Strawberries

It's been a while, yes, so here's something a little older to keep your beaks wet...

I could feel it coming on. The conversations around the house I was in continued, the familiar buzz uninterrupted. Everything moved in slow motion, every movement took an eternity. Every emotion, every hint of a feeling that attempted to squeeze itself into my brain seemed to last forever. I looked at Jen’s face, fleetingly we made eye contact, and my heart would pump for hours, or split seconds. Or maybe it was always pumping. Even when I broke the eye contact, however long it lasted for; maybe a second, maybe the whole night. Even when I broke eye contact, and stared at the ceiling, her bright green eyes bore deep into me. They transformed slowly into kaleidoscopes, and spun and spun and spun. Maybe the room and I were spinning and the eyes on the ceiling were stationary. My heart fluttered, and the eyes looked, for a moment, or a lifetime, sympathetic. Then the eyes vanished, and from when I looked at Jen up to right now, only a second had passed. But it felt like a week of spinning. Maybe it was a week, and it had felt like a second had felt like a week, because it felt so good.

I tried to smile at her, but the corners of my mouth took minutes to turn upwards. My cheeks felt like lumps of lead, that my mouth could only just lift. Maybe if I waved, I could let her know that I was feeling really happy. Then I felt my arm move, automatically, but at snail’s pace. It went level with my shoulder, above it, up to my lead cheek, to my ear, above my head. My hand was raised, immobile. This wasn’t waving, as far as I knew. I tried to think, waving is moving, and I felt each word travel from my brain, down my spine in a flurry of electric impulses. They branched off my spinal cord, and strolled lazily through a tunnel into my raised limb. Then my limb started moving, back and forth and back and forth. Finally, I’m waving. I almost felt my brain give me an apologetic look.

Suddenly I felt something heavy on my back. The buzz of conversation disappeared. A flat surface, crushing me until I was lying horizontally. It weighed the world and more. It was forcing me down. Or up. I couldn’t tell which direction gravity was forcing me, but I was in a dark place. There were small white dots, everywhere. I think I was in space. I think the earth was on my back, like a heavy backpack, and I was falling through space. I kept falling for hours. Or days. A long time, or was time relevant in space? Didn’t someone with a brilliant brain once say time was relative? So if that was true, how long had I been falling with this earthpack for? Jen’s face only seemed a few minutes ago, but how could I know? I blinked.

The buzz of conversation returned. I was back in the room I was in before, and I was lying flat on the floor. Jen’s face was an inch from mine, those bright green eyes spinning again. No, it was Jen this time. But it was still those eyes, the eyes that were glued to the ceiling. They slowed down, but they were still spinning. Just the opposite way, like a fan seems to do when it goes really fast. Maybe Jen’s eyes weren’t slowing down, maybe they were going a lot faster than before.

I tried lifting my arms towards the ceiling, but I couldn’t tell where my arms were now. They might already be at the ceiling, in which case I was wasting energy. Or they were far away from the ceiling, and my body, and had no chance of getting near the eyes. Either way, energy was being expended unnecessarily. This was bad. Or good. I would like to think it was good, because everything else was good.

Then I felt a warm hand on my right hand. I found my hand! And there, linked to it, was my right arm! Everything made sense again. I looked at my arm with positive delight, tracing it from shoulder to hand. But there was something holding my hand. Ah yes, the hand that had led me to my hand, and subsequently my arm. Whose hand was it? Maybe they had lost their hand, and it was my responsibility to give it back to them, the way they’d given my hand back. I spoke loudly:

“Has anyone lost their hand, cos I may have found it? It’s here, next to mine.” My words joined the buzz of conversation like an estuary on a river. But someone whispered in my ear: I think it was Jen.

“You found my hand. Thank you, I was looking for it when I found yours. We found each other’s hands. Hold mine; I don’t want to lose it again.” It was definitely Jen.

Her voice was hypnotic, and her hand was comforting, and felt like a chain between me and her. I searched the space in front of me for her face, but couldn’t find it. I looked at our hands again, and let my vision wonder from her hand to her wrist, to her arm, to her shoulder, to her neck, and there it was. Her face, those green eyes. I felt safe, and safe was a good thing to be feeling. She gave me a small white stick. It felt papery. Maybe it wasn’t a stick. It was burning at one end, and it smelled like strawberries. The end it wasn’t burning at smelled very much like strawberries.

“Have it, and we can keep our hands safe forever.” I put my lips on the non-burning-strawberry-scented end of the stick, and drew my breath in. The smoke tasted like heaven. I let my lungs greedily devour it, and I saw stars.

I gave Jen the stick, and she put it to rest somewhere out of sight. Then she put her own lips where the stick had been. The strawberry flavour returned.