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A series of words were flowing through my mind, but somehow I didn’t understand them. It was as if I was hearing my own voice through a wall and couldn’t make out the details.
“Infrastructure,” followed by a few inaudible, or more accurately unthinkable, sentences.
A few seconds later I could make out “nuclear”.
And seconds after that, “extraterrestrial”.
Who was this interloper inside my own head? Somehow I knew it was just me.
But how could I be unable to decipher my own words? How could I miss my own train of thought, stand on the platform while it zoomed through the station?
The injury, the injury.
Ever since the crash, there had been the injury.
Ever since the injury, there had been the treatment.
What had the doctors done to me? And why did the doctors of the hospital wear dark blue robes, dark like the sky at the cusp of dawn?
I thought about all these things without words. Images flashed past, but they didn’t make sense.
I couldn’t rely on words. The part of my mind that used words didn’t seem concerned and didn’t want to share. An invader in my innermost sanctum, a violator of my most personal space.
What had the injury done to me?
What had the doctors done to me?
My hands still worked. My eyes - I could see a room full of toys. My ears - I could hear buzzing. My skin… my skin… wires creeping into the flesh…
This was written in 12 minutes during a Joy of Writing meetup.
The first two sentences are inspired by the feeling of waking from a dream, trying but failing to remember it. The remainder is inspired by a more conspiratorial work from one of the other writers in the Joy of Writing group.