Night Terrors [Frerard]

The Hardest Part's The Awful Things That I've Seen

My brain synapses were firing like some sort of hyped up internal aurora borealis... like all these electrons were just crashing repeatedly against my skull in its attempts to form its own Northern Lights inside my head. It was a painful phenomenon (understatement of the year), but only if you were directly involved. That's how it felt right then; like the world was romanticising my problems. Like the murder of heavy metals and gunpowder in fireworks, no one caring for anything except the colourful after effect. Ruining what we loved, destroying fireworks - or, at least, what made them fireworks - just to see the after effects of it all. Killing what we loved, only to shed glorious lights on it, turning our horrible facts into pretty tragedies.

(Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God...)

Artists, especially; the masters of finding the goods that sometimes just didn't even exist. Yeah, we needed some optimists in this fuck of a generation, but we also needed realism. You couldn't just add layers of shine and sugar to mask the truth. We didn't need people plastering make-up over their faces to sugar coat the ugly that could lay beneath it. We didn't need to splatter jokes over serious situations to sugar coat how surreal and horrid it was. And we, most certainly, did not need to romanticise our problems.

(Out of breath... God, God, God...)

Yet we all did it, so blindly too. Even I, though I felt like I going to explode into a million raw pieces, was romanticising everything. I needed it sometimes; false securities. And, with the way the lethal air was making my eyes water and sting, I could do it so damn easily. Just pretending that everything was blobs of colours...The air was cigarette puffs of creamy greys - not smoke - with small sparks of earsplitting neon orange - not fire. The colours were the finest you could get them, I even wanted to bottle them up, and preserve them for a painting, or just to keep forever. But it was of no use.

(Was this death? Or the afterlife? Will this just go on and on and on on andonandonandon?)

With manic coordination, strained vocal chords (and, obviously, a whirling mind that was thinking of philosophies instead of what I was doing), I was some fleshy blur of colour that was running among neon colours. My body was bare, devoid of any clothing that could save me from the heat, making my horrible pale skin stand out. I was some sort of outcast against the vehement smoke and blinding fire (though the feeling was not new).

(Fucking hell, fucking hell, fuckinghell, fuckinghellfuckinghellfuckinghell...)

Being so wrapped up in my firework and colour metaphors, I realised a little too late, I had completely lost myself. I let myself be one of those optimistic artists and I lost myself. I lost myself somewhere between the steaming sidewalk and the thick smoke. I lost myself when I took notice of the bright orange that started to lap at my ankle, instead of taking notice how the molten substance sent raw pain throughout my entire body. I felt sharp tears in my abdomen and fuming half-liquids that seemed to remove all the layers of my (not so dreaded, anymore) pale skin. I curled into a fetal position but hadn't dared to shut my eyes. I was going to force myself to look at the colours I allowed myself to be lost in, even if it killed me. And I knew it would.

(I knew it would. I knew it wouldwould I knewIknew it would... IghKnewitnhfewould...)

My throat gurgled as I struggled to breathe through the creamy grey, spitting up dark crimson, and, eventually, letting a deep scarlet leak from every colour in my body.

_____________________ 7:03 A.M. ___________________

I threw myself up, clenching my bed sheets in tight fists. I felt like my entire body was quivering in after-shock, but I could hardly remember what for. All I knew was the feel of terror, the cold sweat, the shaking, and the feeling of things only getting worse.