and Other Short Stories

Trip

I awoke backdown on the cold wood floor with a needle in my arm and a tense pain wrenching my spine. Sitting up I found no clue of my physical whereabouts and plucked the syringe from my weak left arm. Thinking proved fruitless so I decided to stop. My gaze followed the hardwood floor for a moment before being cut off by a stark red eruption of red plaster wall. The syringe was small and plastic and thin with cloudy chrome liquid remnants spinning inside. Slowly I rose, grounding myself into my roots of feet and leg. My feet were bare, pale, and cold, sheer ivory against the rich brown floor.

Thin cotton trousers draped my legs, and a blue black denim coat hung heavy upon my shoulders, a sleeve rolled to reveal my left inner elbow, now trickling blood traced with the cloudy chrome. A sour smell struck my nose, my face contorted at the scent as I raised my nose to find the source. The room was empty beside myself and the syringe now laying beside me, no doors, no windows, one light, blood walls, wood floor. I took a step to the wall and smelled again, it seemed that the wall itself was putting off the stench. I reached with my right hand and palm outstretched I felt the wall. My hand was greeted by a warm dampness, hand shooting back with a cringe at the uncomfortable texture.

My hand had left a yellow print on the strange wall. The yellow print sank, the odor grew, and the small yellow of my hand grew. No longer resembling a hand, the yellow grew and grew until it owned the wall and then started Columbusing the other three. The yellow grew, the odor grew sharply, until the entire room had a mustard yellow glow. As soon as the yellow had reigned king of the walls in their entirety, the walls started to shiver ever so slightly. A small oscillation, tremble. I reached out once more to touch it again, and as soon as my first fingertip brushed the dank yellow wall before me, the yellow wall rushed down like an ocean, liquidizing and flooding the floor. A milky yellow sludge of wall removed itself from its place until the room was gone and nothing but a mustard thick pool.

The walls now gone I found myself nowhere. Behind those once red once yellow now gone walls, laid absence as far as the mind could dream. Eternity of white before me. Whiter than anything I'd ever seen. Pure. A moment, stopped to steady my head, slow my heart, and took a step.

I haven't the slightest idea of how I got here, who I am, or why. I suppose I should be more concerned, but a certain undying languidness surrounded and cradled my brain. My feet carried me forward into nothing. My footprints behind me faded to nothing. I looked back to see the remnants of room, nothing. Hollow universe. My left arm hung limp heavy beside me, began to sting. Tiny pin pricks like static blur. Right arm lift to greet my gaze before me. Skin pale wrapped tight on bones, news to me. Mind slow, hurt think. Blood drip nose, fall knees. Surrender. Collapse. Submerge.

My mind focused as my body sank into the floor. I felt the jelly of the floor of the mind of eternity envelop and consume my frame. My brain told me to struggle. My body declined. My legs gone beneath me, arms close behind.

Struggling, my eyes crawl open and my vision focuses on the sky.

Sky.

I'm present again.

I rise once more, stabilize, a drop of silver tainted blood dives from my fingertip, tracked from my elbow where the needle once rested.
A forest. The sky and world and trees return to me. I feel my feet sink into the cool damp earth, my lungs fill, stop, and revolve. My heart is blasting heavy speaker through my chest. It's too much, I can't breathe. Heart, too much. My legs fall, ground again. Choking. Dark.

I awoke backdown on the cold wood floor with a needle in my arm and a tense pain wrenching my spine.