Gratrangest

written 031 3/31/2008

They slithered across his face. He couldn’t see them but he felt. Their scrabby multi-legs pushed into his skin, tingling. Not the tingling of actual sensation but the jolt of neurons neutralized, paralyzed, unable to render regular sensory data in the mind. Had he been able to feel he’d know they were horrifyingly many, bellies rubbing slimy against his pockmarked face. Involuntarily, he tried to blink. Something was at his eye. But the insect held the lids apart and walked across. From fresh feelable damage he screamed. Regret. He’d told himself not to scream again. The thousands responded with their own screams, too many to describe. The pressure from the audible invaded his eardrums, cutting clefts in his canals, substantial long after the last reverberations escaped. Again he heaved against the soaked coils around his submerged forearms. His muscles burned, weary and water-logged. Macerated timbers creaked beneath his raw feet. “Ah” sucked in some crunchies. He gagged out some of the uglies that had been in his facial hair, nesting.
Calming down, he relaxed. It was more comfortable not to struggle. Not enough strength was left in him to lift-off the coils. He had tried earlier ‘til his muscles burned and his head throbbed. Beaten. Clammy liquid dripped from one of his remaining hair patches, rippling with a plop in the placated pool. His body was swelling from osmosis.
He wanted to sleep. So tired the world was out of focus. Things were heard through a haze. His conscious drifted in and out, back and forth, barely understanding the sensory information that did come in. But he couldn’t get comfortable. His muscles were so tired. They ached for real rest: a prone position. But the coils kept him sitting up, he couldn’t break them. The sneeze-inducing filthy liquid, chest-high, kept him awake. Every now and then his nodding head would dip in the water. Small things which stirred verminous beneath the just-broken surface would brush against his chin. Like a drunk, he would try to sober from his stupor -but without sleep such mental clarity was unattainable.
Eventually it didn’t think of itself as ‘he’ having long forgotten its’ name. It would have died if it still needed to eat. If the roots in its’ feet didn’t sustain. Torturer’s intravenous force-feeding. A newer voice screamed, botheringly. Sub-primal, inanimal, it lent its’ rough voice to the cacophony of reply screams. It was always bothered by the newer voices. If its’ mind was healthy enough to analyze it might deduce the hale human sound, lost to itself, was what rubbed it so wrongly. The sound was heavy with reminiscence, lost things, nostalgia, odious humanity and reminders of identity. If it could feel it would know creepers stirred in the exposed organs it had left. The muscles, fat and skin which once surrounded its’ submerged torso were long gone.
Still, among the many, it lives.