Did you take a look at the materials I sent you?
Hmm? Oh. Yes. Yes, I did.
You haven't even leafed through them, I can tell.
I read something about cats on the first page, I remember that.
You're coming along, that's good. Though I daresay not as gracefully as I hoped.
One can only deal with so much in a day.
So much what? Can you be more specific?
Frustration. So much of my own frustration.
. . . *
I am looking over the water, my retrospective eye pulling this mind backwards, into another place, another time. I stretch out my arms and feel the heavy weight of wool yank them down in the creases of my coat. But I am weightless. I am feeling the sky stretching out before me, beside me, behind me where there is darkness and above where the light bears down on my head. I have no properties. I have no chains. I am free-
Thank you-
And I am falling.
Liberty In Death!
But, no.
I pull open my eyes, feeling the wet salt sting them mercilessly. I look down, see nothing but long drops of air and finally a tumultuous collision of water, hundreds of feet below. I step back from the ledge and shove my hands into my deep pockets and I turn around and go.
Not today.
A car hums, waiting by the side of the pebbled road, the engine grinding softly against the gears, impatient and hungry for release. This must be my car.
How nice.
My boot gives the black Mercedes its gunning thrust forwards and at an almost catatonic pace, I resume driving, and the landscape means little to me. My mind is ahead of the car, racing at blinding speed towards a fatal collision with a star, somewhere, lingering, floating and humming, and with its eyes set on me it is coming fast. Or has it already come? Am I feeling aftershock only?
Numbness, fatigue-no, not fatigue-weariness takes over my body at a constant pace even though my mind struggles to fight the sleep. Morpheus' web has snared my physical form, trapped my limbs in a slow mire that destroys my tendons and crushes my bones from the inside out, from the red to the white and the white to the black I am starting off done. Through, and through, I am done. There is no motion that keeps me limber, no investigation that keeps me curious and wanting. There is no more work that I am allowed. There is no game for me to play.
And my brain is starting to rot away.
Senseless, I think, absurdly senseless. I begin to jerk my eyes from mirror to mirror to road, cautiously watching for men or horses or cats or cars, but speeding on along I know that I am alone on this bleak stretch of highway. In the green, twisting hills of the deep country my thin grey line is the only road cut into the earth, and the sky overhead rolls on and on, a great grey blanket of sad, which has started wringing out rain onto the roof of the car with soft pings! and pangs! and drops of steel draw my concentration away and shatter it in a thousand directions.
The Mercedes' windows roll back up and this helps clear away some of the sound, which has so torturously been pounding in my ears ever since the Problem began, and now it never goes away. I am forced to move myself out of the city on regular occasions, as often as every weekend or every few days, because I physically cannot stand to intake the sound of London anymore. Cars, calls, phones, and people and their dogs and houses and keys and moving. It drives me insane, but no matter how I react I need to do the job, and without the job, I am nothing, have nothing, live for nothing.
Conclusion: I cannot afford to be insane.
Shifting manual gears upwards, I fix my eyes on the grainy, bumpy road and as miles pass by me unnoticed, unceremonious, my eyes grow into boring round balls, staring, faceless. My vision starts to turn kaleidoscopic as the road bores me endlessly and onward, and I have nothing to distract me throughout the miles and miles of dreamy driving. Though of recent the pale brown fenceposts seem to fly by faster, and the distant pops of thunder upstairs have peeled away into scraps of nothing, having been left behind by my thundering black car.
I make an analogy comparing the black rover to a stout, hardy stallion trouncing through a difficult mire, who kicks his heels up indignantly at the first sign of a slipping foothold and cocks his mighty head up in the air, blowing white foam from his flared red nostrils, spewing spit out of his frothy mouth. Sweat like raindrops form and slip along his dark, wet skin, skin like a seal's body underwater, water like tears of skin that the body cries, cries out for release, for definition, for favours, for touching, needs, hands, Joh...n-no.
No. No one must ever know.
I hold desperately onto the wheel, but underneath me the earth slides out of control.
*** NOTES ***
Didn't rate the work because I want to have an open mind about where I am going to take this story.
If any readers have suggestions, gimmegimmegimme because I can seriously handle the critique that may come along with it. In fact, I love the critique.
Remember that I could always improve something I'm missing if only I get a helpful dose of comments by readers!
Finally, I seriously hope that such a chilling tale will catch you all off guard and set your feels on fire, because this is what good fanfiction does to me. (Oh god, I'm becoming Moffat.)