A screaming comes across the sky.
At least it would if my life was a cartoon; my screams would dart across the sky in boldfaced letters above my spinning head, and the punch line on the following page would somehow justify it all. Unfortunately, my head is firmly attached to my neck, there is no comic relief, and my screams are trapped in the echoic wasteland of my brain.
This isn’t to say my brain is a wasteland devoid of thought—quite the contrary, actually. My head is bursting at the seams with thoughts. Thoughts that zoom through my cranial expanses like cars on a highway, all desperate to get where they’re going, but not really making it anywhere. Explosive collisions of these cogitabund cars and the fiery chaos they leave smoldering behind muddle my stream of thought so that only half-formed ideas bubble at my mouth.
Oh, my mouth! Had it not been for the unceasing flapping of my lips, I wouldn’t be in the mess I am in now. If only the A Wire of my brain hooked up to the A Wire of my lips, I would only say what I mean to say. Instead, the A is somewhere near Y and Q, C, and E are on strike until they receive richer material to process. The corrupt system short-circuits until it is all I can do to keep breathing.
But I can’t keep breathing. The balloons of my lungs are stretching, inflating, expanding until they are ready to burst with the pressure of the moment. The red, blue, now purple balloons rise in the oven that is my body. No, not an oven. A campfire. Oxygen is the flint, fueling the shallow hiccupping that threatens to unhinge all of my other organs like picture frames during an earthquake.
There’s Great Uncle Malachi flexing in his black-and-white striped tank suit, shattering as he hits the hardwood floor. My stomach drops.
There’s Grandma Margie in her long-sleeved wedding gown, drowned in so much lace she looks like a moldy chunk of Swiss cheese, splintering as she plummets to the marble side table. My heart falls.
There’s me in 6th grade with headgear and braces, drowning in a rainbow sweater, smashing against the lamp against the wall. I don’t know what a spleen does, but I definitely feel it take a plunge.
Plunge. I am drowning in the sea of my own whooshing blood. I can hear the frenzied clash of these red seas upon the twisting shore, and can feel the syrupy liquid beginning to boil as if in a pot above the stove. The bubbles rise to the surface and explode against the artery walls until I am sure the lava will break through and scorch and sear my insides. While I wait, I become aware of my blood’s evaporation seeping through my pores. A clear poison, the sweat covers me like a viscous cocoon with an odious stench that makes me want to crawl under a running faucet and die.
Surely this is what dying is. Dying is the pulsing embodiment of Satan’s wickedness. Dying is being sucked into the vacuum of internal awareness until you cannot find your way back out. Dying is a malfunctioning car driving into a boiling pot of lava’s condensation during an earthquake. The maze is too difficult. The door is locked. I cannot escape myself.
Why, oh Dear God why, did I tell Johnny that I thought he looked sexy in his sunglasses? Now he’s going to think I am such a creep.
Surely this is what dying is.