MOSAIC

Chapter 18: Unravelling

Every speck of dust was questionable, every particle in need of painstaking examination, every passing moment disputable. Every second and circumstance had to be tracked and catalogued with the teeth of a bear trap. Nothing should be allowed to slip past anymore. Nothing could be permitted to further slacken and bend my already damaged reality. My wasp-punctured brain needed to be alieved with rest, and the gaping wide maw in my blurred conscious-subconscious needed to be fortified with sobriety. These were all measures which should have been taken, but I made no effort to enact any of them.

​I paced around, enclosed in my room like a starving caged hyena, casting bitter glances in the direction of my bed as though it were a suspect and I it's interrogating officer. The stillness offended me on a level so profound it wasn't explainable. There was a permeating evil with menacing intentions discharging from somewhere, but it was impossible to pinpoint if it was even coming from the same dimension. Or if it even existed. Everything was cripplingly strange. It felt like it was thirteen o'clock or something. A time lodged someplace obscure, amid the flanks of real time.

​I downed one last aspirin and chucked the still open bottle at the wall with a casual fling of my wrist, spilling the remainder everywhere like clattering candies. Putting my hands in my pockets, I smirked and footed a few of the little white tablets around on the floor. They looked so similar to the Oxy I'd been taking, and in a certain light, I guess they even looked like ecstasy. They could have been anything, actually. As I stared at them spread out all over the floor I nearly laughed out of amusement. How could I not remember what the fuck they were?

It was light out now, probably somewhere around late morning, and I thought I might try to leave my room now, even though I hadn't slept at all. I hadn't even laid down. The bed rested as it had been, still untouched. Something compelled me to lay down for a moment, so I did, but my head refused to make contact with the pillow. "No." I whispered. I wasn't going to let sleep get me anymore. I had to stay awake.

Like a lurking wolf, I approached a small palm sized mirror resting on my dresser, looming in its peripheries for a moment like I was trying to catch my own reflection off guard. I craned my head this way and that, reassuring myself that it was undoubtedly me in there— a ridiculous notion, but oddly necessary. I let out a calm breath and stared into the murky greenness of my eyes. There was nothing abnormal there, but I felt like I was tricking myself somehow. There was more to this. More to everything. It didn't matter because I was somehow insulated inside this room. I had to go out. Things appeared to be halted and veiled in here.

A distant growl of thunder crackled hellishly from somewhere faraway, its echoing rumble fading into remote depths. I had to get out of here or this stopped-ness was going to just keep holding me until it consumed me. I'd been in here too long, I had to go see out there to see.

I opened my door, and loitered in the passageway like a hatchling on the brim of its nest. I didn't know what felt more ridiculous, fearing to remain in my room, or fearing to leave it. Teetering on the rim of madness, I stepped out into the hall, hands in my pockets and slouched over like I was trying to put on a performance of normalcy for whatever secret eyes might be watching. I pretended that all was ordinary but I couldn't help but turn back and look into my room. Something terrible was in there, or had been in there, but it was nothing compared to whatever had been developing out here. I could practically smell it like it was the raw stench of rotten leaves and floodwater after heavy rain. But it didn't matter, I'd opened the door. And now I couldn't go back.

I walked the few short paces into the living room and the air was jerked out from me like a blunt kick to the ribs. I stared at the thing before me, commanding my eyes to recalibrate and make it go away, but the longer I glared the more blisteringly lucid it became. I was almost certain that it wasn't real, a realization that made what I was beholding all the more disturbing.