Drowning

Drowning

by Austin Cates



It's nearly four in the morning and my mind is racing at a pace most furious. Words beg to bleed from my weary fingers and spill onto the page in the most eloquent and devastating forms.

I feel the characters of my own creation scratching and clawing at the tattered folds of my brain. Their voices overlap and become a cacophony of screams hell bent on destroying what sanity I have left.

An alien sobs on a beach while she dies in her lover's arms; a 16 year old girl begins the chemo needed to eradicate her brain tumor; angels and demons wage war for their right to the world; a lonely robot pines for his chance at love on top of a mountain of hearts; a woman uses her powerchair to roll down the aisle at her wedding to a handsome carpenter; and a guitar strums with a fervent passion while a Navy recruit wallows in whiskey.

All these characters, and so many more, rattle within my skull. They become so loud that sometimes I can scarcely hear the people in front of me. I fear the day I cannot keep them back and they finally make it through the remnants of my fractured psyche. Drool will drip from my mouth and schizophrenia will be a hopeful progression from vegetation.

There was once a way to drown them all and allow me a form of false peace. All it took was a few glasses of whiskey to bathe my addled mind in silence. How sweet it was until my liver could no longer fight my battles for me. Now, with no weapons to use against the onslaught, I'm the one drowning. What peace can I achieve now?

Try as I might, I simply cannot release them as rapidly as the multiply. When I take the pencil to paper, it seems almost as if I were running out of time and my mind is desperately watching the hour glass while trying to get everything out before the final grain of sand falls. Quick, short breaths accompany the mach speed of my hands as the characters are freed from their cages.

Perhaps one day I will know silence as I close my eyes to go to sleep. Perhaps one day I will write the final word to my final piece and sigh a breath of freedom from my heavy, menthol coated lungs. One day, perhaps, but not this day.