It's that burning sensation that gets her the most.
The one in her nose that hides away just at the edge of the closest borders of her mind; right on the threshold of befuddled acknowledgment; scalding and overwhelming and sending her head swimming misshapen circles as it sloshes conflicting tiderays around the brain that never truly feels like it's connected to her any longer.
She'd lost her brain months ago, and yet she was just now missing the concept of the thing entirely. A simple mistake, or a well-planned execution to a series of goals she never quite had the heart to stray and dawdle lines from. A long line of problems and issues better - more healthily - left forgotten in the past where it belonged, but, with her forsaking the act of eating the past few weeks, disheveled showering schedule, downtrodden mindset, staying up until daybreak and sleeping through the afternoon, and distance from the closest, most important things in her entire life thus far, she wasn't living all too healthy anyhow.
There's another burning, there, just now. It swells up in her gut without a vocal warning or a telltale silent sign, then swarms her entire chest with unbearable energy, only to disappear once more until its sneaking reemergence seconds later. This cycle has become nothing but a timeless routine to her and, unable to do anything about it in her state, she breathes much too noticeably in her own two ears and sighs hot air into the confines of her room, sickeningly, unhelpfully mixing with the humidity from the little white machine at the far corner by her hamper.
As with rain after a maple forestry issue, there's a wetness to this whole ordeal, and it only serves to make her further ignore the rest of her body lying in the mile-thick fleece blanket covering her figure. Whenever a hindleg dares kick deadly about beneath the shroud, she feels the droplets and slivers and beads and feeling of it, and she knows that there's not a single thing she can try and do to fix it all trapped against the collar and leash of the frozen lake chipping and crackling aimlessly away upstairs. It would serve well against her scalp, or in her mouth even, but it stays right there on her legs and cooks and cooks and cooks until it's nothing but a boiling point of a reminder that staring at her popcorn ceiling paint, her red-display alarm clock, and her wall full of drawings made by friends long ago isn't doing her any better, nor putting her mind to even the slightest of ease.
Another swirling of heat stabs at her breast, and she barely has half the quarter of a mind to mind it until the sea comes again, rolling around and unleashing a more than hellish kind of assault that is now wetting the inner pits of her forelegs and the tops of their wrists. Now exposed to the stagnant air, she feels an Artic breeze flash up her spine with the blink of a swell, then goes hot all over until another gust swoops by and chills her once more.
The soft squelching and wheezing of her humidifier is a constant sound, like the long arms of a grandfather clock or the blank white machine next to her late grandfather. With each wave of white noise and every ragged emotion and a never missed beat of shied-away events passed, it reminds her of its presence even as she's forgetting her own. The room is a rectangle, like a personalized prison cell with band posters along the walls and a closet full of awful dresses and a long drawer of assorted clothes and a chair in the middle and granola bars and crackers and cookie dough and milk jugs and water and a pizza box on the floor and a desk with stacks of papers and a shut computer and an alarm clock that seems to be communicating to her in the form of auditory beeps she's sure would be much more intimidating and heart-stalling at literally any other occurrence.
She feels for her left foreleg and wills its nerves to the small toggle switch, but she remains at her pre-final step and simply imagines the action for a time, feeling hot and cold and hot and cold and hot again until simply settling back down onto her two stacked pillows and tracing the shadow of her dormant ceiling fan with uncared-for inaccuracy.
A band is playing, with trombones and tubas, and flutes and clarinets, and violins and violas, and cellos and basses, and basoons and oboes, and pianos and guitars, and harps and ocarinas, and drums and cymbals and gongs, and they're playing right beside her but way up front on stage, pressing keys, articulating notes, blowing reeds, puffing cheeks, strumming strings, bowing lines, swaying here then there, lifting and placing hooves, and joining together with one big destructive crash that echoes in the chambers and sounds for miles and miles around, reaching the bottoms of her legs and icing them again and again. Crash and bang and crash and bang one after another after another after two more until, finally, the triangle gets their solo.
Ding!
There's a break– and then it starts back up again.
She moans to nothing, arching her back and throwing her cheek against her pillow, staring at her blue wall looking more black than anything else. It would put her future to abrupt shame. This isn't satisfactory, not even close, and she flips right over and crosses her right hindleg over her left with a bend, inwardly praying she's found a better positioning. She's been sleeping in a stable that hasn't done her a single favour, and the hay all strewn haphazardly about has begun scratching her back the way she wished she could easily lift her fur from her skin to rid herself of the buildup of murky water discoloring her night.
A single thought reaches her head, and a warm face filters through the milky ocean to smile at her and chuckle, and then she feels the horrors of her raggled mane fold up with the pillow and she falls back into it all, fruitlessly lifting a leg and tossing it back down again. Back up. Back down. At an angle. Then back down, forever.
A bell is chiming now, out of sync with the masterful orchestra now blending with the triangle's steady reverberation. Both participants continue without a fuss, but she shakes her head no and is only greeted with a gasoline canister waiting to spill onto the floor and burn up in a smokey, hungry tornado waiting patiently for the day it could finally reign over her every sunset.
It's getting louder now. She feels colder with each swoop; she seethes with each choke.
She wishes she could jump clear from her bed and greet the warm grins and the wonderful flowers, but, the lamp in the corner freshly materializing, the humidifier puffing out its last breaths, her tongue lapping desperately at her lips, and her eyelids trying their damndest to stomp away her vision, the only thing she can do is sit in a fever rest, and imagine every good Godsdamn fucking thing that had ever happened to her.
And the search never ends. It burns.
Author's Note
this started out as a blog i made while sick as hell awhile back
slightly edited, i decided to publish it
im feelin it
