He is not in danger

He is not in danger.

At the very least, being in danger gave him something to focus on. To be busy with.

Cherry stares at the ceiling. 

The peeling white paint. 

The abandoned spider web in the corner he never got around to clearing up.

The mundaneness of it all. The ceiling, the room, the emptiness and the silence. It all stares back at him.

The root of the problem stays all too overwhelming, yet staying here, staying stagnant… he had expected better of himself. 

He was not in danger anymore. Yet he just feels like a broken piece of machinery, rusty from overuse, the teeth of the cogs are all ground up, edges worn and paint scratched.

It happens to all humans. But he wasn’t human. He was supposed to be better. To be stronger. Everyone gets to have off days and weird feelings and lethargy, he knows that. Intellectually, he knows that. Everyone else gets to be flawed… except for him.

The silence continues to consume him like a ravenous disease, travelling up his legs, leaving his torso paralysed, his chest numb. He lets it cover his body like a childhood blanket he never had, when it knaws on the soft flesh of his mind and presses him down like a lead weight. 

It’s here because he invites it, like a close friend. Like a mother. 

 He’s not in danger, yet his body tenses like it has been for too long, yet his heart races and yet his eyes scan the door, the window, the floor… then back at the ceiling. At everywhere at once, while taking in nothing at all.

He’s not in danger.

He’s not in danger.

He’s-

He couldn’t get up, he couldn’t call for anyone outside, or write or sleep or think.

Slowly, his hands seek out his own shoulders as he wraps his arms around himself, and squeezes. Tightly. And the flesh of his body, the rapid thrum of his heart, squeezes back. 

He holds his breath, and the air pushes back on his lungs. 

Then the same air, slightly warmer than when he inhaled, grates against the top of his throat as he exhales.

His limbs stay fixed on the bed, and the linen, the stuffing and the bed springs all presses back.

By the heavens, was this all there is to it? Living?

It was as if his limbs were pushing against treacle instead of air, the way he struggles to lift his torso to sit up. The linen bedsheet feels cool on the soles of his feet as he draws his knees to his chin. 

He squeezes himself again, as if he could wind himself up like clockwork. 

Perhaps in a sudden release of energy, he could lift himself out of bed and stride across the room. 

Perhaps he could then open the door. 

Walk down the small empty corridor. 

Take a shower. 

Or go for a walk, feel the way the sun kisses the tip of his nose and how the wind brushes against his shoulders. 

Perhaps talk to someone. Anyone. No one particular comes to mind. But he knows the chatter would quiet down his mind. 

He struggles against the haze and begs his body to move, but just ends up falling back onto the bed.

Nothing happens here. No tears, no noise, nothing.

His thoughts run listless like a rushing storm he couldn’t do anything but sit through. And he’s used to it, his limbs became lead and heavy and unmoving as he braves the strongest of his storms. And those storms came as uncertain as the ones in nature itself. 

He just has to move a little slower than everyone else, that’s all. 

When he spends so much time, so much energy trying to calm his own mind down, reassure himself, heal himself, his body takes its toll, that’s all.

When everyone else gets to explore the world inside their minds and numb themselves to their daily habits and wake up alive and refreshed and seemingly unafraid to take a break and continue forth… he just… wouldn’t be able to do all that, or at the very least, struggle to. 

That’s all. 

Just forever surviving. Barely learning, barely feeling, barely aware. 

He breathes on borrowed air and expired bones, a version of him lay dead on the cold soil all those years ago, when he felt like he should have died. 

That imaginary version of him, the corpse he carries with him like a ball and chain, like he was a child with a stuffed animal, like his own flesh rotted and fused, attached. Its blood seeps into the floorboards, turning black, growing mold. Its glassy eyes stare up at him, foggy, cloudy, cracked, and in its reflection was his own shattered self. 

He stares back, wishing for nothing. Yearning for the silence in the room to engulf him fully, wholly, until his lungs fill with darkness and his breath no longer warms the air. 

He could claw at this version of himself, his corpse, his fate that should have been. Scratch off the paint and flesh and bone of his own face, make it unrecognisable, monstrous, broken. Pierce his own hands and arms on the porcelain of his own chest, knowing that even when he ripped wire and metal and clay that he would flinch as if he were true flesh and bone and human. 

Knowing never ceases the panic, the instinct, the frenzy. At least not for him. Not anymore. Knowing didn’t make him feel more prepared, more stable, more  safe. 

Because again, he was not in danger. 

It’s just one foot in front of the other. Reminding himself, again and again, until he can no longer walk. 

He’s read how humans would describe this state of mind alike to the grand, immovable forces of nature. A perpetual storm, perhaps, or an incurable disease. As if the strength of our emotions themselves have the power to mould nature itself. As if this suffering has a grander, greater unseen purpose, to water the crops or carve out the landscape.

He could see how they think that.

But sometimes. It’s just suffering.

No grand plan. No guaranteed retribution. No artistic value.

The sun shines bright outside the window he has no energy to open, paying to heed to how he feels. It starts to set as he drifts off to a dreamless sleep, tears seeping through his crinkled pillows.