Paralysis. I don't think I can move. I feel if I do I will snap. An image of
broken limbs lying on the floor saunters through my head, dragging what feels like
broken glass with it from temple to temple. My eyes are overripe olives, lids glued shut in order to hold onto the last shred of
sleep I have left dangling in the back of my head. If anything all I wish is to fall
unconscious again, fall away from my body for another hour. When I realize this isn't going to happen I open my eyes. The clock reads 8:37. I have been sleeping all day.
I woke from long thin dreams of memories wrapped in plastic. Neither asleep nor close to wakefulness, I could feel the sweat on my body as I slept, the aches in my limbs making them feel like old wood, warped and brittle. Sleeping doesn't seem to do any good, I feel worse then when I hastily stripped and wrapped myself in layers of blankets hours earlier. I can't remember what I dreamt about, and now I can't even remember what I thought when I woke. Only the feeling of long, thin dreams stays with me.
When I wake and stand gravity takes me by surprise. In my time asleep it has increased tenfold and now I'm afraid that my legs can’t support me. I think of the long-duration astronauts, of their body mass dropping as the lack of gravity sucks their body down like some hellish Newton’s leach. they exercise, and eat balance diets of multicolored muck, but no matter what the do their bodies wither. At a certain point though it stops, the loss levels out and no more leaves you. The leach, now glutted, floats off somewhere looking for a warm place to die.
Walking to the kitchen everything feels strange. The air lies on my belly and flows around my face in a different way then before. The piece of bread I try to eat feels like cardboard dipped in concrete. All the sensations I feel are different, rerouted through a different center in my head and making everything alien to memories I think I had.
Long, thin memories. I can see them floating in front of me. Not weightless, but rather having no need for any concepts of mass. Sliver fish pace across my vision from time to time, and my eyes are fringed with dark fur, but these long, thin memories still float there.
As I shuffle back to bed I try to think about all the things I was just thinking about. The recent thoughts flee so quickly, I am left only with the feeling that they were there. This is more maddening then anything I have ever felt