Diminished

I woke up with a single word on my mind: ESCAPE. I didn’t think I was trapped here, but everything felt alien. From the tube in my arm to the beeps to the guard outside. I tried to rise from my bed. Every muscle in my body protested. Plus the detective told me I’d hit my head pretty bad. I lied back down. I’d been in bed for days now. I really shouldn’t be rushing things. ESCAPE.

I thought about the officer outside my room. What did they look like? How did they feel to be tasked with defending someone like me?

The detective’s business card was still on the bedside table. I rolled to my other side and saw a cat on the window sill. I blinked, and it vanished. I shook my head and the beige of the wall popped loose for a moment. Blink. The wall was as I’d known it to be.

ESCAPE.

Almost involuntarily, my legs were sliding out of the bedsheets and onto the floor. I stood for a second and I wobbled and I fell over. My hand hit a glass of water on the way down and I heard it shatter.

My door opened. An officer in full uniform scrambled in, looking at me, newly soaked, and the fragments of glass strewn about the place. The world was spinning and over the next few seconds it settled. The officer’s head eclipsed the light bar such that I could only make out his silhouette. He had short cropped hair and was built like a bear.

“Oh shit, are you alright?” he said in an accent I couldn’t place. I felt strong, thick fingers pull me up forcefully by my armpits and nearly toss me back onto my bed. I had the wind knocked out of me by the impact. “Oh no, now this won’t do at all…” he said, touching my left side. I looked down and saw a dot of red seep through my hospital gown. “It’s easy for accidents to happen, isn’t it… Especially with broken glass. See, this is exactly what he was talking about.”

For a split second the room transformed into a forest and the window was a tall pine tree and the man was a three headed zebra. The zebra opened its middle mouth and I saw decaying teeth and a snake serving as its tongue. The snake had glowing blue eyes and its scales were coated in dripping red-

Then I was back in the room and the man had picked up a shard of glass from the floor and was turning it over in his bear-like fingers. It glinted in the fluorescent light. He took another step toward me. My vision was still blurred so his smile could have been anything. But I saw it as a smile and the glass continued to sparkle in his hand.

“Let me… help you…”

Every previously aching nerve ending had sprung to life and my head darted back and forth, the inertia causing my vision to blur as my brain shook inside my skull.

A pillow, a bedsheet, a tube from my arm…

I snatched the button along the tube and pressed it with shaking fingers.

“I-” I managed, slurring my words, “I don’t feel great right now. Let’s… ah… let’s talk later.”

There was a prolonged beep from the computer monitor, then the crackle of a microphone before a voice said “the nurse will be right over, hold tight now.” There was a click and the voice was gone. It was me and the bear and the disparate remnants of the forest.

The bear grumbled, walked back out of my room, closed the door, and plopped down in his chair outside. My vision and mind dulled in short order, and I turned to watch the droplets of something fall from the bag into the tube.

Paranoia? Was that really what this was? The man had picked me up off the floor, set me back in bed, and began to clean the glass. Was I out of my mind? But the zebra’s snake tongue was menacing and had ill intent. I could see it. The forest hadn’t felt serene.

Surely I’d lost my mind. Forests and zebras and snakes and fear. Surely it was the concussion altering my perception. ‘Maybe a screw got knocked loose or something.’ Yes. That’s it. Of course I was safe. All along. I tried to loosen my joints. I waited a minute. Two. The nurse had yet to arrive. Maybe there was an emergency along the way. Three. Four. Five minutes counted by the beeps of my medicated heart. The nurse had yet to arrive. Whatever was in the bag was working. I felt warm and the world was blurry. My senses sank into the walls and I seemed to float in my hospital bed.

A female shriek from outside.

I darted back to attention, wrenching my neck upward to look at the door. I heard another scream cut short by a choked gasp. Then I heard nothing. I waited. Waited for anything else. Nothing came.

ESCAPE.

I blinked and a white cat with glowing blue eyes was on my hospital bed. It softly pawed my face and started for the window. I found myself getting out of bed with my dulled limbs and dulled senses. It stared at the window and flicked its tail back and forth. I fiddled with the latch and pulled it open. It was dusk and I saw the streetlights along the nearby expressway flicker on. I watched the cat stretch, then jump straight down. I poked my head out the window sill and saw that I was on the second floor. The cat had hopped atop an SUV parked outside. It turned back to me, its glowing blue eyes becoming stronger, and swished its tail back and forth. I closed my eyes and breathed in the evening air, and when I opened my eyes again I was halfway out the window. Choice and fate were fusing. My life progressed blink by blink and my autonomy became meaningless.

I blinked and I was falling.

I landed with a dulled thud atop the SUV and rolled off, unable to balance myself. I landed on the pavement injured shoulder first, and I heard a crunch. I blinked and I was in the factory. The man’s arm was decimated by the machine arm. I blinked again and I was running back to my apartment building. I was in pain nearly past my own comprehension. The world was spinning from the fall and spinning from the drugs and spinning from my shoulder and head. For a moment I was thankful for the bag of dripping fluid. Then I was sprinting across a highway, cars honking their horns and profanity screamed in my direction. I lacked the fidelity to process their insults. Instead I ran and then I was across the highway and almost home. An hour of running had passed in a few blinks.

My life now progressed blink by blink and my autonomy was a memory in the past.

I threw open one of the doors to my apartment building and I saw a dozen bodies in an orgy and Cecile and Tom were fucking on Richie’s desk. I blinked and I was back in the forest for a moment. Then the lobby was empty. I continued upward to my room.

I threw open the door and saw smoke stains along the walls. All this time, and they hadn’t cleaned them. The door to my bathroom was open and I caught sight of myself in my hospital gown. I’d never seen such a pitiful creature. I took off my gown and examined my ruined shoulder and bloody ribs from the hallway. Neither looked so bad from this distance. But my face did.

The waves of fatigue were back. Washing over me. Dragging me down. Everything smelled like smoke and my shoulder was completely numb. I stumbled into my bed and inhaled deeply. My pillow smelled like smoke too. I was naked aside from my bandages and I curled up as close to a ball as I could. Then I was asleep.