Backlog: Stream of Consciousness - Electromagnetism

Electromagnetism: Originally written as Stream of Consciousness, featured in Issue 03a - Dusk of The Rebellion:

The sun, fading to little more than a faint glow, was setting beyond the horizon leaving a backdrop of darkness looming closer with every heavy breath I took. In an act of internal resistance, my throat decided to rebel against me. And with perfect timing. Taking a walk on the wild side, it walked right out on me and that bastard didn’t leave anything in its place. However, emptiness felt to have substance. There existed a feeling there much like numbness; almost like a ball was lodged in its absence. It felt as if I had tried to swallow a half-chewed dog bone, but it had gotten caught on the way down, lodging right below my adam’s apple, jutting out from my neck creating a choking sensation that I could not seem to shake.

The same feeling of alien existence had managed to find its way behind my tired eyes. Big and heavy, my pupils began to dilate in an effort to soak up the dying light. I couldn’t seem to adjust to the blackness that was engulfing me. With only the ability to look about slowly, I moved what still existed of my head through the depths of the ocean-like air. If I moved too fast to one side it would get ahead of me and I would be unable to catch up with it. It was a perpetual chase with my conscious.

Walking in this state was an impossibility. I found that on this planet that I no longer knew to be my own, I weighed about 250 pounds more than normal. For some reason the humidity had profound influences on gravity here. I could taste the stench of sweat in the air and I wanted to reach out and ring out the liquid air like a wet dish rag. I felt as if I were swimming rather than simply moving.

I began to fear the worst. A sense of panic arose in me as I grew tired from the constant kicking and paddling. The air had become water. Or maybe glass. It was too thick to be water. The shear density of it confused me and I began to lose my bearings more than before. Losing all smoothness in my movements, the little reality I had left became jagged and jumpy.

My mouth joined the battle, not wanting to open or function properly. For some reason I liked this strange feeling, but it could have been that I was slowly beginning to welcome the night and its impending doom. All feelings of hunger and thirst had left me even though cottonmouth had set in. My brain began to ooze slowly, languidly into my body through the vacancy in my neck. It was like my entire body fell asleep and from the pilot’s chair that was my fleeting mind, I was making it walk around half awake in this zombie state. Had the darkness fully engulfed me? I could not yet tell.

The insanity reached into my extremities and I began to feel very specific sensations in my fingertips. When I had begun to forget the modern existence that sheltered me from the dark of night just a few hours earlier, my tv began making weird noises in the other room. It seemed to be screaming at me sending its electromagnetic waves across the room further perpetuating the oozing departure of the remainder of the gooey mass within my skull. I couldn’t find the strength to answer its call, nor did I want to face what it wanted to show me. I was terrified of the green that was emanating from the screen. It sporadically interrupted the dead silence with growls and churns. I tried not to grow more afraid but the growling grew louder. Everything had become black and the green eminence of the orb within my television reflected in a sick glow off their wretched surfaces of my furniture.

Back in my head my conscious took on the feeling of existing in someone else's body. I felt so light yet I was so heavy. It was a paradox of feelings bombarding me one after the other, smothering me within its confusion, never letting go to allow me to take a breath. I tried to remain still but every movement was like jello and my mind could not make up for the weirdness. I found my way to the bathroom trying to hide from the pulsating energy. Staring in the mirror took me further into the clutches of insanity, my reflection bringing back no recollection of who I was anymore. I didn’t think I was even looking at myself anymore. Rather I was looking at what used to be my body from the outside.

I couldn’t feel a single thing. No heart beat from my cold chest, my feeble eyes no longer blinked, and if I was still breathing, then it was to light for me to notice. I began to feel like the orb was inside my skull pulsating, growing, sending waves of energy throughout my head. I could feel them as they tickled the hard edges of the inside of my head. Once. Twice. Three times. They kept growing in size and speed with every turn.

I began to notice my existence was one of mundane reaction and no longer of cognitive thought. I began to sink into the floor and collapse intangibly into myself. It was so dark. My head was sinking further into my neck and my arms became useless, hanging lifeless at my sides. My eyes, although weak, seemed to be the only stable thing left to rely on. I pictured myself as just two bloodshot eyeballs floating in mid-air. The rest of me was quite unresponsive. It wasn’t a feeling of sloth as before, but more of the pulsating. Everything was moving. I could only focus on an angle. If I cocked my stance just right I was able to manage to pay attention to the little light that still existed. Unfortunately I had completely lost control. My right eye wanted to come down to be level with the left eye and it was fighting my crooked glance. The right side of my body seemed to weigh two or three times as much as the left. When I regained the ability to blink, it was like I was turning channels on a silent television. Even though it was the same thing on every channel, I couldn’t handle all of the stimuli and I felt the sensory overload take its toll over my body. There seemed to be so much time in between the strained blinks. I realized that it was not me that was stuck, locked in that cocked angle. My whole world was tilted about 30 degrees.

As I began to move about again, I saw my head as a giant sparkler. When I moved it about quickly, I could see a heat trail follow it along. My eyes could no longer keep up with me either. Something else must have taken over inside of me. I felt alone and came to the realization that I was only an electromagnetic wave.

More of my writings can be found at my lit profile Stream of Consciousness.

Peace and Love,
The Rebellion Magazine