I don’t quite believe it. I cut the wire and a liquid, red as blood spilled out. An impossibility, of course. Something to do with the codeine. I have a friend at the pharmacy. It’s a harmless thing, except when the hallucinations slip into daylight. I am quite proud of my remarkable grip on reality. Perception has never been a problem for me. I can see just fine.
I awake from a dream of enormous spiders falling to the ground from some unseen source in the sky and when they land, they are nothing but floppy, purple shoelaces. Small deviations.
Lately I am obsessed with wires. Wires and white noise. How Jeremiah wound up at the halfway house. I am halfway to something myself.
I have a codeine dependence. Co-independence. I am dependent on myself. The drug merely opens myself to myself.
I cannot sleep tonight. The words in my head will not be quiet. The voices of people I no longer love run a continuous loop of scratched records, spiraling into a wall of sound. I want to escape the noise. I separate my words from the others and write them down.
I am reduced to electricity. A series of wires.
I have the feeling of being caught in the power lines, strung up.
My voice only comes through on the radio.
Ever elusive, I travel like water, unending. through.
I feel like water on fire, always burning, burning myself up.
I think I willed myself to this sparseness.
Here, no one can reach me. I am pure impulse.
I always find a way out.
I feel a humming, a subtle shaking beneath my skin. I cut the wires to free myself, and still, the red fluid. Perception has always been a problem for me. I can see just fine.
A contest entry
- creative prose. by sideways hourglass.
700 points, ended June 7, 11 entries
Bronze trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 14 of 14
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wow
mesh of dependence and codependence well done and woven..loved this one -
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brill!
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Amazingly writ.
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Excellent
Congratulations on the cup.
What I most like is the balance, or tension, between the druggy inner jabbering and the more self-aware lines in italics.
I saw a shop at the weekend, near Brick Lane market called "I Dream of Wires".
I have a long-unfinished story that involves a cult of young women who tattoo their shaven heads with circuit diagrams, and who get old fashioned electronic components (resistors, capacitors, triodes) implanted into the flesh on their heads. I imagine one of them thinking exactly like this.
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I Dream of Wires is a Gary Numan song. It's on his album Telekon & I believe the concept is taken from a science fiction novel he was writing as a teenager. I adore Gary Numan, a good deal of my writing is infused with things I've heard on his albums.
Your story sounds fascinating. I love the idea of implanted electronics, especially the bulky vintage type. That would be worth translating to film!
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/g/gary+numan/i+dream+of+wires_20058462.html
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I enjoyed this. It held my attention all the way through, congrats.
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This is good. Very much so.
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I can't be constructive. This was a great read. My son knows when a tv is not totally turned off. He can hear high frequency. Love the ending and really i think we all hum to our drummer!
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love this
took a lot of codeine as a child with a sensitive throat, but never had hallucinations from it
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Everything makes me hallucinate. But for me, it was the crazy dreams. I miss those dreams!
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that's why i appreciate sleeping...
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Yes, me too. Hasn't been happening lately though. Too much coffee at night, I think.
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same here
but sleeping is just a waste of time
why sleep when you can stare at the walls, eh?
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