flashforward...flashback

flashforward


I'm being dragged out from under drugged sleep by the throb of pain in my side. I am in the backseat of a car. I cannot open my eyes but with clarity I can make out the coarse rope binding my wrists and ankles. My mouth is so dry I fear choking on the scaly bloat of my tongue which lies dead in my mouth... my head hurts. I can make out the low rumble of highway as it slides away under car tires beneath me and into the past. The hiss and crackle of a badly tuned radio at pains to broadcast late night jazz standards. Whoever it is in the drivers seat exhales loudly and the air in the cabin fills with the bitter wooden smell of tobacco smoke.


I have no idea how I got here.

I have no idea where here is or where we are headed.

I can't focus on anything outside of myself for more than a second.

I can't will my eyes to open

but

I don't need to see or think to know that I am in trouble.

Big fucking trouble!


I wish I knew how long I've been gone. How many curtain calls have I missed? Could the show really go on without me?


Whoever it was that said that all the world's a stage didn't think their metaphore through too clearly if you ask me... I try to shift off my side but the throb grows louder till my guts flip and I am left semi-conscious spitting up bile onto the floor of the car... I mean, how can there even be a stage without the darkness of a backstage? The place a shadows behind the scenes where the nameless ghosts of power push the buttons and pull the levers which create the predictable little routine that is our lives.

The people who make the world tic.

No, the person who said that all the world's a stage didn't account for the ease with which someone could accidentally wander off too far into the wings and get lost in the shadows forever... lost amongst the pulleys, switches, levers, weights and sandbags.

If only they'd warned us just how fucking hard it is to wander back on stage, back into the lime light. I am in trouble. It is not safe here. It is too close to the truth to be anything but dangerous.

wherever here is.


flashback





(to the begining)