I ask if there was a point to trying.
They tell me not to be so dramatic.
Each thought, nestled in my mind, slipping and sliding among each other, no end in sight. No destination. They giggle in those waterfall melodies that come from knocking into each other. Little droplets of thought. Comprising an ocean, roaring in my ears. Don't be so dramatic. I see.
All these terrible thoughts, all this terrible life - life? - and together, my brain makes them up.
"Is there a point to trying?" I ask.
Don't be so dramatic.
I was not speaking to you. It is short, crass. No more of the lily-voiced murmurs I usually reserve for my thoughts, my notions. They are different now. Unorganised. What monster does not recognise their own children?
"Is there a point to trying?" I attempt, again. This time, I suspect it is aloud. The evidence enforcing this abduction mainly originates from the manner in which the sturdy man ahead, head bowed over the mantelpiece, turns. There are lines upon his face similar to the ones I feel beneath my fingers - scattered, shallow, ssssssighing.
"You'll hurt your back," he says.
I cannot be compelled to place a sole finger upon my chin in rumination, but I ruminated upon his suggestion nonetheless. I even attempted to imagine the finger upon my chin, to complete the picture anyhow (the 'real world' and mental one are no separate terms), but I could not locate the entrance to my imagination anywhere among the fog. To tell you the truth… be as it may… I cannot see a thing. I feel that I have become blind. All I can feel is smog in my brain, fog permeating every corner of my mind, pressing the surface of my brain against the surface of my skull. It is like… I can only be bid entrance to my own mind if I leave my eyes behind. Now all I have to rely upon is pushing blindly through the fog, but it is impenetrable. Where can I find the entrance? Where can I find anything?
"It is backbreaking work," I assuage. It is important, I have learned, to maintain conversation when one has begun it. And by important, I mean an optional procedure for social lubrication. This talk of importance is often a flippantly-used term for things not necessarily very important. However, in the presence of a man who believes such things as important (I would assume - note that this is a proletariat stereotype), the optional use of an optional method suddenly appears a lot less optional that an option would typically opt to be.
"I meant your position."
"Yes. It is… a difficult position. Backbreaking work… is there a point… to… trying?"
"I mean your back, Sherlock. For someone who reckons they're so literal…" He trails off. It is worse than pausing.
I am indeed lying upon the couch in much the same manner as I have been dominating it for the past… days. I cannot collect the strength to move. I do not feel compelled. In fact, I am not sure if this man did me a service in reminding me that I was indeed lying on a couch. I had forgotten. But now his voice calls me back to the immediate world, the 'real world', and I will have to fight to get back into my mind. And even that endeavour will not do me much good: it seems blind men feel more. The mind is a place for rationality, for clearcut precision; not for new emotion to come prying in, bent to undo whatever architecture there is left in my skull.
"Just try to move a bit."
"Your… qualifications as an… MD…" It is my turn to trail off. I deplore it: oh, how that makes my gut wrench! There was something in my mind, something about being overprotective, some medical analogy, but it has disappeared into the fog. Now it will float about and eventually rest somewhere, clutter up some place, categorise itself in a place it is not meant to be! There is something abuzz on the underside of my throat, something hot and tingling.
Within the mental womb, I did not really have to see. I did not have to feel. Sensory input was for the external, was for the place were ordinary people roam, where the commonplace can be transformed into the extraordinary and only I would know; only I would observe. But inside my mind, where I was safe and capable and myself… it was different. It was me.
Don't be so dramatic.
You would know, I whisper. You would know if you were them. If you were the thoughts from before.
Don't be so dramatic.
Please stop. Please go away.
Don't be so dramatic.
"Please," I whisper. I shut my eyes, tight. But I focus on the cracks beneath my fingers. The lighter air pressing against my eyelids. The man's presence just beyond. I do not want to steal back into my mind. I do not want to face it. I do not want to work. I cannot. I cannot work against it. It will break me. I do not wish to be broken.
Don't be so dramatic.
"Sherlock, I'm concerned."
"Don't be."
So dramatic.
"Will you ever move from that position?"
His voice is marbled by fog. Swirls and tendrils of the stuff leak about the room, but barely any coincide with my ears.
"I do not… expect so," I whisper. The origin of that response is unbeknownst to me. It was born on my tongue. I did not view it transpire in my mind; I did not create it in little brush strokes of my mentality. When those words were flung to the air, flitting off, not looking back despite my looking forth, I looked upon their occurrence for the first time. Perhaps somewhere in that fog, something was being formed, but I did not feel it. So I doubt it. I cannot. I cannot. Since when did I place so much emphasis on feeling? All I can access in my mind is pressing my hands against the ballooning pressure of the fog, that dense softness, sponging the twitches of my hands.
With their backs to me, I consider those words, and yes, I do not expect so. I do not know whether I can move from this position. This place in life (life?), this place in time, this place. This state of mind… how can I move from this position? To move from point A to point B, some exertion is involved; some spent effort. Effort! Oh. How can I move from this position? I do not have the energy to face my mind. Oh, how I would love to pick through it, deconstruct it, put it back together! But I cannot. Oh, I cannot. I cannot even move from this couch; how on earth would I pick apart my own mentality?
"You really should move. You've been there for days." A pause. A sigh. Is it a sigh, or a squall of air huffed by his armchair as it suddenly accommodates his sturdy frame? Another attempt. The words, not the sitting - if it is that. I am still uncertain on the subject. "You'll get sores." I would be able to abduce it in a second, if I were myself. Myself… oh, how I miss him. How I… miss… What is this emphasis on feeling?
"I… cannot move - from this… position," I breathed. The dust upon the couch at my mouth unlatched their feelers and threw themselves off the cliff-face of leather. Sores. I am bereft. Why should I care for corporeal harm? The body is only perceived by the mind, anyhow, and that puts all stakes to a dead end. I suppose the dust particles settled upon the shrubbery of carpet, but they had undertaken themselves beyond direct line of sight and, with the waterfall of the couch edge blocking my line of sight, negligible fabric fuzz had to substitute. I had time, however, to appreciate the caustic testimony: the very couch upon which I was gaoled due to mental catastrophe blocks vision, an element of my former function that I was fascinated by. The ideals that I could invent, the objectives I could envision, the possibilities I could imagine, all set upon that sunlight stage: sight. Established there, branching off from there, becoming something far more reaching and indeed, employing methods beyond the menial medium of seeing: but as dutiful children thank dutiful parents, I remembered where my roots were. If only I could access the memory bank which held my origins, my roots, perhaps I could attempt to rebuild what I once was! But I cannot. I cannot. And indeed… would I want to?
That engenders a petrifying thought. Would I re-engineer an architecture that cracks and bends and falls apart before I perceive a seam? Would I dare to outreach to a whole different building, one that would take again decades to design? But all of this is irrelevant. Petty daydreaming - if I could see a thing of what I am thinking of. All I could do is lie upon this couch, breathe in this dust, and cannot move from this position.
"Come on. Move."
"I cannot."
"Sherlock!"
"I cannot."
"Why not?" His voice is heated. Temperature pertains to voices. Sometimes, when I was quiet and somewhat content (content?), my mind would adopt a lukewarm nature. Like being submerged in a silky, tropical lake. The water slips over your skin as if it is laced with soft. You are suspended, but it is not dense. You can move anyplace with ease, as if swimming through air, soft slipping over you, lukewarm. You could move from your position.
"I simply… cannot," I whisper, although there is nothing simple about it; or perhaps there is, for there is a sole thing, and that is that I cannot.
The man, in all his gruff encouragement, has proved to be thoroughly unfascinating. There is nothing in me left to be fascinated, but I suppose that is not the sole reason for this. He often sits in an armchair not far from me. In his occupancy of it, this particular furniture has become inaugurated into the small group of elements that I am aware of - joining the couch and the man, but excluding the contents of my mind. Everything else seems to be shrouded in fog; not that I can see anything else. But the feelers of my senses stretch out, and that is all I can see. And I try to envision where I am, but of course; I cannot see in my mind either. Indeed, I am quite blind, and it is no assistance that my eyes are tightly closed. It may appear, from the uninitiated (which is all but I), that I am subject to a tumultuous migraine. I wish I were. Oh, if only I were! I wish it were as arduously, in the faint ghost of ardour of one void of emotion, as a frostbite patient praying for the pricking pain of circulation. But I cannot feel a thing. Only the fog. The cotton-wool pressure of the fog. It is not even cold. Nor lukewarm. It has no temperature.
It is perhaps worth noting to myself that the man seems more present than my own body. Of myself, all I can feel is the exterior front of my mind and the gentle pressure of my shutter eyelids upon each other, the delicate splay of eyelashes on the fraction of skin of which I am aware.
"I've got food for you," I hear. There is a dim clatter, somewhere out in the grey. It echoes a little, then gives. The fog dissipates a little by my face as the sound falls through it towards the carpet bulrushes. Another shard of awareness. The eyelashes twitch a little: the skin itches negligibly. Would I have the strength to raise my hand, to touch it, if irritation transpired? If I could feel my arms, would they emulate lead? Or a pure emptiness devoid of all strength, all power?
"Your hand is twitching again." His voice is closer, but no less clear. He speaks from behind a thickset wall. "I put food out. Just near your mouth. Don't have to do a thing."
The eyelashes twitch again. Does the hand mirror it? Why is my hand twitching?
"Sherlock, are you okay? Open your eyes."
I cannot. I cannot reach that food. I cannot open my eyes. I cannot feel where they are. I cannot do a thing. I have no strength. I cannot feel. What is this emphasis on feeling? Why can I not feel inside my mind? I want to see. I want to see what has happened. Please let me back into my mind.
"You're trembling! Sherlock, open your eyes! Open them!"
And just as I could feebly feel those eyelids, those eyelashes, they vanished from my awareness. All that is left is the couch, the armchair, the man. If I could feel them, would they be leaden? What is this emphasis on feeling? They shifted from their position in my straitened perception, and now I cannot move their position; I cannot rise those shutters; I cannot quaver those lashes. If I were to dare to say it, for fear of crossing a line, I would say —
"Open!"
I cannot.