Walls

Fighting to remember, struggling to break free of the walls that contain her, something is so close she feels it brush her finger tips. Tear down these walls.

Something, something was so close.  She grappled with it, tried to claw at it and sink her fingers into it and drag it into the light.  She fell to the floor and wrapped her head up in her hands and let a slow, wretched moan of agony break her composure.  Her nails scratched the skin of her scalp, sending waves of pain through her but she didn't feel them.  Her concious was not a part of her physical body, tied so loosely to it that she was barely in control of her movements.

"Something.." She mummbled and crawled dilerious on her hands and knees on the floor, bumping into dressers and walls.  Her eyes couldn't see a thing that actually existed, that actually was. Yet still her eyes moved rapidly, searching, searching...

"Something..." She repeated.  A doctor or a professional would have deemed her psychotic by medical standards.  But this was not insanity. 

There! Something danced into the light and where ever she was, in the darkness that had a texture, she glimpsed it and lunged out.

Within her small home her body was flung against a wall, and she slammed her fists into a framed picture of an ocean sunset.  Or was it a sunrise?  The glass cut her deep, and she slid down the wall mummbling, leaving a trail from where her palm had been punctured. 

"I am.. my name is..." She struggled, body sweating uncontrollably and arms shaking, lips quivering, rapid eye movement allowing her to see only the ghosts and mists within her mind.  where ever she was cobwebs and fog and cold stringy things fell into and around her face to keep her from seeing all that was so close.  She flailed her arms around her head and shrieked with anger and fear and despair.  Words flew through her thoughts but in a rapid fire sort of way.  No one word could make it to her tongue before four more had passed through.

"Home, safe, love, river, night, walk, fear, pain, broken, tired, laugh, knowledge, nothing, friends, fire, car, mountain, pills, hospital, cry, cold, bricks, walls, white" they kept on coming.  All somehow connected with her misunderstanding of herself and her identity.  She was so close the truth burned like a fire.  Smoke clogged her lungs and she coughed violently.

Smoke on the water fire in the sky.

There was something to that... what was in that lyric that called to her?  She felt rational thoughts coming her way but the smoke around her began to destroy them.  She was lost.  She clutched at her neck and tried desperately to breath.  The heat was unbareable, scalding, there was fire.

Fire.

The word fire grabbed her and shook her so deeply she felt her bones grow cold when she thought it.

Back in the world where law and order maintain the balance most of the time and reality rules over fantasy, she was grasping her ankles with her hands, arms wrapped around her legs and her thighs were drawn up to her stomach and chest.  She drilled her head against her knees and fought to break free.

All of the sudden the smoke cleared but the heat did not become any less intense.  She saw from someones perspective a forest burning.  Something warm and heavy squirmed and weighed itself in her arms.  She felt a hot wetness on her shoulder and heard a very far away wailing. 

Child.  A child.

It was her, she was running towards where there was no fire.  She saw pale blue sky, almost white, but its wiggled and it waved before her like an optical illusion.  Thunderous cracking and roaring was to be heard from all around her and it drowned out the sounds of all but the childs soft sobbing and her wildly beating heart.

Forest fire. I was in a forest fire.

And all of the sudden she was back in her apartment, nails sunken into her carpet and already working on leaving deep indentations on whatever hard surface lay beneath.  She was soaked with her experience and breathing more heavily than she could ever remember having breathed.  She shook and very suddenly she began to cry.  She had come so close.  The walls that held her in and kept her back had repaired themself while she stealed herself to experience the rare clarity that came and gave her brief hints of a past she couldnt remember.

She tucked her legs under her and let tears fall to her carpet.  Not so much from sadness, than from confussion and fear.  And then, there, she remembered something all on her own.  Something that couldn't have helped her no matter how intricately it tied to her last life.  A song.  She shook her head and a cynical, desperate smile spread across her face as tears of irony and lost understanding rolled down her cheeks. 

Tear down these walls for me
Stop me from going under
You are the only one who knows
I'm holding back

Dream theater.  How suiting.

 

To remember is to become, become what she used to be.  Become herself, because god only knows who she is now.

Author's Note

Its a short story ending in a cliff hanger. Im doing a bunch of them because they're fun to write and I enjoy doing on the spot dramatic exerpts. IF YOU WOULD LIKE MORE, comment so and ill give a satisfying explanation to finish up the little tale. If not its on to the next one!