The Weird Insights of a Scobberlotcher

Four Sounds Smudgy Black

I'm not sure how long this went on. Maybe a week. Maybe two. More likely a month. My blackouts gradually matured into a zoetropic series of flickers. It was more functional because you were never gone long enough to really miss anything important. And it was a good match for watching television. I watched a lot of television. It helped to be heavily pixelated. Then the blackouts suddenly stopped and the condition changed. The ten ton vacuum spontaneously exploded out from my brain and formed a bubble that completely enclosed me. I'd estimate it's diameter at about ten feet. It was like the Germans moving out and the Russians taking over. I wasn't directly occupied anymore but everything around me was filtered and distorted by my bubble. The most innocent and mundane of perceptions were altered by it. The bubble was gloom and everything that I saw, heard, tasted, felt, smelled, every incoming sensation, was infected and deformed by it as it pierced the surface.

My mother may have been in heaven watching all this. Certainly hope so. She spent enough time getting ready for it. She had an entire arsenal of bromides for the everyday that she brought with her from the farm. "When God made time He made plenty of it" when you were in a rush. "You must be healthy, your water is very clear" when your tea was too weak. "Friendship is a Gordian knot which angels hands have tied" when you had a fight with a buddy. "Cheer up. Don't be such a gloomy Gus," when you were down in the dumps. Well, I wasn't just down in the dumps visiting then, Ma, I had taken up residence. The sweetness of existence was fouled by a constant scent of garbage. And the really bizarre part was that I was fully aware that this dump was entirely of my own creation. Each and every sensory input was tainted and added to the heap. And I was doing it. I couldn't stop it. Worse still, I felt like I had to isolate myself, cut myself off from human contact wherever possible. I was untouchable. Didn't want to be touched. Which wasn't supportable. I had got away with it so far with my wife the ghost by mimicking a combination of custom and learned behavior but that was no long term strategy. And soon friends would start their interrogations. "Where have you been? Why don't you ever reply to my emails? Why don't you ever call back?" The prospect of having to deal with any of that made me feel like I was sick from radiation poisoning.

After weeks and weeks of this my thoughts turned to taking out the trash. Nothing definitive. There were no plans. But as lifestyles go this new one sucked mightily. Going from living in a vacuum to living in a bubble was no consolation. Instead of living in and under a huge, exhausting weight I now lived in a world tainted by a veneer of shit as far as the eye could see. I used to say that they would have to drag me from this life with a tow truck, that I could simply not understand why anyone would be so desperate as to end their own life. Now I found myself slapping my forehead and saying "duh." And that's when I saw the light.