Diabolical digital readouts. Multilayered perspectives in the head. Tentacles of green black eyes listen to multicoloured line animals of electric colour dancing to honeycomb flavoured music in a sunburst of sound. The ice maker's crash. The agonising nights and soft patient lights. Doctor-needle, "Just a scratch. Over soon." Blunt pain is a tentacled slit eyed monster. Sweat. The snap of rubber, red drained blood. "Blood pressure normal, temperature spiked." Watching the drip drip of the drip dripping. The antibiotics silent disappearance into the system as nights merge into days.
During daylight the unstable floor breaths, its aromatic colours calling intimately to my feet. As ripples of steel move in the stomach a miniature giraffe trots by on the floor. Pethidine has me beguiled by magnificent waterfalls of clattering cutlery that accompany Elvis "It's one for the money two for the show." A dinner trolley shivers past on jelly wheels and hot slices of toast begin to ravenously devour me, wondrous apple pies crumble my lips. The internal logic astounds me. Hallucinations as real as this chair, intricate patterns delicately opening and opening, flowering to tantalise. Enthralling the mind as I quench the thirst of a cup of tea.
-Billy Campbell.
Author notes
After a week in hospital fasting.
Adding your comment: