The Weird Insights of a Scobberlotcher

Eighteen Sounds Purple Maroonish

I woke up inside a gargantuan headache. Firing up a single synapse was painful. Thinking was nauseating. And there was this beeping sound coming from somewhere. Every time it beeped everything was filled by a pulse of pale green light. What the hell was going on? I panicked. Tried to sit up. Mistake. My brain felt as if it had suddenly expanded like a flexed muscle, crushing against the inside of my skull. I passed out.

Take two. I didn't know who or where I was but I did remember to take it real slow this time. That's all I remembered. The rest was gone, black hole, total amnesia. In retrospect I guess it was sort of interesting. An object lesson in fragility. It started with my brain. Either it or the whole world was buzzing. Couldn't tell which. That was my first question. Why is everything buzzing, vibrating feverishly? It felt like waking up in an airplane you didn't know you'd boarded. Then the first of two waves hit. First wave, who the hell am I? For that matter, who's asking? I had completely lost my identity. It was like I was flailing about, frantically looking for a hand hold when I couldn't swim. You don't know desperation till you've had a bout of amnesia. You're completely lost and utterly helpless. Seemed to go on forever. Hard to say how long. Time is a victim of panic. Fortunately there was that second wave. More a tsunami, really. Everything I'd ever done, everything I'd ever known, all of it, all of me, flooded back in. Right where it was before. Everything neatly in its place. As if it was never gone. Like I say, interesting. If you didn't catch that second wave, though, it'd be a real bitch.

Once who I was had sorted itself out I could take stock of where I was. That mystery survived about two seconds. Even flat on my back, hesitant to move anything but my eyeballs, the decor was unmistakable. The same brutal minimalist interior decorator who handled interrogation rooms and torture chambers had been at work. I was in hospital. Wow! I'd already learned to admire the gypsy's core strength when she hoisted me up off the pavement. Now it dawned that she also possessed a formidable overhead smash. So, how bad was it? Checking the damage was a bit of a challenge. I'd already learned my lesson about sudden movements. So I decided to try and walk my arm up to my head on two fingers. I propped up my right hand on the index and middle, Yellow Pages style. Stepped ever so gingerly across my stomach, my chest, up my neck, climbed the chin, then the cheek. Stopped for a second when I hit something that should have been hair but wasn't. Then I carried on up across what became unmistakable to the touch - bandages and coarse cloth. My head was swaddled. Right down to the ear. And now that it was so close I could see an I.V. tube running out of the back of my hand. What did that woman do to me?

There was that beep again. Everything flashed green again. It was coming from somewhere on my right. I turned my head slowly, ever so slowly in that direction till an I.V. and monitor stand came into view. Didn't seem to be anything unusual about it. A dark screen with figures and numbers flashing and a yellow line crawling across it registering regular spikes. My heart beat, presumably. A few red lights were blinking on and off. But nothing green. Then it beeped and I distinctly saw it, a flash of, not just green, lime green, exactly the colour of the Kool Aid I used to love as a kid. And the flash of light wasn't coming from outside, it was coming from inside - inside my head. It wasn't a green light, the beep was a green sound. A lime green sound. And it was making me thirsty. It was so weird I couldn't help but laugh. Not hard and just once. But again, a mistake.

I came to again in the middle of a fireworks display. And I do mean middle. Not standing on the ground looking up. I mean right in the middle, at altitude. A drone shot. They were bursting all around me. A bit monochrome, nothing but coruscations of silvery white. A low budget backyard display. Nice vantage point though, lying here in my bed right in the middle of it all. Then I realised my eyes were still closed. I was afraid to open them. I had this irrational fear that I would plummet back to earth if I did. Like in a dream. Then the fireworks began to fade so I peaked out of one eye. My bed and I were still safely in place. I could still make out flashes of light but they seemed to be dimming along with some diminishing sound coming from out in the hall. It must have been a trolley rumbling off into the distance carrying metal cutlery or instruments of some kind. They were clinking and rattling together. Then the trolley suddenly stopped. And so did the light show. I didn't know what was happening to me but I didn't think it could get any weirder than that. Then I noticed someone was sitting to my left, humming. It was 'Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves.' Oh, Christ!