Analgesic calm

I am a teenage werewolf... prowling the streets looking for life. An experiment in cause and effect... as I move up the hill the curtains of a hundred front rooms swing open for a split second, prying eyes glint and then fade away as the curtains fall back into place... call it voyeurism, call it community mindedness... call it whatever you want, maybe I'm just paranoid. The rhythm of blood thumping in my temples... I cannot medicate myself heavily enough to force the pain into a background hum... turn the corner to the bus stop and there is a man there... long scraggly goatee, tattooed from his knuckles to his shoulders, can of bourbon in hand, arms like tree trunks, mirror shades... is he looking at me?

ME: "Yeah, what do you want mate?"
I here it come out of my mouth and I have no idea what I am doing, it's automatic... this is how you get yourself killed... he looks confused "Did you say something buddy?" I know they're my words but I feel like someone else is driving... this guy could snap me in half...

MAN: No mate, your right... I'm just standing here, waiting.
He's backing down like I am the threat... this is the power of illogic, this is the magic of the migraine and then...


I am on the bus, and then...


Chirnside Park, the consumer equivalent of a cancer ward; painted in beige and pastel pink and all wrapped up in the diffuse glow of weak lighting... everywhere you look your surroundings say: DON'T PANIC, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY... now that you are here.


I am anything but okay!


I am a ghost, weak at the knees from a headache that had been crippling me for days. It feels like invisible hands twisting an ice pick into my back pushing up between my shoulder blades. Dry heaving, I force a grey oval shaped pill down with the coffee dregs from my styrofoam cup. It is Friday, just before closing time and I don't know why I am here... it happens... sometimes the pain gets so bad that you'll do anything just to keep going. It's that feeling, like if you sit down you may never get up again... ever. To stop is death, to stop is to let the pain in and go under. This is the momentum which carried me out into the street and onto the bus to here... everywhere around me the world is saying: BE CALM, RELAX.


I am moving as quick as I can, the knot in my stomach tightening... I can feel the metallic cool of too much saliva flooding my mouth. I feel light headed and dizzy and I am scared that I will be sick here in front of all these people. I am looking for something to focus on, searching for something to grab my attention but around me all I see is neutral calm plastered to the walls. Even the store front neon seems to have been toned down to suit the mood. Everyone I pass is mid-forties, saddled with toddlers and stuffed into cotton print leggings and and over an sized t-shirt.


I am trying to shake the image of myself flat on my back where I stand spitting up vomit all over the Pine Fresh floors. Messing up the placid off-white swirl of the tiling with splashes of bile yellow and the murk of undigested coffee. I tuck my thumbs up into my closed fists and center myself around the pain as I sqeeze, I feel my joints pop and I keep going. I'm trying to block out the anti-depressant calm of the place but I can feel the weight of my surroundings falling in on me.


...I can't breathe... I feel like I am fading, like the Tardis, a damaged dimensional travel vessel with no control over where it ends up... and my mind is taking me back to the days of the first headaches...


The pattern had always been the same, I am fine but I can feel the pressure building up and then it explodes... white hot sparks... pain... like the aftershock of fireworks burning into the retina for days, weeks, months... they come in clusters, nothing for ages and then... I was nine when I remember going to the doctor, a nasty little man; lean and stoic, unsympathetic, he asked me a bunch of questions, took some scrapings to test for allergies, drew blood and sent me away... I was always a nervous child, I didn't know how to interact, when I was in my first year at primary school I remember needing to go to the toilet. It was just after afternoon playtime and I was so embarrassed and uncomfortable, I decided it would be best if I just ignored it. I wanted to be invisible... we went back and the doctor said he didn't know what was wrong.


I have never been able to relate to people well on their terms, they talk to me and me head goes warp speed trying to figure out how I am supposed to react, I et so caught up in notions of appropriateness that I forget to listen. It used to be that I never spoke, I'd just stand there trying to look thoughtful and wait for them to let me go... that was until I discovered that if I did all the talking, I would never have to relate to people on their terms, the more noise I made the more control I would have over the situation.


I am back in that classroom trying to concentrate on my comprehension sheet but the pain in my bladder is so bad, that I can feel the nerves in the ends of my toes tingling in sympathetic complaint with my bursting bladder. It hurts so badly I as though I am going to start crying but the feeling shocks me into my original embarrassment and can feel my cheeks start to burn red... the family doctor wanted to be a championship cyclist but he didn't have what it took. His resentment was expressed in his lack of concern for his patients, he had two methods of showing how little he care: if nothing was wrong he'd prescribed whatever you wanted without checking you over to see if it was appropriate, or if you were in genuine pain he'd refuse to let you have anything, he'd tell you you were fine all you needed to do was get back to things to take your mind off whatever it was you'd come to see him about.


Every muscle in my body crying out, I'm standing behind my chair, waiting to be dismissed at the end of the day, waiting for the bell. I don't think I have ever experienced pain, like the pain of my straining bladder and the illogical fear of admitting anything was happening, my skin crawling with phantom tingles, a sharp stabbing radiated in quick pulses from the pit of my stomach causing my body to jerk visibly. The bell is seconds away but the time stretches like an eternity of desert between my pain and the toilet... the night before our third visit to the doctor I'd started vomiting uncontrollably at the dinner table, the world had greyed out, everything around me felt like the the low hum of an air-conditioner fading out against the noise of the headache, this was before I learned how to control it, before I knew how to focus. The doctor had no idea what to do, he prodded me here, poked me there, tapped my knees with a rubber mallet, took my pulse, my blood pressure and stood there hands on hips looking defeated.


I am nine years old, standing behind my chair in class with urine streaming down my leg in torrents. My light blue shorts turning black, saturated.