#a vessel to carry parts of my mind Speech to text except it’s thought to art

[fearoffun]

feel like shedding a tear when i read wat ppl tag on my posts :.l

[crssroad]

Morphine

Somebody was calling him now from the other side of the door. The voice was distant compared to the splashes the shower was making as water cascaded down its nozzle. But none of that existed to him at that moment. His head was floating high above the clouds at incalculable altitudes, with his eyes wide open, staring blankly at the plain beige ceiling, seeing nothing but an empty void in front of him. He felt weightless, he was weightless. Though one could observe his palms pressed tightly on the cold bathroom tiles, he felt nothing, almost as if he was grasping thin air. His legs, thin, gangly, and shuddering against the tiled floor, were at the brink of collapsing under his fragile state, when he was sent back to lucidity by her cries.

“Peter!” his wife cried banging the door at the other end, “Wake up! Wake up, Peter!”

Suddenly his eyes shot open, slowly readjusted to the bright white fluorescence of the bathroom. His senses still quite foggy and his breath disoriented by the heaviness in his chest. With a sharp in take of breath, his cheeks blossomed back to color, almost like having a soul being brought back to the vessel that had been carrying it. But it wasn’t all too pleasant for him. He was coughing violently now, trying to release all the water that had flowed into his nostrils in his dazed state. His lungs threatening to cave in were releasing much more fluid than expected, making him gag for air. However, hearing him cough, signaled no alarm in his wife’s part, only relief. She knew he was awake now and that’s all that mattered to her at that moment.

With a soft knock on the door, his wife opened her mouth once again - this time, speaking with more tenderness than urgency.

“Open the door, sweetheart,” she said smiling softly, though she knew he couldn’t see it from inside the bathroom. “Let me in, darling.”

He tried to answer, but he was crouching now, naked and cold with one of his hands clinging on to the steel tube connecting the faucet to the shower, and the other still palm-flat on the wall, trying to gasp for air. Struggling for breath, he opened his mouth slowly and feebly. His parted lips quivering ever so delicately as he tried to articulate himself.

“One moment, de-“ cut by another fit of coughing, his speech was interrupted painfully, with his heart now thrashing his insides. His hand, which was once pressed on the bathroom tiles, was now gripping the shower curtains tightly, creating little crescents on his palms through the fabric. Both hands were hanging on to dear life, trying to save him from toppling down onto the bathroom floor and making the situation much worse.

After two more minutes, he successfully avoided collision, and was now breathing much normally. His wife was still waiting hopefully and helplessly outside their shared bathroom, praying her husband would emerge out of the door soon.

“Honey, do you need me to call an ambulance?”

She was starting to get worried now, and when no one answered her, she leapt straight to their bedside table, running towards the telephone. With pale shaking hands she reached for the phone and was about to dial the emergency hotline, when the door opened to reveal a tall slouched man, naked except for the towel wrapped loosely around his waist, breathing heavily with eyes rimmed red and nostrils blaring wide. In shock, she let the receiver drop and stared at the figure before her speechless and with her feet turned to lead.

“I’m...” he struggled and spoke with a soft voice, letting out a few breaths, “I’m okay now. I’m fine.”

With small strides, his bare feet approached the bed slowly, treating every step with care as if the ground was crumbling beneath him. Having felt the soft white mattress touch the bottom of his knee, his body descended onto the bed, letting the duvet devour him whole. His mind went blank, thinking of nothing but his breathing and weather or not he had coughed out every last drop of liquid in his lungs.

It was only then that his wife found the courage to speak, but only in quiet whimpers, almost inaudible for him to hear. Tears were down rolling down her cheeks, slowly and then all at once. She sank down on to their carpeted bedroom floor, her legs positioned in weird uncomfortable angles making her pink skirt flare on the chocolate-colored carpet. She did not know what to do, she did not know what to say, she did not know what to feel. She felt only her raging heartbeat as her heart leapt back and forth inside her chest, piercing her ribs and aching for her husband, as he lied there almost unconscious and semi-defeated by the water that had almost drowned him.

“D-d-did it work?” she stuttered with her warm tears choking her throat.

“I saw you, Helen,” he finally spoke, lying down with his arms resting relaxed on his abdomen. He was feeling a bit calmer now, compared to a few minutes ago. His eyes were closed and a small smile appeared on his face. His breathing was steady and slow, as if he was about to go into deep slumber. “I saw you back in the shower, when my head was all fucked up. I saw you and I saw her, our child.”

At that sentence, her sobbing became fiercer and her eyes were producing tears faster than ever. She covered her face now with her palms, unable to look at her husband anymore. But he ignored all this and continued, letting his mind wander off peacefully in recollection of his fantasy. “She looked just like you, of course. Light brown hair, emerald eyes, the same glassy stare that you always have when you and I took long walks in my mother’s garden. You remember those days? Yes, ah well, you were beautiful, Helen. You still are, and she was too.”

His eyes were now open, staring at the ceiling just like he did in the shower, only this time he was perfectly aware of the things around him. His wife was still crying, sitting limply beside the telephone. Her tears were slowly draining her and she could feel herself right at the edge of sleep. Her body was threatening to faint, but she stuck around to listen to her husband’s voice.

“I mean...” he struggled to find the right words, “i-i-it was weird. I knew I was dreaming, of course, but it was different from all the other times this had happened, you know? I-I-I... I actually wanted to stay. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to hold you. I wanted both of you an-“ His sentence was cut short, interrupted by his wife who was now calm enough, to speak despite her situation on the floor.

“Honey, you have to stop this! Whatever Mark told you is a lie,” she shouted trying to fight back her sob. “Dwelling on these things- they aren’t worth it!” She was crawling now, trying to reach for her husband.

“This is now,” she said trying to be strong as she took both of his hands in hers. She opened her mouth once again. “You have to stop.” But this time it was different. Her voice was replaced by a man’s, dry and raspy, hollow and tired.

Slowly the scene evaporated right before his eyes. He was lying, sluggishly on a couch now, sitting in front of a man in glasses, middle-aged and balding with little grey hairs sticking out of a few segments of his head, holding on to a pen and a notepad with previously written texts scribbled across the open sheet. The room was quite small and quite dim, lit only by the small lamp propped on the desk by the other end of the room, and by the sunlight filtering through the curtain fabric. There were three paintings seen on the wall to his right, and a bookshelf nailed to wall behind the desk. He was in an office, he figured, but he had not quite remembered fully how he got there, and why he was there at all.

“Peter,” the man snapped him out of his confusion, looking quite disturbed himself.

“Yes?”

“Are you back?”

“Where’s my wife? I could have sworn Helen was just here a second ago.”

With a sigh, the man took off his glasses and wiped them with the hem of his white buttoned-down shirt. He was frowning now, looking down at his glasses with knitted eyebrows. Suddenly it all dawned to Peter. Every question he had previously formulated in his thoughts were now answered and he had never felt the color on his face drain away as fast as it did that moment.

“It seems you have been taking much more than the prescribed amount, have you?” With that question, Peter just gulped, speechless, knowing of no words to say. The man sighed once more and scribbled on his notepad while he spoke. “I’m afraid we’ll have to alter the prescription, seeing that this is only making your maladies much worse.”

“My head wouldn’t stop hurting,” Peter finally spoke, “and I didn’t know of any other way to stop it.”

“Really? Well, it seems that you’ve been taking advantage of the situation haven’t

you?” Finished with his notes, the man decided to put his glasses back on, crouched down with his elbows propped on his knees supporting his weight, and looked at Peter, intently, hoping to shed a little more light on the situation. “Look, Peter. I know you’ve had it rough and I am in no position to nose into your personal problems. But abusing your medication will not help you at all.”

“I know. I know. I just- well... Oh, I don’t know.” Peter was lost now, torn between caring for his health and getting this appointment over with. But sitting down listening to what his doctor had to say, wasn’t helping him at all, at the moment.

“It seems like I’ll have to up your dosage,” the man calculated, “and don’t think you can get away with it this time. This is only for your health, and you of all people should know that.”

And that was all Peter wanted to hear. His mind wandered aimlessly again into the deep blue, thinking fondly of the many dreams awaiting ahead of him, longing to get a glimpse of his wife, once again, and the daughter he had never met. It was then that the color rushed back into his face as he smiled a big toothy grin at the man sitting in front of him, ignoring the growing tumor invading his brain.