100TC #9 - Insanity

I know I have not posted a new text for a long time, and I am sorry. But inspiration is something that has to come by itself, and forcing it does not always give good result, so I prefer taking my time to do things properly ;) So here is the 9th entry of my 100 Themes writing challenge, based on the theme "Insanity".

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- INSANITY -

Sex And Whiskey

She was a strong woman. She was about to give birth to her first child. Well she hoped to, her last attempt at having a child had been a failure. Stillborn, her baby died before he even came to life. She was scared to death about it happening again, and she prayed to all the gods to hear the baby cry. It was time, the baby was here. She had been drugged by the doctors to avoid birth complications. For some reason she was still half-conscious. She had no idea how long she had been on the hospital bed with the doctors surrounding her, but she could still see them even though she couldn't not feel a thing. Their voices were muffled and her sight was clouded, yet she was still half aware of what was going on. After what seemed to be hours, the baby had finally come out of her womb. She fell unconscious.

I woke up, feeling real bad. I felt like I was having the worst hangover of my life. Where was I? I could see shapes and shadows walking around me, but I couldn't see much, nor hear much either for that matter. It was like there was a giant storm around my head, shielding me from what was going on in the outside world. And that pain in my head, it was as if I had just been hammered. What on earth could have happened, where was I? Who was I? 

The young man prayed to all the gods everything would go well. He had only just started on the job, and he felt like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maybe not the world, but at least one life depended on him. Maybe even two. He had to succeed. He was well aware of how the previous attempt ended in failure and he surely did not want to be the one linked to it. He would feel responsible, and he could never forgive himself if it did fail. Taking a deep breath, he moved forward.

That feeling of the first sip from a glass of aged whiskey, there is nothing like it. I can feel it go down my throat and into my stomach into a long, nice and warm embrace. There is nothing else in the world like it. Keeps me warm when the outside world is so cold, like a hug from a past that used to be good, unlike this full of shit present, and an even bleaker future if you ask me. I have nothing else left now. I have made mistakes in the past and they will follow me to my grave. Whiskey is my only friend now, the only thing that keeps me alive. Keeps the madness at bay. Meh, it is better than all the suffering I guess. That was not my fault, yet they blamed it on me, the bastards. And because of them my life is lost forever. I have no reason left to go on.

What is life to someone who barely has the time to breathe it? Is there really nothing for someone who dies before being brought into the world? Or maybe there is something after all? Maybe what is for us the glimpse of a second is for them a whole lifetime? Who knows those things? No one? Lies! I do, because I have lived it. There is no one to hear my dying thoughts, except maybe you, whoever you are. You will know how it is. A life of death. What fate it is to be born only to die right after? I did not even have time to live, nor to actually learn how to talk... So how is it I am using words in my thoughts if I do not even know what words are? Are we born with the gift of the Verb, even if we think we do not know how to use it? Are we born out of something that died? I do not know, but here I am thinking, even though I should not. Maybe I should stop thinking. Yet there is no such thing as not thinking. No matter how hard you try, you cannot not think, and that even if you do not have a brain. So here I think. And the writer types what I think. And you reader read what he typed. And so we are one. You are inside me through him. It is like a threesome when you think of it. We are sharing a sexual experience here. Is it not great? I liked sex in my time! Or did I? Actually I do not think I ever experienced it. Or maybe I did. Anyway it was great. Or not. I do not know. What do you care anyway? Leave me alone, get out of my head.

The voices would not stop haunting him since that day. Voices of the dead, of people who suffered because of him. The more he would go on, the less sense they made. As this, this did not make sense.

You read this yet you do not. Reading those sentences, you scratch your head. The memories of the dying. You wonder what is the link between all those paragraphs. Maybe the writer is just trying to fool me, you think. Maybe I am losing my time reading this. That is exactly what you are thinking. You close your eyes, trying to make sense out of this. Yet you cannot understand something so senseless. You decide reading this is not worth your time. You have better things to do. This is just plain insane, you think as you click off the tab on your internet browser.

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(C) Copyright 2014 Hope Alexander aka David Giroux for the text

Painting by Edgar Degas (1876)