Fade Out Again
He can see himself laid out on the table below him.
Everyone looks so serious. Lights and blips and buzzers. So much machinery. Faces covered with masks, blue hands tinted with chocolate syrup.
Wait, no.
That's blood.
Hands dip in and out of the center of his chest, pulling out layer upon layer of gauze soaked through.
So much blood.
He's leaking his life force from a wide open mine in the center of his chest, spilling an endless tangle of tubes and cords, leaving trails of slick red lines smeard across his flayed torso.
A watercolour explosion of streaks fading out as they drip to the floor.
He feels no pain, which is strange. He's dreamt this moment over and over. This out of body, into the light experience.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
He never envisioned the chaos, the disorder, the frantic recklessness diguised as absolute authority.
It's uncouth.
Graceless.
So messy. All of these gowned bodies working with controlled urgency, a regimented familiar choreography quickly being overrun by the need for improv.
Limbs are flailing, instruments clang to the floor. Someone shoves their arm into his chest and holds his heart in his hand, caressing it like a small pet.
This is absurd.
Reflexively he places his right hand on his heart.
He feels nothing. No touch, no weight, no sense of a corporeal self. Just this energy emenating light hovering directly overhead the mess of a corpse splayed out before him.
The room goes silent save for the constant high pitch squeal of the monitor.
Time stops.
He feels cold, the first sensation he materializes.
The masked gowns slowly peel away one by one til all that is left is his lifeless cadaver blown wide open, quiet all around.
This is when he normally wakes up, a jolt which sends him upright like a cardboard cutout on a shooting range.
He waits for it.
He waits.
He
The room fades to black.
Everyone looks so serious. Lights and blips and buzzers. So much machinery. Faces covered with masks, blue hands tinted with chocolate syrup.
Wait, no.
That's blood.
Hands dip in and out of the center of his chest, pulling out layer upon layer of gauze soaked through.
So much blood.
He's leaking his life force from a wide open mine in the center of his chest, spilling an endless tangle of tubes and cords, leaving trails of slick red lines smeard across his flayed torso.
A watercolour explosion of streaks fading out as they drip to the floor.
He feels no pain, which is strange. He's dreamt this moment over and over. This out of body, into the light experience.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
He never envisioned the chaos, the disorder, the frantic recklessness diguised as absolute authority.
It's uncouth.
Graceless.
So messy. All of these gowned bodies working with controlled urgency, a regimented familiar choreography quickly being overrun by the need for improv.
Limbs are flailing, instruments clang to the floor. Someone shoves their arm into his chest and holds his heart in his hand, caressing it like a small pet.
This is absurd.
Reflexively he places his right hand on his heart.
He feels nothing. No touch, no weight, no sense of a corporeal self. Just this energy emenating light hovering directly overhead the mess of a corpse splayed out before him.
The room goes silent save for the constant high pitch squeal of the monitor.
Time stops.
He feels cold, the first sensation he materializes.
The masked gowns slowly peel away one by one til all that is left is his lifeless cadaver blown wide open, quiet all around.
This is when he normally wakes up, a jolt which sends him upright like a cardboard cutout on a shooting range.
He waits for it.
He waits.
He
The room fades to black.
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