Suddenly, I was taken by an overwhelming pain of emotion. It was strange and exotic, something I had never felt before. Yet, it was also as if it had been inside of me all along, from the day I was born, till now, nurturing itself somewhere deep and dark in my soul, growing stronger and more formidable by the day. It was like a bullet – one moment it was far away, in a land where misfortune and torment never would fall upon me, and the next it was inside of me, in my chest, where the toxin and metal disintegrated into my lungs and spread the cancerous drug. The pain was not sharp and did not sting; instead, it crawled into every crook of my body and enveloped me in a suffocating embrace. It squished my bones and flesh together until I felt as if my blood were just seconds away from ripping open the seams of my skin and pouring out like an avalanche. It made me think of tomorrow, of the future, of everything bad that is still to come. It made me want to puke, but I could not because it would not let me. I remembered all the memories of failure and defeat, when life seemed to grab me by the neck and hang me upon the tip of a skyscraper, showing me the world that I so desired and whispering the truth in my ear: that I was not worthy. I recalled the rolling days of laziness, nonchalance, and apathy; the days when I felt nothing, just a dead, black hole sucking away any excitement for the future, leaving only a desolate feeling of emptiness, a sort of indifference to whether or not there would even be a tomorrow. And then the worst hit me – I remembered the guilt of not living up to myself, indulging in indecency, betraying my most valued morals and ethics. Oh, the guilt! It surged through my veins like a snake, both slimy and rough, leaving a trail of poison and death. It made me feel lower than trash, lesser than the absolute muck of the world. I was, indeed, the inferior, the peasant, the pieces of dirt that are scattered unseemly across the ground, hated, useless, and always replaceable. What is this thing that society has made of me? Not human, not chimp, not alive.

Then I should just die already.


--

A moment later, it retracted instantaneously back into that womb of darkness, just as quickly as it came. I laid still for a moment, eyes wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling above me.

What was that, anyway?