ocean. They stood in sand. John was now wearing a brown suit. Why brown? He should have worn his dark blue, so as not to perfectly match all the wood furniture and décor.
The older businessman invited John to sit in an armed chair the color of John’s suit. He did and instantly got absorbed into it, no different than a sponge inhaling water. John felt as if he’d sunk and stiffened. His company became confused, looking all around for John. John couldn’t do anything to get his attention, to inform him of his position in the chair. And then it hit him: John was the chair. Again, no panic, not even confusion. John sat back and observed, now distant from the handshake and introduction. He watched the older man make his way to his chair, his interest in finding John gone.
Business as usual, or so it appeared to John the chair as he observed the regular workings of his elder, at his desk, pencil in hand, rotary phone receiver curiously off the hook. As John stuck on the detail of the phone, tickled by corrupt possibilities, feeling like a puzzled private eye, gravity suddenly gave way. John the chair detached from the ground and began to drift upward. At first, John was desperate to hold onto the mystery of the rotary phone, considering the case would have to be solved before he reached the top, but as he looked up and saw the coming of the surface—increasingly foggy and bright—he forgot about the phone entirely, and indeed, he became a man again, with loose limbs and extended extremities, all drifting haphazardly to the surface of this immense body of water.
And at the top the flowing light was too bright to bear.
In the hospital bed John’s eyelids flickered until they opened into a squint. From his view, John was only able to make out vague shapes of objects in the room, all seemingly through thin but obtuse wax paper. As he awoke, his fingers and toes twitched in mechanical jolts and movements similar to the way animatronic machines stiffly represent animals and people in some museum exhibitions. For several seconds it looked as if John were an engineered replica, waking from a rusty rest, and not a human being coming to from a trauma induced deep sleep.
Within the next several moments, all of the delights of being human would return but only in overdoses. Movement of arms and legs would strain the
muscles that power the work; the fidgeting of fingers and toes would come with a tingling sensation of a thousand miniscule needles. His skin would stretch as he adjusted himself and a rash of heat would follow. But most annoying was the goddamn pillow poking at his itchy scalp.
“Hello!” John sling shot his voice through the chamber into the hall in an echo with the intention of attaching a kind tone before it left in too quick a hurry. It scaled each white wall, object and glass surface looking for a home until its energy wore thin.
He sent his next calling in the form of a question, sure to lace it first with his unique brand of vulnerability, “Hello?”
John was scratched up pretty well. The car he tumbled in took a worse beating, so you could say he came out on top. The blood left on the steering wheel and dashboard could be a mocking consolation prize for coming in second place. But if John was victorious, he didn’t feel it. Not with his muscles and joints burning in hell. His itchy scalp and needle tingling might have made him wish he were back in the tumbling car if only he remembered the damn incident ever took place. Instead, for some odd reason, John thought he was in this state of needing repairs due to falling down steps, although which steps he couldn’t fathom.
The exercise of recalling the circumstances that placed him in his current bed of distress worked as a great distraction while his senses took to adjusting to their surroundings. He first appreciated the clean, odorless air that sucked into his nose and sailed through his esophagus, ultimately stacking in his lungs in the form of a deep, life-affirming breath, before being firmly pressed out in exhale. That felt great. That alone was rewarding. Especially as John closed his eyes and focused only on expanding his chest and relaxing it. It was marvelous. Something you can’t get from a dream no matter how in control you may be or how real it may seem.
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