The room was hot and the air stagnant. Too many bodies breathing the same air, the same air that was full of tension and unspoken lives. She now knew what it was like when people described the air being thick.
She could see it moving up and down in slow, slow motion. Thick, globules of sticky brown air rising with the heat like the oil in a lava lamp. It mesmerised in the same way.
Dark outside, the blackness contributed to the oppressive feel, as it wrapped itself around the building and crept into the room. Most of the people were slumped in their chairs. They looked as if asleep, oh blessed sleep but she knew how this eluded. The peace denied them.
Others were sitting upright, their bodies full of strain, eyes fixed, then suddenly darting between the faces. Arms dead straight, fists clenched, rigid, terrified, gaunt.
If only the thickness of the air was the thing that was causing her to choke. Then she could get out of the room and feel free, but it was the weight of the lies that she carried inside of herself that was gripping her gut and clawing at her throat.
The cancerous mass that was a great heavy rock dragging her down, but oh how she wished it were cancer. She could deal with cancer. It wouldn’t be her fault if she had cancer. She’d have done nothing to deserve it. She’d treated her body well.
No it was the malignancy of lies and deceit that invaded her now and she deserved that. If it were cancer there would be pills and chemicals that could make it better, or at least take away the pain. Deaden her to the gripping, knifing pain.
She would have welcomed such pain but her pain was the pain of dragging shame and dragging guilt. The mass of it constantly pulled her down until she was face to face with mud and shit.
That pain could not be eroded by any chemical means unless of course it was the chemicals of the final act.
They wanted her to speak. To spill it out, but how can you spill it out when you’re being throttled by fate?
If only she could vomit it out, it would be brown, full of pus, fowl and reek of hell.
If only she could be stoned like some biblical whore. The lack of judgement and censure was too much to bear.
Punish me, make me pay she screamed inwardly
but the voice was strangled and killed dead in her throat.
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1 comment:
Very powerful, very strong evocative imagery from a range of senses. Really good flow from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next. Emotionally involving to read.
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