Everything

Everything is sped up, except the time. The time stays steady and constant as the world and I thrum around it, thrumming and thrumming until something clicks to make us stop. Through the speed I see shapes and visions and memories and moments just out of my reach and I feel like running to catch them. But I can't run. I can't stand. It gets light then, lighter and airier than it is already - and it is very light. I do not feel that I am inside this body and this body doesn't feel me. I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is erratic, everything flicks out and snatches and catches at the air. I catch at my teeth as the words try to slip through, out of their cage and into the space in front. It is not the words and the mouth that misbehave; it is the letters and the fingers that tap out their treachery and I can do nothing to stop them. They just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is twisted, wrong and the wall doesn't look like it should do. Instead it stares out, each small lump gazing at me and following as I move. All the colours seem to have changed in this haste, as if they might be different when I'm not looking but quickly turn back so that I don't see them. I'm too fast for them now. I'm too fast and they're forgetting and they're different. The words on my wall pulse, they want to be read, they want to be known. I won't look at them, scared they may not say the things that I'm used to, worried that their words might twist and become darker. They're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is so loud but there is nothing but the unfamiliar music drifting in and out of my ears, and the tapping. Still there is a buzzing inside my head and my room and the space around. Sometimes the familiar sounds creep up and shock me, I don't expect them but they come anyway and I find myself clinging to the strings between this body and I. If all was quiet and this music was away from my senses I would be forced to listen to the silence and the walls would continue to stare and I would shrink smaller and smaller until I was no more. But the music keeps playing. There is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything breathes a scent remembered but it runs away and it doesn't let me hold it and recognise it as I should. I can't find it when it hides between the clutterings of this room; I know it's there but it slips past, it doesn't want me to find it. And I don't want to make it angry, so I let it slip. It keeps sliding away and between and there is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything feels alive, my fingers recoil as if bitten and they don't stay in the same place for too long. They can't. They don't want to be caught and I don't want them to either. I don't understand why these living things are so eager to hurt and scrape and I don't understand why they're not moving. They stay still but I don't want to turn away. Just in case. They bite at me and it keeps sliding away and between and there is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is angry and sad and malovent but it still grins and emits happiness - so much so that it must still feel it. Everything is mixed up in this room and nothing knows where it's going and my body seems far away. I want to move towards it, to reclaim it like I should but everything is strange and I and my body keep moving further apart without meaning to. My voice doesn't work, I want to speak but nothing happens. It is still there, sitting in the back of my throat along with my body but I can't make my body use it, we're too far away. I want to tell everything to calm and to move back to their normal places and colours and sounds but I can't and I'm stuck here. It grins and they bite at me and it keeps sliding away and between and there is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

And I'm stuck here.

Shells

And here we are again in the turning, ticking, moving, roving, itching, scratching, licking, biting, beating, thumping turning of the world. And it turns, yes. In a full circle before falling off the pin it is sat on, sharp and shiny and malevolent to the core. It takes you by the hand and it leads you to that little rose garden, closer to the bay and that white cottage than you would have at first thought. When the door opens you must be careful not to scream and scare the inhabitants who are always sitting there in the front room whispering and talking and cawing and nattering and screeching into the glass of the windows. They are easily frightened.

So are you, I remember from the days we would run barefoot in the fields and not care about the worms between our toes. You found a dead bird one day, half eaten and rotten but you still called it beautiful or I thought you called it beautiful. What I imagine seems so real that it might be true if I tell you enough so I tell you every day, I make sure I repeat it word for word and talk as fast as possible so you can't miss anything. Like now I'm talking and talking and talking and you're there listening, you're always there listening, listening at the door, at the wall, at the floor, at the cupboard and at that sick little hole at the sink. You put it there to remind me not to get ill or I'll be like the plug-hole all silver and filled with such small rips that a mouse might have made them but they are perfect, perfectly round. It's almost like an art.

You liked art, you always liked art, you were always arting around in the garden beneath the ferns. It's not the same as the rose garden and it's not at all near the sea. You liked it by the sea, didn't you? I always liked it by the sea and the sand and the smell of the salt in your hair and on your fingers after you picked up all of the shells you could see and put them in the bucket.

Then you stood on them. You crushed the shells and the bucket and it makes me feel like you're glaring at me. You were always glaring at me, you're still glaring at me even though I am in this bed feeling oh so sickly, you still glare. You look at me with those eyes and they tell me it is my fault. Mine. That you glare at me so when I have done nothing but count the tiles on the ceiling and pretended that those shells weren't in splinters. But you're always here, aren't you? Always glaring and looking a gaping at me. Gawping at me.

Why are you always looking at me?