The Ants Behind My Eyes

There were ants behind his eyes and a jackhammer slamming around inside his skull. He winced before consciousness and drooled upon himself. Moaning loudly, he woke. His tongue shot out to lick his morning lips, and was greeted by a coarse day-old stubble. Everything was ringing, and the noise inside his head seemed to echo back and forth between his ears, aggravating his headache.

The world was grey.

His eyesight blurred. His vision continued to haze, even after a ceremonial scrunching of the face and rubbing of the eyes. However, after letting his sight settle, he began to realize that it was not his eyes that were betraying him, but rather the terrain in which he was surrounded.

The world was grey.

He began to try to sit up and his pounding skull answered with a knife point through his forehead and pushing out the back. It punished him for every degree he inclined. It reached an almost unbearable climax right before he was fully up, but settled to a dull annoyance once he was. Being vertical now, and with eyes open he began to survey his surroundings.

The man wondered what he had taken last night, and when it was going to wear off.

Everything around him was grey. Grey walls, grey floor and grey ceiling. As he looked down, (and tried not to grimace the headache too much) he found the bed he was on was grey. It occurred to him then, that the bed he was on did not feel like it was covered in sheets or linens. Neither did it feel as though he was held upon a mattress or box spring.

The bed he was on, so too the floor under his feet and the ceiling above his head all appeared to be made of the same material, that felt almost gelatinous to the touch. As he sat upwards he had felt it give slightly and then respond a moment later with firmness. He found this also when he pressed the bed- it would depress and then repel. Then when he’d remove his hand, the surface would go soft once again.

He shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind and was punished once again by the hangover. The pain shot violently through from his head, down into his stomach as a sharp spark of nausea and then back out through his mouth. Yesterday’s meals splayed out all over the soft floor before him. For a moment he considered himself skilled that he’d managed to avoid getting any on himself, though in truth this was from years of practice.

The vomit was not on the ground for more than a half minute before the floor, oddly enough, seemed to drink it. Seconds later, there was no sign he’d ever puked at all, ignoring of course the small smatters on his socks that he was just beginning to notice.

The man wondered for the first time where his shoes were and was immediately embarrassed. Among his friends there were often jokes about women being unable to keep their shoes on when they drank, and when he found his friends and assumedly, shoes, the man would no doubt want to downplay this un-soled development.

It was the third time since he’d awoken now that he was wondering just how much he’d drank the night before. In truth he couldn’t remember much of anything. The night began with his friends deciding that they’d wanted to go looking for some tail at a series of local clubs they’d scoped out. After a beer he recalled the three of them had met up with some girls from the local university. They’d ordered a round or three of some sugary shot concoction, and then there was dancing… Or did he dance? Was it karaoke?

This lapse in his memory after only four drinks was disturbing to a man such as he was. For now however, he resolved to work on his endurance once he managed to find a way out of this bizarre place he’d found to pass out in. He pushed himself off of the bed awkwardly. It was a rocky dismount as it responded with force to the pressure he was exerting on it.

He stood wearily on a floor made of the same material, and worked out a reasonably reliable way of walking on it. Utilizing a wide stance, he’d almost bounce off of the reverse pressure the floor would exert upon him. He lumbered about the room, doing his best to ignore the punishment his head was doling out from this jilted movement.

He stopped after four paces however and looked around in a panic. There was no door.

There was no door.

As he turned around, around and yet another time again, there was no door.
He had no way out. His heart began to beat violently in his chest as in the back of his mind half remembered images and sounds began to play. The sound of the closet door slamming, and that heavy lock his dad bought being latched into place. He remembered darkness and the heavy pungent sweat of old world clothes hung up for a second or third wear before wash.

Whatever was left in his stomach evacuated and was consumed by the floor in a moment.

The man began thrashing about at nothing in particular and screaming. This only lasted a couple seconds however, as he quickly threw himself off balance and fell onto the floor, which bumped him back, bruising his tail bone.

The sharp pain cut through to him and he calmed down. Rational parts of his brain took over and he began to consciously slow his heartbeat with reassuring thoughts. Obviously there had to be some way out- he got in here some way, right? Of course inkling in the back of his mind was something answering that he had been sealed in after being put here.

He did his best regardless and found some semblance of calm, enough to pull himself cautiously to his feet and begin tracing the outline of the room. He looked for a seam, something to indicate a door or portal- anything. Though after three or four circuits of the rather small room he began to realize that if the wall really were semi-liquid in nature, any external door could open into the room, and then close and leave no obvious seal.

He made an aggravated sigh and rubbed his head, the migraine was still there and strong. Pulsing steadily with his heartbeat and stabbing with any sharp movement of his head. He looked upwards and the ceiling and began to squint. Something else wasn’t right here. He looked to the walls, at the gradual, almost wave like tonal differences in the grey surface.

He realized he couldn’t see any sort of light source. There were no candles or light bulbs to be found, nor obviously was there any sort of skylight. The entire room seemed to be illuminated, no matter the crook or cranny. Nor on either side of the bed or in the slight recess behind it, where it jutted from the floor, but didn’t meet the wall was there any hint of a shadow. Everything was light and darkness didn’t seem to exist.

Everything was grey. Everything was even.

He sat forward intending to stand up. In an instant later he found himself lying down on the bed.

The man blinked in shock and shot up to a standing position so quickly he forgot to steady himself on the floor and stumbled for balance. Finding it, he stood as straight as he could and looked around the room suspiciously; nothing really seemed different save that he felt taller somehow and the mygraine was gone.

Oddly, he began to realize that his face felt incredibly itchy and his hand shot up. It was greeted by a full beard, one that must have been weeks in the growing. He worked his fingers through it in disbelief, having no recollection of the time it would have taken to grow it.

His heart began to race again and he was beginning to start lashing out again when he was suddenly stopped by a piercing pain from his stomach. It felt as though something were biting his stomach, from the other side. Taking smallish nibbles and then ripping bits off of his insides. He screamed till his throat bled. His wails turned to terror when his hands instinctively went to his stomach and he felt something hard and moving there.

Whatever it was inside of him began to vibrate and grow. He felt it pressing and pulsing against his organs, brushing up against his bones. Still it tore at him and still it grew. It pushed out, bulged his stomach and he looked down with horror as his skin began to tear like rubber and something black as hate emerged.

He opened his eyes and found himself curled up in the fetal position in the far right corner of the room from the bed he originally awoke in. His hands moved down to his stomach instinctively, and he was relieved to find nothing amiss. He looked around the room and again noticed nothing different save it seemed smaller again. Not too noticeable a difference, perhaps even just a shift in the wave texture of the walls.

He stood again and moved his hands to his face. He blinked several times as his mind tried to understand what its hands felt, another inch of beard on top of what he’d felt before in that dream. It was a dream.

And it was a dream.

His hands again traced down his chest to his stomach. Tears began to well up in his eyes as his fingers ran over the texture of his shirt, as they scrunched it, cracked it. His lips quivered as he looked down and saw that the entire front of his shirt was caked with dried blood. He lifted his shirt in a rush, which moved like a solid object to inspect his stomach. No wound, not even a scar or scab. No stitches, nothing.

He sat down slowly, brought his knees to his chest and began to weep.


What next he remembered was odd bouts of singing. He’d catch glimpses of himself pounding against walls and speaking out to whoever might listen in words he didn’t understand. At other times he’d find himself sprawled out in various places around the room again with no recollection of having laid there.

He remembered once trying to record hours on the floor and walls with his fingernails that were now impressively long. Every attempt he made to etch marks however, was always rebuffed as the wall or floor would resurface itself moments later. Time seemed to lose all meaning except when measured in the length of his facial hair or finger and toe nails.

It was a terrifying memory recalling the moment he realized the room really had been shrinking almost imperceptivity slowly and he feared the moment when the closet door would open up and he’d hear the sound of his father’s belt being swung.
But this was no closet, and there was no beating to end his time here.

Consciousness became a stream that flowed with no discernable direction and time became ever more liquid. His crying, screaming and singing all held in one moment. His desperate laughter at his vague attempts to fashion his bush of hair into various styles and shapes fell into another moment. It all flowed together. It all flowed at once. His life and his perception of time was only punctuated by the shrinking of the world.

He woke up one day. The world was maybe a foot over his head and a foot in front of him when he sat with his arms holding his legs to his chest. He’d been this way for a long time he felt, though he couldn’t be sure precisely how long that was. Things seemed different today. He vaguely recalled crying recently for quite awhile, but today was different. Today was a day for smiles.

For the first time in a long while, he remembered his time before the grey walls. He remembered the women he’d spent the evening with before waking up here. Something called a body shot, and he remembered the sight of her naval filled with sweet liquor. The man remembered the soft feeling of her skin on his lips and the sweet smell of her. He smiled slowly, for the first time he could remember.

He smiled slowly, as he began to feel himself slowly sinking into the floor.

It was like quicksand, but he didn’t fight it. He just remembered her; a woman who he’d never learned the name of. He just smiled. Today was for smiles. He grinned even as his head began to slip underneath the floor and darkness greeted him.

His smile ended though when the inky darkness began to move and swim around him. It felt as though it was made up of thousands of little black creatures, and he knew little black creatures. His stomach turned a final time when he felt the first bite.

Out past the swimming darkness, past the moving shapes and teeth. Past the moment where his existance seemed to erupt into a quick but sharp moment of pain, the man was almost positive he could hear a crowd applauding and begging for an encore.