Mad Tangents

by slasher_13

"Doctor, save me from myself! I am dying from the inside out." the man sitting on the cold metal table says, with fear mounting and his eyes red from lack of sleep: too afraid to sleep. He trembles and sweats. The doctor walks across the room, black and white tiles, over to the sink and begins scrubbing; he scrubs and soap bubbles float up into the air like mad pixies. There's a semi translucency to the bubbles. They are beautiful and floating up and then down, down, down, until they hit the floor and pop. They wink of out existence. The patient sees this and screams hysterically.

"No!! Not that! Anything but that! Please God, no!!" Behind a green surgeon's mask emotions mean little to the outside world. The doctor's face is the mask and the mask his face. His eyes are of no comfort, looking through little, round coke bottle specs cased in heavy frames. Cold hands, cold hands, cold hands on your face, So cold they burn. Flesh, blood, tissue, all shrieking at the touch. You lose control. You spiral to the ground, but the ground has betrayed you. The ground isn't there; there is only see-through nothingness. The cold hands are touching, but no one is operating them. No soul is guiding them. Just an emotionless body wearing a sterile mask pushing you deeper and deeper down.

The patient is too mesmerized by the fear. Losing control: systemic system failure.

[A fatal error has occurred, press any key to continue.]

Reduced to rubble, man is nothing more than a pile of guts and blood. The soul inside still screams all the way down, down, down. Down into that hole of the unknown. What is it that is so scary? The mystery of the unknown or knowing that gravity is unforgiving and you can never control an unaided downward fall back to earth. All the way back to the hard, unforgiving pavement.

The doctor's hands are still on the patient's face, fingers burying in deeper and deeper. There's no saving him, or you for that matter. Nothing but mad tangents in an organized landscape. Insects that are thrust into a jar and then let out at death to wonder, "Just how the hell did I get in there in the first place?"

You scream. You scream louder. You screams so hard that your throat hurts and burns. Blood is coming from your mouth. Your heart is beating wildly, so wildly that it's suicidal. You curse your own heart.

"Fuck you heart!" You curse God for creating you, "Fuck you God!" Most of all you curse yourself for ever succumbing to this unfounded fear that is now in your system like disease. Give and inch and every cell that you call your own is overwhelmed with something inexplicable and even more deadly. Thump, thump, thump, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, your heart sounds like it's in your head; perhaps even in your ears. That copper taste of blood still in your mouth and dribbling down the table. It dribbles like a little stream.

Then you pop out the other side and your story ends and at the same time begins. The patient's story ends, and at the same time begins. Welcome to the other side; you made it. The fear is over, but it has only just begun. Time is looped.

The tangent shifts.