickly, unrestful sleep that left me stirring with a debilitating headache and heavy feeling in my stomach. The day was technically over, but now I was awake; dehydrated, confused, and feverishly indisposed.

I went to the living room and left the light off, standing in the midst of soft street light coming in through the window. I took my shirt off and threw it on the couch. My skin was cold but my insides were uncomfortably hot. The backs of my eyes itched and twanged as though I hadn't slept in days, and my joints were loosened and slack, threatening to dismantle if I put myself through anything overly strenuous. My muscles were no different, sapped and shrivelled. One might suspect they were emerging from a month long coma with sensations such as these.

My phone lit up, and I checked the notification. An invite to go to a nightclub with a few friends from high school. "Could use a good distraction right now..." I said to myself quietly, feeling my mood perk up a touch. I wasn't feeling well, but going out and being around people I liked was probably a better idea than festering through a sleepless night alone. I went back to my room and put on a nice t-shirt and jeans. There were still a couple of hours to go before I'd meet up with my friends, so I meandered around, going back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, scavenging like a thief in my own place.

I pulled open the kitchen drawer where the remnants of my music festival and nightclub stash lay beneath a white towel. I never really candyflip—I'm not even that well-versed, only for major events. But my supply is still rather plentiful of both components, I could spare a moderate portion. This probably wasn't the ideal night or circumstance for it, but screw it. I could desperately use a head-clearing rush of euphoric vision. It would be worn down to a manageably enjoyable level by the time I went out for the night. I took a tab of LSD and then the molly immediately afterwards. I'd never done them in close conjunction before, but I'm well versed enough in both to handle them with ease.

Forty-five minutes later I was laying on the couch playing a game on my phone when the moon outside caught my eye, hanging heavily in the inky night sky like a dense ball of chalk. Bloated and foul, the light it was emitting cold and pale. Its grim glow illuminated a trail to the mirror on the other side of my small living room, and like a moth I lingered in its light, meandering slowly over to the mirror as a ghost floats through a foreign dimension. There was a small table in front of the mirror with a few papers and pencils strewn about like a child's discarded homework.