The Commotion, I.

A Story by Inertia

Just a blurb...nothing special. An expression of the creeping-on of neurosis.

I stare up from my knees, wide-eyed, as the hands of the clock casting the long, dripping shadow down my wall begin to slow, slow down, slow until they are barely crawling along at all. I watch the second hand, will it forward with all my might, but it won’t go. Tick. The beads of sweat are welling up on my face, under my brow, in the crease above my lip. Tick. My fingers curl into the carpet which isn’t carpet at all but sand, fine, fine sand, and I can’t grab a hold of anything. Tick, tick, TICK. The world is imploding. I can feel the pressure outside of my head, pushing me inward, all of me. My limbs are growing smaller, my chest is caving in, I open my mouth to make a sound, any sound, and the vacuum pours right in, trying to reach equilibrium, the laws of the universe dictate it so. My hands are trembling badly. My body is careening forward through time, reckless and wild, bounding towards the inevitable black wall where it will eventually collide, smash, grind, shudder to a final halt. All the cogs and screws will spill out of my stomach and shower down the seven stories below me, and the people in the street will look up and laugh and hold out their tongues. The blood is rust. My head is buzzing. I’m at the window. Outside of my apartment, the night is so loud, so f*****g loud, and also perfectly calm. We can shout and scream and conjure up all the noise we ever could and the cosmos wouldn’t so much as blink. It’s all relative, I mutter. I know that. Everyone knows that. We just scurry around real busy and try not to think about it because it scares us. It scares us so badly we can’t help but make ruckus and attack one another and burn things. We do it because we must, because if we didn’t, what else could we do? And out there, somewhere, two people touch on a park bench, the static electricity between their skin reaching out to the other in long, jagged tendrils. Eyes close, lips touch, hearts whir, blood flows, press, taste, warm, spark, feel, grow. Something new is born when they touch, completely original and only theirs. And underneath it all, they are two bleached skeletons, just like you and me and everyone. Carbon, water, all the stuff that eventually crumbles back into dust. I chuckle to myself and wonder, How life can be so splendorous!