that boy needs therapy

Open your eyes.

Look up, look down, and blink; you’re in a room, and the whitewashed walls as so blinding you have to scrunch your eyes to block out the searing pain this light is causing you. It is as if you were comatose and this is your first awakening, the stark contrast between the brightness here and the cosy warmth of the darkness lying behind your eyelids almost alien to you.

Reach out, and taste the air. Your tongue retracts with distaste; the atmosphere is medical and your tongue feels violated with the vaguest scent of disinfectant lying heavy upon the air like a damp sheet. You can’t see your hand, but it is reaching out in front of you, feeling its way forward until it touches something metallic and cold. You suspect bed bars, but it feels like ice beneath your fingertips and you recoil, as if burnt.

Your suspicions are confirmed as your head feels suddenly heavy and you glance downwards – hell, even the bed itself is a startlingly bright and clean. The stark white sheets burn their way into your eyes, and you screw them up again to defend yourself from the unnatural stark white of this room that you feel imprisoned in.

Open your eyes.

You’re somewhere else, a wood this time, it appears. A chill wind is blowing, but you barely feel it. Your limbs feel numb and your vision sways, you feel detached from reality and as if nothing is under control. You narrow your eyes and watch carefully as everything before you ripples like a sea, but all you see is leaves and trees, little else.

You feel as if you are intoxicated, but you don’t recall letting anything pass your lips as of late and your throat is parched, the roof of your mouth much akin to sandpaper. Do you dare touch it? You’re not sure, and you stand still. As still as you can manage, your eyes still swimming and reality just out of reach. Your body feels small, as if being crushed under the weight of an ocean.

Suddenly, your foot makes a move and you stumble, the scraping of a boot on leaves jolting your eyes wide open briefly and making you incredibly aware of the sounds of approaching men. It is like you have just surfaced, the clarity of sound is almost painful. Something tells you to escape – instinct maybe – but instead you collapse forward and your eyes close again.

Open your eyes.

Needles, everywhere, as far as the eye can see. Which appears not to be particularly far; your vision blurs just a few feet in front of you and, though you can feel the safe ends of syringes beneath the rough skin of your fingertips, your own body remains a mystery to you. You scrabble mentally to even recall the colour of your own skin.

This feels so surreal and a part of you feels like laughing at the possibility that this is reality. But the rest of you remains deadly silent, begging the question of how real this is. You feel a sinking sensation that perhaps you are trapped in this, eh, reality. Perhaps this is the real one and the ones that have come before are fake.

Your fingers grasp a syringe, selected entirely at random and a shock runs through your fingers, causing you to almost drop it, but somehow you hold on. The electricity dies in a few moment and you’re left feeling slight numbness as your hand reaches round to your upper arm – the other arm – and the pinprick of pain causes you to shut your eyes, as if it could shut the whole world out.

Open your eyes.

Sudden alertness; not what you were expecting. Noise everywhere, barely distinguishable shouts and the occasional scream – is it a scream? You aren’t so sure any more and the situation is uncomfortable. The cloying atmosphere is so humid but your clothes refuse to unstuck themselves from your body and you can barely move for unidentifiable bodies around you.

Something tells you to look up, and you do, eyes narrowing against the sunlight streaming down to the mess of people and lord knows what else below. Or, rather, lack thereof. There’s a dark shadow blocking out the light hat should blind you as you look up, and for the moment it has little form, but you’re suddenly consumed with overpowering dread of the object.

The shape becomes clearer and it’s a long, cylindrical object, and it looks heavy. Time seems to slow and the object moves closer, at a horribly leisurely pace, but it seems inevitable. Your limbs refuse to move as it approaches and you close your eyes again as it nears your head, as it quickens again within a foot of your skull. The part of your mind still functioning screams in protest and then succumbs to a brief flash of pain as whatever it is connects.

Open your eyes.

drawings and writings only. nothing else.