Black Tide

My hand jitters and the contents of my cup slosh precariously, pouring over my hand and fingers, but I ignore the stinging pain, quickly drinking the coffee, wincing as the scalding brown liquid eclipses the hurt of my hand and burns my throat, snakes down my chest, seeps into my stomach, and then seems to finally cool somewhere in the middle of it all. It is my third cup in some twenty odd minutes. I have been up for sixty three hours, I am having fits of uncontrollable shaking and have lost seven pounds, mostly, I assume, through sweat and lack of appetite. I stand in the kitchen of my small apartment dressed only in my boxers, forgoing other clothes as I have to peel them off five minutes after I put them on. My mind is slow, sluggish, I’m forgetting things even as I watch them, zoning off and snapping back just before I drift off. Sleeping is not an option, I can’t go back there. Not again. Not to that.

Dishes choke the sink and bits of old food infest them like crusty sores. The trash bin is overfilled. An empty orange bottle lies on its side, child proof safety cap lying next to it. I try not to think about that. Envelope lay stacked upon envelope by the door, manila corpses piled together with no undertaker to shepherd them. Pantry and refrigerator are full, but crowded with spoiled food, some moldy, some stale; I haven’t been shopping in weeks. I slouch over to my bathroom, but a smashing sound stops me, and I whip my head to the source of the noise, feeling my last nerve fray and snap as I grit my teeth. Shattered white fragments are lying on the ground. How did those get there? I stare blankly at my hand, looking at the irritated, red flesh, sticky from where my coffee spilled. I hadn’t noticed the cup slipping from my hand. I’d forgotten it was even in my hand.

I continued my slouch, moving into my bathroom, gently shutting the door behind me. I stare into the mirror. I pick up a picture with a mangled frame, one side dangling, held on by slivers of wood and compare the vibrant, healthy looking man with the sparkling blue eyes and handsomely crooked smile with the image in the mirror. The mirror mans eyes hold huge black trash bags underneath them, there is as much sparkle as swamp water, I can’t tell about the smile because he seems unwilling to move his mouth. A scraggly beard clings about his face like an infant desperate for nourishment, and his hair lays untidy and greasy on his head, oily and disgusting. He’s pale and, even though he doesn’t feel any sweat, he seemed to shine with a sickly luminescent quality.
He saw no resemblance to the man in the photo.




I shook, startled from a reverie or shaking from tremors of exhaustion. I know not which. I was kneeling next to my couch in the living room, staring at the fire place absent mindedly. I don’t remember how I came to this position, nor what I was thinking when I came to it. The fireplace is hollow. No light shines within.
I begin to stand, but my legs wobble with the effort. My strength is ebbed past the point where I can no longer carry myself. I lurch forward, vision blurring and, strangely only on the upper part of my vision, a darkening, aching familiarly as the muscles in the lids of my eyes can no longer continue. I feel the rug slide against my cheek, in-between the webs of my fingers, brushing my lips. I’m drifting. A stab of panic echoes somewhere in my chest. It’s too late. Everything goes black.




I’m dreaming. I know this because this dream is always the same. It always begins the same and it always ends the same. It is always the same.

Standing on a stage by themselves are two people, outside of the spotlight only darkness reigns. One is the healthy man from the photo, though his face is one of distress now. Across from him stands a woman, pretty in a way few would realize, but to those few she would be the most striking woman they had ever met. The man in the picture is one of those few. I was one of those few. Her face cold, it makes me think of the fireplace that once was roaring with warmth, lighting up the entire room. But now the fire was out, in its place a lump of black timber now sat. The man made agitated motions with his hands as he spoke, often tossing them out wide angrily. I could not hear his voice, though it was apparent by the look on his face that he was yelling. The woman’s response seemed casual, cool, with no room for debate. This only angered the picture man more. His face seemed to grow a little red, and he waved his hands in the air beside him, a little above his hip. Two children appeared next to him, or perhaps they were just always there and I just hadn’t noticed them. They were slightly off, their skin just slightly see through, their smiles a little too perfect. The boy had his hair, the girl, his eyes. Picture man seemed to beckon to them, but did not turn address them, rather his eyes remained on the woman. She said something, one word, and the child apparitions seemed to be swallowed by the darkness, though the circle of light around the argument and the conflicting pair did not waiver, the shadows had not leapt forth to claim them.

The man with the handsome face was now turned to where the two children had been, too late he realized as they were gone. He stared. He turned, and his eyes were different now, they were no longer his eyes, but they were my eyes, the animated anger now seemed to have been taken by the shadows of darkness as well. They held each other’s gaze, neither moved, they seemed content to look at each other in mutual loathing, they seemed to appear as strangers to each, growing more alienated by the second. He whispered something, you could tell it was a whisper, his lips seemed to soft for it not to be a whisper. The woman glared at him for a moment, then turned and left, walking freely into the abyss. Left alone, the man looked around as the darkness, the darkness that had taken everything from him. He let his head drop, the light shrank, slowly enveloping the once picture perfect man in the once picture perfect world in darkness. He let it.