Words on a Scream

I fade.

Edaf I. Shot of coffee brings me back. Through countless millennia the mind races and that whoosh is the sound of time. Who will I be? Who will I be?

The answer, of course, is: me. Yet still I fade.

There is no cause for alarm. I cross the room and adjust an aerial. I come into focus. I try to pick something up but my hand passes through it; I am not here, this is a memory.

Whoosh again. I am here now. I am sat before a scream and I am typing. The scream was blank but I fill it with words. I give voice and volume to the scream before I loose it across the horizon.

Nobody will call the police. It’s not that they are used to people screaming, but they’re used to not caring. They’re used to shunting thoughts into that part of the brain that tells them it has nothing to do with them. It is right alongside damn fool, kids and what-was-that-I-thought-I-heard-something-but-now-it’s-quiet-it-must-have-been-my-imagination.

But it’s nothing, of course. It wasn’t even a real scream. I just made it up with words. I doubt the neighbours even heard it. Originally it was supposed to be the word “screen”. It was a typo. A misfire of neurons.

I fade.

Edaf I. In and out of reality I step; between rooms of memory and illusion. And then I am Here Again and I am typing as I try to convey these sensations: words on a scream.