Blog #2: 3:52 am on a Monday Morning

Sweat casts a layered sheen on my face. The wetness does nothing to cool the blood flushing my cheeks. I half-lift a hand to wipe away the moisture and instantly the muscles in my neck twinge in protest. My hand falls back to the mattress with a quiet resounding of the springs. I try kicking at the thin sheet covering my body next, the material catching on my legs so I have to lash out with my feet again and again until the fabric ends up in a twisted bundle on the floor.

I listen for my roommate once the creaking quiets, letting out a puff of air when my ears catch her soft snore from across the room. I sigh again and close my eyes, lying still for several seconds before rolling over onto my stomach.

A full minute bumbles by, then I twist onto my back once more. I press my leg up against the wall, but my skin only steals the cold for only a few seconds before there is none left to gather so I let the limb slide down to the mattress.

With growl, my stomach muscles flex and pull up my jellied spine to a sitting position, which has been liquefied with heat and four hours of needed sleep. The bones slide into pockets of air as I twist my hips, cracking, and I wince as I place my feet on the floor.

Black vision turns red when I stand, and I grip the rail of the bed until there is no more color. Luckily my feet know the seven steps to the window. With a few twists, and a snap, my hair lifts off my shoulders and the sweat chills on my face and body, coolness crawling across the skin like a spider made from an icicle.

It takes fourteen tries to move away from the air source, but my eyes can only blink in five second intervals at this time of night, so I lumber back across the floor and fall with a loud “whamp!” onto the mattress.

Air stirs in the room, the softness of the breeze blowing away the whispers of thought. My mouth opens, the jaw stretching repeatedly to take in the breaths of cold. Then these sensations too… start to… disappe…

The sound of screeching tires fills the room, honking horns, yelling, gasping.

A scream pulses in my throat like a heartbeat, and I want to throw it up, let it fly from my lips and splatter on the ceiling, then let it trickle down the walls in jagged red lines to rot there.

Yet, I press the shriek back down, bury it even deeper, down into my stomach to let it churn, mixing with a different kind of acid, because somehow beneath the screeching in my belly and the screeching on the street I can still hear the sound of snoring.

I roll over again and lift my pillow to press it over my head, but I feel the sweat at the back of my neck, so the pillow remains underneath my cheek. The breeze tickles my bare toes and I kick at it like I kicked off my sheets, but the air does not respond to me. It just echoes the screams within my ears until I do not know which ones are mine, and which ones are not.