Murk

Day 11

Henry, motionless on the floor of his apartment, blinked, stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, then rolled on his stomach and pressed his face into the carpet.  He looked at the fibers, the stray hair and the clumps of dust that were only visible up close.  The air was filled with sunlight and dust; He had neglected cleaning his apartment for weeks.  The place was a mess.

The visions were gone.  His hastily constructed fantasies had failed to serve any purpose, only spinning him closer to madness.  The Ward, Buffalo, Crutches-- All of them were shoddy images constructed to make his life feel kinetic.  Henry's belief that he had finally awoken wasn't necessarily incorrect, but the process was slow, painful, and far from complete.  In a last attempt to prevent addressing the world he so feared, he built up his fantasy world, his own cage, but he couldn't decide if it was meant to protect him or the world.

The world didn't need protection from Henry.  He had yet to realize this.  Isolation was an insidious form of self-destruction.  Henry was fading, breathing in the debris on the carpet.