50 The Meadow Peter has breached the inner circle, fingering something I can’t quite see. I look at Katherine. Don’t let him force his way in, I plead, eyes wide. He might be attractive, but I don’t want Peter and his fucking cutting instruments anywhere near me. I make a secondary attempt to speak when the machine next to my bed interrupts and lets out a series of beeps. I feel a constriction and a spike. My body is a minefield. This is a total systems breach. The sensation tearing through my limbs is electrifying, and the discordance in the room causes a dizzying sense of dissociation. Blue. Panic. Blue. Pressure. Blue. Mass. I want to remove every stitch of clothing because if I don’t, I will catch fire and burn through a mattress already soaked with sweat. I claw at my sternum and kick my legs, vaguely aware of the attempt to excavate and depart. I want to use my nails to flay skin that burns. I want to use my hands to crush this vessel that is going down, Titanic in nature. My eyes are almost swollen shut but I catch sight of fingers that look like fat, boiled sausages. Or maybe miniature erections? Wait, they’re mine. Inflated and bent out of shape, my appendages have become so ductile and exaggerated their very structure has changed form, like skinny balloons clowns favour at children’s parties. It’s a giraffe! No, a pretzel! Wait, it’s a plane! Up, up and away. Capillaries expand. Heat rises. Atoms dissolve. Moments from short-circuiting, my blood begins to roil. 20:47 | 78/50mmHg | ♥ 140 bpm | 38.4 °C | SpO2 85% “Now!” the doctor hisses as the machine blurts out mechanical modulations in a language only I, in my hallucinatory state, understand. Beep: Attention! Beep: Achtung! Warning! Beep! Your life is nothing but a whisper, the transcription reads. Beep. Beep. Beep.
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