My bed comforts me. I can feel its plush pillow underneath my cheek as my jaw is pushed upwards into the top row of my teeth. The air conditioning is on full blast as I wrap my faux fur blankets around my legs and arms like cocoons. I pull my hands into my chest, looking to the side of my bed with a striking feeling within my very soul. My blinds are open. Like a dark cloud encompassing an empty field, the night sky is vapid and long. Stars flicker like light switches. Within my soul, the same darkness invalidates my being, scraping at my exterior shell with a bladed edge. I can feel a tear begin to form underneath my eyelid. Taking my eyes away from the window, I look to the drawer underneath. It’s dark wooden mahogany shaped into a block-like stand-out piece, incredibly homely in my affluent estate. On top of the bare brown wood was a picture of me and a female.
Her name was Erin. She held a smile on her face. Her cheeks were white as we stood in front of a carnival ride, illuminating the top of our heads in orange and red glows of light. Her black hair fell behind her shoulders as her arm reached around me. Laying in bed, I can still feel her touch. Her soft hand on my side, pulling me in in a lie that I never envisioned. She smiled in the picture, and I did too. Around her neck was a black necklace that hung over her sporty blue top. Behind her, within the curvature – of the space – of her neck, there was a man with whistling lips. He was a funny man. She thought so anyway. He wore a black tank top with sleeves that were cut low below his non-existent, weedy traps. On his left shoulder was a black tattoo of a tree. I can still feel her touch around my waist.
I pull my arms closer, unable to realize what I had done. My arms were around my own waist as the tear that once accumulated was now falling to the side of my cheek. I gather myself from my lonely bed and rip my limbs from their wrappings. Sitting straight up, I kick my legs out and move beyond my bed to the restroom. The carpet hitting my toes is like stepping on playful worms made from yarn, wiggling beneath my feet. Vermicular beings, my toes crunch against them, squeezing the life from each.
In the bathroom, the tile is cold and desolate. The white walls and perfectly shiny mirror radiate the light as I flick a switch on the wall. Simply, I turn, not to the bathtub, but to that perfectly radiating mirror. I see myself; Bare chested with acne riddling my shoulders like cavernous volcanoes, ready for eruption. I drop my head to the sink, taking a gulp of saliva, and letting it slide down my esophagus. My black skin looks out of place against these white walls. I feel out of place. Empty maybe. Like a tomb filled with nothing but dread. The torso I use to pump blood feels like a machine that runs, but doesn’t experience. My head, full of greasy blonde hair, doesn’t feel filled with thoughts, but empty with foggy shadows of a past that follows.
The air conditioning blows in the springtime, down onto my bare red mottled shoulders. My skin is cold. I can feel the chills run down my spine. The air rises to my nose as the window from my room rattles. The tree clits and clangs against the glass with its thin, boney branches. The green leaves, darkened from the night sky, scratch against the glass like nails from a feline. Shaking trees outside, I shiver inside. The spectacular cold air rises inside my nose, creating a visceral reaction no one can resist.
A sneeze.
I sneeze into the sink as the world becomes filled with brighter colors. I raise my head, staring deeply into the mirror. Its round gold edges are moving around the circumference like snakes from ancient Egypt. The white walls seem to pop like popcorn, rising and falling like bubbles that want to explode – like something deep inside them gradually pushing against the skin of the white paint. My face in the mirror has all of its edges, exemplified by glorious colors of blue and orange, gold and green. A face stands behind me like a man himself. Not me, but looking like me, he stares at himself, feet behind me. Greasy hair, same as mine, he stares with the same wonderment I hold. The bathroom quickly becomes a capacious room, with an infinite space behind me. More men, who look exactly like me, hold the same expressions behind me. In seconds, the army of myself stand behind me with wide blue eyes and greasy blonde hair. Their shoulders are erupting with red spots from zits. I sense their spirits behind me – their presence is as real as they are visible.
I sneeze again, and with me, the men behind me begin to glow with magnificent colors, rising back up to look at themselves in the mirror. I hold myself steady, leaning onto the bathroom sink, blinking rapidly as the colors rotate themselves around my vision. Their skins begin to morph into strobes of light, following my movements. It’s beautiful. The majestic movements, like visual echoes. I can stare at these people – myself – all day.
When you sneeze, there’s a sudden sense of panic that sets in; there’s a panic knowing you have relinquished control to your own body. Seasonal allergies unlike any other. The colors of my vision are spectacles, magnifying the faces behind me like spotlights. As I smile, I notice they don’t. I take my hand and tap the top of my head, and my glowing selves don’t. They stand, staring at themselves in perpetual torment. Their eyes are widened, not from the excitement that I feel, but of true terror. Like an echo, no, more like a tide rolling into shore, I can sense their solemn dread. Their spirits are dying.
An army of glowing bodies begin to frantically move about in this infinite space of a creation I had no understanding. Their faces contorted as their skins began to blandly drip with the loss of color. Their skin were now gray with hints of color dripping off their skins and onto the floor – like perspiration. Their spirit was now my own. Their dread was now my own. I took my hands and pressed my palms to my cheeks. Taking them off, I looked down at my hands. Glistening colors of skin pigmentation. Looking back up to the mirror, two gray hand prints were left on my cheeks. As the men behind me began to shake each other into a tumultuous frenzy, the color from my ears drip like faucets. My greasy hair slides to the back of my neck, falling from my scalp. I can feel it slide like a wig. That feeling. Like a wet rag on flat skin, sliding to my back, leaving a snail trail of colorless gray.
I take my eyes away from the mirror. To the floor, they see color. Colors flood the floor like viscous paint. An infinite pool on all sides, it ascends up my ankles. It feels like syrup, dense and sticky. I can take my foot out of it, but it becomes increasingly difficult with its rising effort. My skin on my calves drip with color as something begins to emerge from the pool of glowing colors. Beneath my scrotum, in between my feet, she emerges. A face. Only the face. Lips of red and eyes of brown, she emerges with a smile. That terrible smile. I can’t see her hands, but I can feel her tiny fingers grip my ankles and hold them steady. I want to puke, but I can’t. I pull my legs, desperate to be released. I scream, begging for help, knowing my echoes are going through the same hell. I thrash my arms to no success of release. Her face smiles at me.
Instantaneously, I lose control. I sneeze, returning everything to normal. The sense of dread is still there, but the fingers are not clasped at my ankles. My face is back, with color. The echoes are gone. I turn and galumph back to my bed, falling onto the faux fur with a terrible weight. My face hits the pillow, nose digging deeply into the satin sheet. I can’t sneeze again. Spring has the worst months. The air is infected, and I am too. I can’t sneeze. I can’t live seeing her again. She pulls me down with so much force, holding me trapped.
I feel cold. I want to sneeze, but I know what comes next. I can’t lose control.