A Dangerous Indulgence
I am escaping to the sanctuary of this hallway where few pass and those that do, do so with such care that it could almost be called reverence. My locker is one of the once-coveted minority of maroon ones, now fading to mediocrity in shades of dusty-rose. It holds my spine straight as I affix myself to the carpet and the quiet, and wrap myself in the stillness of the air.
The cafeteria was so gravid with noise that my thoughts were pushed from my mind's agenda by the insistence of ears eager for explanation of the messages they carried. I wore my smile like armor and my friends like a fortress though I was the least present among them. Their voices pulled at my tongue begging me to join in, but I held back because I knew that if I opened my mouth to speak, every word inside would pour from me like a flood and I would drown myself with my good social intentions. And I remembered that once I was so in love with my ideals that I dressed them up in elegant rhetoric and paraded them like generals through the town. Once, every day was V-Day, when I was never afraid to speak my mind.
I am warm now, the taunting wind that leapt around me like a child coaxing me to play is left behind and I am at home in the muted footsteps of disinterested passers by. I pick up blank pages I promised myself I would fill, and unravel myself there into the fabric of potential. Without external input to distract, the thousand active corridors in my head are at once ablaze with conversation; and the machinery is efficient again with the production of practical things. The vagabond thoughts from exotic lands in neutral zones between heart and head are aliens and outcasts, sending up wordless prayers in the droning language of fluorescent lights above.
The lights began to blur as they shone whiter and whiter becoming the foremost of sense receptions. I hadn't expected it to happen to shortly after the quick slight pain of the needle had dulled in my arm, but my brain was too heavy to protest the charisma of induced entropy. I can't remember if I saw the blanket or if I closed my eyes in time to only feel, but it didn't matter for the warmth was already inside me and persistent in its silent conquest of my body. White light and then white darkness and for the first time I was conscious yet so close to sleep that I could touch the line between them, and no other pleasure in the world could have been so complete, or so kind. A restless mind found its first and only solace, for I knew the drugs wouldn't let me dream.
I am interrupted by the ticking of my watch which has begun to insist on being noticed, and I hardly have to look to know I've tarried too long already. Comfort slows to a standstill and the ruthless doors of my steel home slam shut around my mind. The quiet breaks its embrace and all my inertia is diverted to possible modes of self-expression. My feet are made of feathers from Icarus' wings and when I finally reach the center of fusion and flame that fuels the world I breathe, their steps on the linoleum remind me of my continuing existence.
©2000 Elizabeth Hebert
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