Notes from the Whorl...

Nerves

"The fabric of dreams is ripped apart
As you feel the twist of the shadow dagger
In your pumping heart.

Nerves."

I used to work, or rather brush by the paranoid schizophrenics at the last county sponsored psych ward in California. My cousin was moved to stab a prison gaurd in the eyeball with a pencil on one of his bad days in Prison. They in turn were moved to transfer him to they psychiatric penetentiary in Vacaville (near the jellybelly factory).

I had glimpsed the monsters' in thier eyes I thought. They're fear and rage was always real enough- even more condensed and pressurized perhaps than our own.

Liquid fear, seething and bubbling through thier gums and pours. Swelling their lips and drying thier mouths in acrid washes. Adrenalyn boom inside their skull poisoning thier blood with furious survival. Pumping the will to live at high speed through their bodies from the top down. Their hands would swell and thier feet would numb. And all at once the world was against them. All at once they found they loved life more than they ever had. They're animal took over then. Everyone became an enemy bent on thier destruction. Those they trusted most were the worst and the craftiest equally involved in this private conspiracy.

Everything had meaning then. Everything was connected in this web of shadows at which they were the center spinning. Every glance or movement they observed, every object was now poised to hurt them. It was uncontrollable. The thoughts kept coming no matter how far fetched. They are boxing you in. They are signalling somone around the corner or someone behind you. When she coughed he glanced to the left. I saw them.

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