Saturday's Storyteller: "You know that feeling you get when you think it's nighttime, but it's really the middle of the afternoon?"

by Belinda Roddie

You know that feeling you get when you think it's nighttime, but it's really the middle of the afternoon?

Disorientation, above all things, brings you the closest to reality than any other distraction or jolt in your brain. It is when you are disoriented that you question everything around you, drawing you uncomfortably nearer to any sort of fathomable truth.

I woke up at 3:49 in the afternoon, far later than the normal time I arose from a nap. The air was very heavy and cold, like fog was swirling around the couch and frosting the puckered skin on my palms. Outside, it was definitely dark, the skies overcast and refusing to let the slightest finger of sunlight extend from its fiery palm. Still, as I struggled to stand up and gaze through the window, I could still see the trees rising like an assembled green diadem against the mist that crystallized like jewels on the leaves.

It seemed like the world wanted to spew rain, but no drop could be heard smacking the pane or the boats docked beneath the floor of my apartment. Stretching my arms out forward, then above my head, I moved to fling the throw blanket that had been nestled against my knees, only to feel a deep, disturbing pain scald my hip like a branding iron pressed against my side. And that was when I heard my sister's voice from the other room.

"Sammy? Sammy, are you up?"

When you've just woken up from a nap, it's easy to be confused by some things and overly observant of others. For example, while my sister's voice sounded garbled and foreign like it were being filtered through a radio station, I was acutely, almost painfully, aware that I was still wearing the Pink Floyd shirt that I had thrown on yesterday in a fit of laziness. In my blurry, bare-boned reflection in the corner of the window, barely illuminated by the brass lamp behind the couch I was resting on, I could slightly discern the contrasting faces of each band member, accentuated by the rainbow prism as seen on most typical fragments of the group's merchandise. Of course, this invited a song that had absolutely nothing to do with their best-selling album - "Have A Cigar," specifically - into my head, the high-pitched synths scraping against my ears as if the tune was actually being played on the stereo.

I grunted over the notes in my own brain and made a move to stand up. That was when I noticed I couldn't.

"Elle."

Not hearing my sister's voice again had given me a strange sensation of loneliness. This feeling of absence was especially becoming prominent as I sat up. Specifically given the sudden absence of every part of my body below the knee.

"Elle."

I tried to plant my feet on the ground. Only I had no feet.

"Elle!"

In my crazed cerebrum, Roy Harper was blurting industry speak.

"Elle, Elle, Elle! Fucking Elle! Help!"

In a queer fit of desperation, I threw my body off the sofa, the stubs of my thighs dragging against the extra fabric of my extra long cargo shorts. The ache in my hip was noticeably spreading, a peculiar burning now like I was pressing my waist against a hot stove. In the next half-second, my sister was flinging herself toward me, her hair half curled and her nails painted as if she were planning on going out some time in the next hour.

"Sammy?"

"Where are my legs?" I demanded, as if she would know the answer. "Where are my fucking legs?"

Elle was gawking at me. "Sam, I..."

"Tell me where my fucking legs are!" I bellowed. "Now!"
"Sam," she pronounced, as if the one syllable caused her exhaustion. "They're right there."

"Bullshit! Where are they?"

"Sam, they are right there."

"Bull. Fucking. Shit."

"Look, if you'd just focus..."

"Fuck!" I howled because there was nothing else I could say. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck - "

Elle seized me with both hands as David Gilmour began strumming, never quite obeying the remarkable cease and desist I was sending around in my own skull. I kicked wildly at her, thrashing against the rug, spare pouches of lint burying itself into my shirt and shorts as I flailed. I tried to grab her hands, to wrench them off the place where I was kicking, only to realize that I had something to kick with, and she was clearly holding onto something that was not there previously. Outside, the fog had only just begun to lift up, and it somehow made the dark evening somewhat brighter, as I pushed myself up on my newfound calves, my raw feet squealing in protest against the adequately chafed carpet.

The only thing that punctuated the ensuing silence at first was the howling of a dog, most likely owned by someone in the neighboring apartment complex. Then the wind picked up, and chain were heard clanging against the mast of a nearby sailboat. No one within our own system of apartments seemed to stir, or desire to complain against my most recent moment of disorientation. Or burst of awkward clarity.

I took long, damp breaths, coughing once, as all music faded from my memory for at least the time being. Elle was standing there, sweating slightly from her forehead. An angry patch of mascara threatened to leak from her lashes.

I stood up slowly, not taking my sister's hand for support. I looked around. I felt goosebumps blossom on my arms as I pressed my hands together. My legs were wobbly, shaking. But they were there.

Elle looked at me blankly until I got enough air back in my lungs to speak. I would not let myself smile, not even apologetically.

"You have a cigar I can smoke?" I asked.

***

She made me a bowl of creamy potato and bacon soup - straight from a can, of course, as I let the smoke of my stogie make its way out of the now opened window. While the chill was unwelcome, it was the only way I could puff without the landlady smelling it and getting mad. The soft, rolled up tobacco leaves against my teeth were bitter, and tempting to chew on, my molars quivering against the shortening stub as I accepted the food from my sister.

"How long was I out?"

Elle retrieved a mug from the sink before looking at me funny. "Out?"

I inhaled smoke. "Out as in out. Like, asleep out."

"Oh." She sighed. "Twenty hours or so. Tops."

"Ah," I breathed. "That explains why your day-to-day calendar says Sunday instead of Saturday."

The cigar, suddenly, didn't taste so good to me anymore, so I put it out in the shallow vase that hadn't held flowers for over six months.

"This has actually been the first fit I had in a while," I muttered, more to myself than to Elle. "Maybe the car accident didn't puncture my brain so badly after all."

"Not as bad as your last episode, either," she added. "I prefer you believing your legs have been amputated rather than our family being chased by the Emperor of Antarctica."

"I didn't believe that."

"No, but your last episode was borderline schizophrenia." She noticed the coagulating of the cream in my bowl. "Aren't you going to eat the soup?"

Probably not.

I had no appetite. All I was thinking about was triggers. That was what my experiences had trained me to look for. Since getting a half pound of shrapnel embedded into my brain and then surgically removed, I realized that triggers were untrustworthy and difficult to categorize. Obviously, it was easy to blame musical triggers, since every episode I had endured involved some kind of classic rock song. But obviously, I had slept for twenty hours for a reason. I needed to rest frequently, but never for that long.

"Maybe I should go back to the doctor tomorrow."

"No." Elle shook her head. "You know what he'll say."

"And I'm not going back there."

I pulled the stump of the cigar out of the still water in the vase and moved to dump it into the trash can. My entire hand smelled like ash and, oddly enough, moss. Like rain had soaked into my skin and was causing something foreign to grow.

"Keep an eye out on me from the window, Elle," I heard myself say - garbled and distant like a radio crackle. "I'm going to take a walk around the block."

This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.