Six AM in Smoke

It’s six in the morning and there’s an empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand and a dead woman on the floor. There’s a knife in your hand too, but you didn’t put it there. You were not responsible for this.

Your fingers are limp around the handle, letting it merely lie in your palm. You cannot recall why it is there, or why you are allowing it to stay there, or if any of that really matters because as far as you can tell from here the dead woman was clearly shot instead of stabbed.

You exhale the mouthful of smoke you were holding. The cigarette in your fingers has burned down almost to nothing, but you take another pull on it anyway. You are unsure of many things; where you are, who this dead woman was, why you are holding a seemingly unrelated knife and whether there will be any more cigarettes after this one is finished.

The empty bottle of whiskey seems less important. You were never a fan of whiskey.

Dimly, you become aware of the sound of sirens somewhere outside. It seems an appropriate sound until you realise that it is moving away from you, not towards. Silence settles back over the room and you exhale another cloud of smoke. The cigarette finally falls apart into warm ash that coats your fingers. You continue staring at the ceiling.

Somehow, you know you should be feeling more than this. Sluggish memories of the time before are surfacing, but they are lacking in the appropriate emotions. You do not remember how or when you got here, but that this is a cheap motel on the outskirts of a city that you don’t know. You recall that this knife you are holding was used to cut the phone line in this room, but you don’t know who used it, or why. You don't know what happened to the gun that must have been there. You don’t know why you are inside this room, how you got here, or why you are still alive while that other woman is dead.

Perhaps it is to do with that needle that’s lying on the nightstand next to the bottle. Yes, perhaps that’s the reason you don’t remember, and the reason that all you really know for certain is that there is an empty bottle of whiskey on the nightstand, a dead woman on the floor, and a knife and a pile of ashes in your hands.

Marionette Wonderland

It is different for everyone.

For some, it is simple. Cold logic and hard facts come together as flat steel walls. Everything is ordered neatly and smoothly beneath their fingertips. It always makes sense, it always fits. There are no cracks, no gaps, only more smooth edges where the pattern can be continued as more logic and facts are added to the machine.

For others, their minds are like marionettes. Fragments suspended on strings and hanging in liquid darkness. Pulled this way and that. Half in control, half controlled by whims and follies and dreams. It may make sense when you follow a string to its end, but sometimes, it is better when it makes no sense at all. When you allow yourself to drown in your own mind.

And when you walk through Wonderland, you start to feel the strings. Attached to your arms, your legs, to every finger on your hands and wound around your neck. Who is in control here? Are you moving the strings, or are the strings moving you? You raise your arm, look at your hand. The strings hang slack, and you pull-

No, they told you to stop that. It isn’t Wonderland. It’s not real. There are no strings. There are no strings and no eyes and teeth that flash and grin in the dark. Return to the machine. Put the pieces of the puzzle back together. Remember, if they don't fit together, they won't stay. Put the red and black into their patterns, colour and shade on white backgrounds in perfectly ordered columns of numbers and ranks.

Relax. Focus, just like they told you. That isn’t a string around your neck, there is nothing tied to your hands at all. It isn’t dark here, you can see perfectly clearly. But then why can you still hear that voice at the back of your mind? That seductive purr and the ticking of clocks and suddenly you understand that gravity and sanity are linked so very intrinsically. 

After all, what difference is there between falling down the rabbit hole, and falling down a flight of stairs? All it takes... is one... little... step...