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My guts begin their crawl back into frigid knots.
I'm a dumb fish, gasping on the bank beside violent river waters; cast out when I tried to swim upstream. I can't take in the air, coated in dry dirt. My hands clutch the arms of the chair. Hot tears prick at the backs of my eyes as I dive back into that terrible torrent: the place I'm dying to get away from and the only place I can breathe.
"It's all fragments-snapshots of the larger picture. A dark shape on the floor." I take a deep, slow breath, forcing my eyes to stay open. If I blink, I'll see. "I thought it was a pile of laundry . . ."
+++
In the cool dark on the bathroom floor I found myself wide awake and sweating, wondering how I had managed to sleep. Cautious fingers groped my head and the knotted muscles of my neck. My migraine had receded for the most part. My head still hurt, but I could think.
There was a stretch of light creeping in from under the door and a . . . a staggered sound-almost like a whimper-coming from beyond on the wall. It was low, but still a shrill sound. A howl. Like a dying animal. I banged on the nearest wall-no, the front of a cabinet-and called out for Avery.
What's going on? I wondered, making my way onto my hands and knees, cautiously probing the cool tile as I approached the door, because even though I was crawling without irritation, I was sure my headache would come back if I got up too quickly. Carefully, slowly, I stood and reached for the knob.
The room was darker than I expected. From inside my hole the light that streamed in seemed so bright, but the room was actually very dark. The strange howl had stopped, but I made out the echo of breath, a grunting or hoarse gasping like a runner makes when they've just finished a sprint. My eyes went to the carpet, where I caught sight of a pile of laundry that had been tossed in the corner, between my bed and the wall.
+++
Shaking my head, I look across the table at the blocky framed, emotionless eyes of Tight Bun Tara. "There's a black spot right here." This memory photo is blank.
"That's alright. Just move along to the next thing you recall." Tight Bun nods her head, waving a hand towards me.
My eyes lose focus, letting go of what's in front of me once again.
"It was a feeling like . . . I literally left my body."
+++
I was floating in a vat of black. There was a burning-it felt like a light switching on. First there was nothing and then it was everywhere, strong and solid, but it was more than that-it was like light was breaking. There was pain everywhere; I didn't feel it as much as sensed it. What I felt was dread; as if a giant fissure had opened up, wanting to drag me down. I was yanked out and away from the center of my universe, into something strange and unknown, where the sun had exploded or died or blew a hole in the fabric of space and it was sucking every particle of good from the cosmos.
That's what the black felt like.
I couldn't see anything. I could feel the floor under my feet, the air moving through my lungs, but that was all there was. Besides the dread that held on like a poisonous whirlpool.
A cry came ripping from my throat like a rush of red pouring from a gaping wound. I didn't know why I needed to weep aside from the thick sense dread at what I couldn't see.
Something was very wrong.
I blinked several times and kept at it; counting to ten, telling my eyes to start working. I took lots of deep breaths until the motel room came back into focus.
Then all I saw was Avery. She was standing beside me, saying, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So sorry," repeating it, like a mantra.
+++
"She kept saying it over and over and over. Slow at first, and then faster and faster, until it stopped making sense."
The soft blue walls take in my words as my mind skips to the next thing I remember. As I try-and fail-to simply deliver the words and not to picture it, the interview room shrinks.
"I don't know how, but I was . . . on the floor."
+++
Everything was a puzzle. I was lost, just like that time in the corridor at school. I was in my motel room, but there was no more room, or carpet, or bed, or light. There were only my fingers, curled around someone else's. I followed the length of them up to a wrist and an arm. I studied the pale skin, utterly confused by each detail. I was just trying to breathe, waiting for what I was seeing to make sense. The palms of the exposed hands were marked with thin slashes.
Red marker lines.
I knew whose hands they were, I knew it, but there was something blotting out my understanding so I kept staring. Familiar fingers and those forearms were crumpled awkwardly across the chest. I remember thinking, he. It's a he. And even in that vulnerable state he looked like he was trying to protect himself. When I straightened his fingers, the cuts on his palms relaxed apart. A long, deep gash that stretched the length of his forearm made my stomach wretch.
The synapses of my brain were not firing. I couldn't find words to identify what I was seeing or think of what I was supposed to do about it. I knew there was something, some kind of instruction for moments of holy terror, times when you find limp hands. But I couldn't find the answer; like it was trapped behind a brick wall. Everything I saw was a question picking at individual bricks, but my mind stayed blank. There were only my feet stuck to the floor and my stunted brain, my hands grasping relaxed palms, and my eyes stuck on a sleeping face my mind couldn't comprehend. I couldn't find the language to process my situation or what needed to happen next.
