Mental Diarrhea: Bangkok Insomnia Thoughts, Part 3

[kimcancer]

3. 

 

I wormed underneath the covers and pressed my head back into my stack of pillows. The pillows were soft as breasts. My bones heavy, I sank into the springs of the mattress. Tossing, turning, I was trying to position myself right. Yet sleep wouldn’t find me. My mind raced until the urge came back.

 

Sitting up again in bed, I coughed. A dry, hacking cough. There was something in my throat. Something bubbling up from my stomach. There was something inside me. I knew it. If only I had an X-ray machine, I’d know. When will phones have X-ray apps? When will that happen? Probably not soon. We still lack the flying cars I pictured for the 2020s.

 

Coughing more, a body-rocking cough seized over me. Then a cold quiver. Then my body trembled, so much it was like an earthquake. I worried I might have epilepsy. Or Parkinson’s. Or Lupus. Whatever the <deleted> Lupus is, I might have it and might be about to die.

 

Wait a sec, doesn’t Selena Gomez have Lupus? And she isn’t dead. But didn’t she need a kidney transplant? What if I need a kidney transplant? Is Lupus why so many people wake up, in a bathtub, missing a kidney? The more I contemplated Lupus, the more I became unsettled.

 

But I would resist the impulse to grab my phone and check WebMD about Lupus. I would resist WebMD altogether. The NHS site is better. The British are typically better at accepting death. Americans act like it’s optional. A British coworker told me that. And it’s generally true. Just compare WebMD to the NHS website and you’ll see.

 

The NHS site even mentions “farting” as a side effect. Of what, I can’t remember. Maybe it was Lupus. As scary as Lupus seems, I think Lupus needs a scarier name. Lupus sounds more like a Sesame Street character than a disease…

 

I heard an obnoxious falsetto voice in the distance. It was crooning a horrific version of the David Bowie song I’m Afraid of Americans. It sounded worse than a failed American Idol audition. It sounded worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. It sounded worse than Avenged Sevenfold.  

 

Then I smelled a strong scent of gin and lifted my head. Startled and curiously intrigued, I scanned around the room and, standing beside the TV, I saw a bald, heavyset man; he was broad of shoulders, thick in the stomach, and maybe 50 years of age. The stranger stood on stubby legs and had freakishly long arms, arms that dangled like dead animals, arms that reached below his knees.

 

Stranger, too, was that the stranger was naked, and looked like a white ape, with how his bushy gray body hair coalesced, carpeted his pale skin. His simian face was twisted into a taut mask of pain, but once we made eye contact, a toothless smile stretched over his lips. Then he vanished into the darkness of my bedroom, instantly, as if a TV screen were shut off, and the heavy scent of alcohol also disappeared.  

 

Must be the insomnia, I thought. Or maybe I’m dreaming. Whatever it was, I was disturbed by the vision but threw my head back into my pillows. Tried to let the night terror pass.

 

I tried to count sheep. I tried to think anodyne thoughts. But I was haunted, rocked by a bolt of fear, when I closed my eyes and saw the white ape again. He was still naked and was crucified, upside down, to the wall of a Hooters restaurant, and his chest had a surgically implanted, heart-shaped computer monitor that was broadcasting leaked video of corporations chipping human brains, corporations broadcasting commercials into the populace’s dreams, and corporations, raffling off, purchasing face tattoo advertising space.

 

I ruminated on just how much Coca-Cola would have to pay to slap a Coke logo on a customer’s cheeks or forehead… I estimated face tattoo ad prices would vary by country, region. 

[Rimmer]

Troll topic

//CLOSED//