Familiar
My eyes flicker open and I feel woozy; my face pressed to icy wet pavement. I try to get up but that arrow in my shoulder has posed a problem for me. It’s shiny slicked in blood but, I don’t feel pain? It’s smothered by adrenaline your body’s personal brand of painkillers. So, high off adrenaline I decided to rip it out but, first I have to snap the tip of it off. Snapping it was more painful than anticipated but I have to keep going; I have to. I grasp where the rod and my shoulder meet and I pull. One, . .Two, …Three. I hear the muscles around it give and it’s free; faster than I thought less painful than I thought. I’m happy to have that out of my shoulder and for a second I consider keeping it as a memento of my crazy fucked up life.
Where am I? I don’t recognise this place. It looks like a mundane city it has no defining characteristics, none at all; it looks like what a person would put together if you asked them to draw what a city looked like. Not a single heartbeat or corpse in sight and as I try to rack my brain for an image of who I’d like to see I can’t find one, not a single one. Why can’t I remember anyone? A mother? A father? Noone? Myself? Noone. The only image I can conjure is the word “Panic”. My breathing picks up its pace racing with vigor and faster than ever before. The world starts to spin faster and faster. I can even hear my heart’s beating accelerate to a full fledged hum quicker than that of a hummingbird in a field of coral honeysuckle. Everything is going blurry, black inching its way from the outsides of your vision inward; no not again. This seems familiar.