Waving Not Drowning

A certain stirring lingers deep in her gut. Nat can't shake it but for the life of her she can't name it, either. Hour after hour of plugging straight through and now she hits the pillow at night and wakes up oblivious to her surroundings. At least she's sleeping. Deep, dreamless exhaustion. If only she'd strung herself out like this months earlier she'd have saved herself the anixiety of insomnia and long dark nights of the soul, counting down minutes til sunrise and the dawn of a new day. Another cycle completed. The world keeps turning regardless of how mired in stasis Nat is. There's hope in that, she thinks. She charts the shape of the moon. Full, half, quarter, crescent. On cloudy nights she draws the curtains and drowns herself in Rachmaninoff, headphones cradling her ears on the pillow. When sleep won't come the music lulls her into a semi catatonic state. Nat's not sure it's restorative or meditative but it drowns out the interior noise whic...

It's no bigger than a fruitfly but something has lodged itself square in the centre of Mike's eye and he's immediately blinded, ripped apart by searing pain, fluid gushing out of his left tear duct. And there goes the ride. A fantastic start to a much needed and longed for spin and blammo, a knat takes him down. He is undone by a speck of an insect. Knocked him on his ass. Mike unclips, frantically blinking his eye, trying to find the position where he's least in pain. Eye open, lid shut, both feel like there are shards of glass scraping across his eyeball like rusted out windshield wipers on his old Civic. He unscrews the lid of his water bottle and pikes forward from the waist, tilting his head to the sky like that wizened old crippled deaf man who rides the evening bus . Glug, glug, glug. Mike pours the ice cold water across his eyes, trying to keep them open so whatever has burrowed it's way inside can be flushed out. This is crazy. Mike can't believe the pa...