The Snakepit

This was a very tough chapter to write and it is not completed as I had to give myself a break. It's the first time in the story the protagonist shows a different side.

I walk into the run-of-the mill, lacklustre hotel room having picked up my luggage which had been conveniently waiting for me outside the door.

It was late, about 2.30 in the am, and deservedly so I climbed straight into bed.

To my surprise the usual monkey mind which, so often my bed fellow in my typical nigh-time routine, was sleeping in his cage. The long flight had clearly knocked both of us out.

I sank into the pre-puffed pillow and went to sleep.

I rested well up until about 5.30 when my phone starts ringing from within my jacket across the room. By the time I had fumbled my way out of bed and nearly broken my ankle on my luggage it had stopped ringing. The screen showed that a number of international origin had called but the usual caller ID you get in England had not registered.

I take it with me, place it on the bedside table and get back into bed.

10 minutes later, just as I was drifting back to sleep, the notification goes off instructing that a voicemail had been left.

For the love of God, I don't know why, I grabbed the phone and listened to the message.

I was greeted with the tones of an irate George, my ex-girlfriend. She had just found out from my mother that I had absconded off to the states at the drop of a hat.

The actual content of the message was unclear under the anger and abusive emotional outbursts. I ended the message just at the point of hearing myself being accused of being a little boy who always runs away from his problems and that I needed to man up and face my responsibilities.

This was exactly why I had left, yes I couldn't face up to my responsibilities, I was a broken man, a bird with a broken wing caught in a snake pit, each time the wing healed just enough for me to fly a little bit, the snake would come along and take another bite. Absconding was my only option.

Restraining myself from launching the handset across the room, I pulled the covers over my head and closed my eyes.

'Wouldn't it be great to be dead!' The thought rose up through my consciousness and bit hard into my reality.

Before I could reflect a chasm of self-pity and self-loathing formed itself under the bed, a grey hole of despair with its own gravitational pull begins sucking me deeper and deeper into it. I tried with all of my might not to be pulled in but it was no use, I was too tired, out of drugs and drink and incapable of firing at least two neurones of positivity in my mind.

The demons were out of the closet, and I was going to have to ride them out until they had finished torturing me.

Like an elevator plummeting down a despair shaft into hell I continued to fall. Every so often at each new floor, bigger and stronger demons would jump on board, ganging up on me with greater and greater ferocity.

I was on board the Bi-polar express, yet this was not one train but two. One careering East to Doomsville taking my serotonin as a passenger, the other rocketing West to Planetmania each mile fuelling up with more and more adrenaline.

With this comes the Panic, oh the panic, blind panic which can only accompany the feeling of immediate impending doom.

Its like Death himself has jumped into bed next to me and whispered in my ear that eternal damnation is forever mine, there is no escape and that my soul belonged to him to do as he pleases. He could torture me at whim whenever he liked and there was f**k all I could do about it.

My heart pumping and with a body soaked in sweat I throw myself to my feet and stagger around the room.

Give me some f*****g drugs, a voice screams in my head. Anything to take away the pain.

I ripped open my luggage and find my wash bag. The only thing of any value at this point are some ibuprofen tablets. I open the box and two strips of eight pills land in my lap.

For a moment I contemplate taking all of them. The temptation for complete self-annihilation was both morbid and mesmerising. Thankfully I take only 2 with me to the bathroom, I knock them back with some ice cold water and head back to bed.