There was a time. A time in time. A place in time. Is there a difference?

"There's a fog," I whisper. A fog in time. A fog in place. Is there a difference?

"A fog?" His voice. It is in time. In time to the clicking of time gone by. I feel it going by, but I cannot stop it. I feel I should start doing something, some aching need brewing under my skin, but there is no strength beneath it; it has no integrity; and I have no strength enough to satisfy it, however shallow it may be. I, lying down, doing nothing, working to satisfy all the weakness and pain in this time and place (it is all the work I can do), unable to satisfy something shallow. Something. In time and place.

"Can you speak, now?" The man must be beside me. He must be nearby. He sounds far away, but so do I, to myself; but I know that I am in immediate proximity to myself - I see it sometimes, when I open my eyes - so he must be, as well.

"Don't… get as close… as I am… to me…" I croak out. A precursor to precaution. All I want is to be safe. But all I can be is safe from contact, safe from presence, safe from the time and place of another (another?) human being. Safe… since when did I wish that I was safe? I would high-tail through streets with high tails of coat flying behind me as I flew down further roads. I would bury myself so deep in the tissues of my mind that it was a precarious thing, wondering if I would be able to get out. Mostly, I did not wish to… but I cannot think about that now… oh, I cannot…

Those notions are so vague, distant, now. I cannot grasp a memory, not even a snapshot of the event; I cannot gain access back even into the outer reaches of my mind. Oh, it has that flimsy, echoey nature, as if it never happened; as if it simply poorly-yielded imagination.

"But it did happen," I whisper, in a sore effort to make it permanent. I clench my eyes shut tighter, until periphery wrinkles deepen and scrape against each other to a painful point. Since when did external happenings have such an influence on the internal state?

"No, I didn't." He seems further away. Is he closer? What is his place at this time? "I won't get close to you, if you don't want me to."

The internal state is supposed to be sovereign. It is meant to be omnipotent, omnipresent. Superior to the outside. That is all I am. Alone protects me. I could sit inside my mind and be safe. My thoughts were supposed to be gospel; why is it now my words? Why is it external over internal now? Why has everything turned upside-down, illogical?

I was safe. Even when I was hightailing through streets, wrapping unarmed arms around armed criminals, I was safe. I was safe in my mind. My mind was safe. Indestructible. An infallible architecture. Even when I was on the outside, sprinting down a street, engaging my senses as if my life (life?) depended upon it, my mind would always be there. It would always be there to come home to. I was so safe, so secure; even while scouting danger, skirting the periphery of demise (demise?), I was safe. My mind was there. Oh, it was there. There.

And now, it is there. But that is even worse, for I cannot break in. Why should I have to break in? I do not have the strength. Even if I could break in, what would I find? Would I have the strength to put it all back together? Would I want t— no. If I do not have the strength to want a mind, my mind, my home, then— I cannot think about that either. I refuse. (I cannot. As if I have strength to decline.)

But it is regardless. I am on the external of the internal. I am out of my mind.

What do I do? Stay stranded out here in the cold? I want warm, I want lukewarm.

I am on a short fuse. There is a taste of congealed, rotten saliva all through my mouth. There is a tap-dance of heartbeats in my chest and waters rising within it, silty half-waters that are partially curdled liquid and stale air. It pushes me, snaps at me, generates an ill, trembling drone just beneath the skin, its vibrations permeating all through my chest. It demands that I do something, and something short, and something quickly accomplished, and easily accomplished, for how else can someone of my weak calibre truly accomplish anything? But I cannot. I don't have the strength! I don't have the strength! I scream at myself, but it only comes out as a whisper, of course. Only the shivering disquiet beneath the skin gave the illusion of possessing enough energy to convert into a louder voice; even in thought.

"My poor… chest…" I whisper.

"Your chest? Like, your heart?"

"No… need to flout… your qualifications in this area…" I rasped back. He is an M.D., but he has none, of course. His brain, I daresay, has as much fog as the day he was born. "You know… nothing else…" I wheeze in addition, as clarification.

"Thanks." His voice appeared laced more with pique than illumination. The notion fluttered away before I could reach out and grasp it; my arms stayed by their sides; would I be able to contain it once I had taken it in? I no longer have the strength to investigate even thoughts. I no longer have the strength to… investigate. Investigate. My investigation…

"My poor… head…" I whisper.

"Your head? Like, your brain?"

Silence.

"Do you want some water? I'll get you some water. Good for a headache."

It is not something external that will assist this internal. Sure, it may enter, but it shall be stopped before the same breach that I am akin to: that spongy brick about the place I… hold dear.

He has returned. He is close. But his external place cannot soothe my internal, terrified time. I do not feel safe.

I am locked within a landscape; a paragraph of ooze.

There are cracks along my fingers, but not along the couch. They have strayed from that point. No; it is my skin, withering away; it is the life (life?) beneath my skin - withering - away. I cannot move my head (containing my brain) enough to check. But it feels that way. Feels that way! Since when must I rely upon how I feel, however more rational that method of feeling may be? And yet, I cannot feel the cracks along the couch; those cracks that resembled the laboratory ceiling. I cannot feel them… I must… since when did I condemn myself to feel?

(That day under the laboratory ceiling.)

There was fog about… fog within… but no fog above.

(That day under the laboratory ceiling.)

I remember the day I met the man. The man who always seems to be around, these days. Whether I close or open my eyes. When I can open my eyes. The more accurate description would be when the strings return, and my eyelids are forced open of their own accord. But he seems to be omnipresent. As my mind used to be. But he is far less complex; far less interesting; far less where my home is.

(That day under the laboratory ceiling.)

He was somewhat interesting, I profess. But that was in the days in which my mind was running without glitch nor catch. What interesting notions I had abduced in relation to his sturdy persona is now locked away in another landscape, a different world. I cannot access it. I am locked out. So all he is to me now is a presence, without background, without knowledge, without notion.

It was (that day under the laboratory ceiling) the most beautiful place he had ever seen. That person from before, with that mind - that detective, who before, was me. The laboratory was so white, but I cannot quite picture it now, for no memories arise: they are locked away, and I am locked out. All I can see are the black of my eyelids, all in opposition of the place I desire to be. The most beautiful place I had ever seen.

"Afghanistan or Iraq?" The words float to me. Out of nowhere. Akin to the fog. Quite like the fog. Is it the fog? Afghanistan or Iraq? Did that bring on the fog? It is as good a guess as any. For I must guess. I have nothing much to go by. All my material is locked away. Could I locate it, anyway, in the fog? Fancy that, a detective, perceiving guesses along a vast, lined-up equilibrium rather than the differential problem-solving of the mathematical dance I would savour, if I did enjoy, if I did cause myself to feel. But now I am driven to feel, for I am blind, and I cannot open my eyes. Perhaps I could fight it - perhaps I could scramble for a sliver of who I once was, to push aside the feeling, the emotion, the sensation, in all its methods and forms (that day under the laboratory ceiling), but where is the strength? How can I do anything, when drifting into my own mind was the most effortless thing to my possession, simpler than twitching a finger? And inside, upon the internal, there is an encompassment of home. A rhapsody of intellect, lukewarm as a blanket against the external. There is no time; there is no place.

But here, right now, is certainly a place; a time. Nowhere I wish to be. Oh, I wish I could move on. How can I move from this position? The man sometimes suggests movement. A walk. Dinner. Speaking. His efforts have faded out (which sounds familiar); perhaps he has relented; perhaps given up (which sounds famili— have I given— wait). Have I given up? Is this what entails giving up? I did not actively choose this (or did I? How can you review the processes your mind took before this occurred?). But I would not reduce myself to this (would you not? How do you know?). That is not what I feel (feel?), what little remnant of myself survives bedridden in the nostalgia and self-loathing that stews in my lower gut, answered. It writhes, quiet and constant, and seethes when I pay attention to it, as if to convince me that it is seething all the time. Even my self-destruction takes shortcuts. Even it gives up. What gives immunity to the notion that I would not have chosen this for myself?

But there is yet something in me that whispers, croaks, rasps, that I couldn't. I cannot.

"Sherlock?"

His voice again. I do not open my eyes. If only I had the choice. Then it would be a better event, to me. This is relative, of course (although must be made explicit to people such as… me).

"You're okay. Come on. Don't start trembling again."

If only I had the choice. Am I… the same as everyone else now? Has everyone got this fog? Have they simply learned to live with it?

"Sherlock, I know you can hear me. Just… twitch your finger or something."

My finger? If I had the choice to even twitch my finger, I would place it back upon the cracks along the couch. Then I would be reminded, however dolefully, of (that day under the laboratory ceiling). The cracks along the (ceiling), the spindly little cracks that decorated the final days of my wonderful mind. The mind once treasured and now taken, and once taken for granted. If I had the choice to even twitch my finger, I would have the simpler mechanism of entering my mind. If that were to occur, I would once again see a beautiful place external, from an internal of no time or place.

It is (that day), in a retrospection clearer than all else, clouded less by the fog that lurks my every moment; more vivid than the other snatches of memory that are spilled involuntarily behind my eyelids, rather than the choice of actively retrieving them - they mock me in doing so; in (that day) with cracks upon the ceiling echoing ("Afghanistan or Iraq?" comes the resound) those upon my fingers, which I cannot twitch. It is (that day) — I digress: that day under the laboratory ceiling, the day I met the man.

"John."

"Yes, Sherlock?" He is at my side. He is immediacy, in this aching state of sluggish perception. He is solidity, when the trembling call for spent, gratified action compresses in surroundrance of my heart.

"Look at me," I rasp out, almost indecipherably. (The cipher of my mind; yellow; infected.) Under the laboratory ceiling, he was staring at me. Taken aback, perhaps verging upon astounded, by my observations; my mind. I… miss that. Terribly. What am I now? Can I look at myself now? I miss the way — oh, it hurts terribly — I miss the way I could —

"Observe."