Fruit of the Tree

I am consumed….

The echo of the final pistol shot roams the hallways of this place, bouncing back and forth across the walls like an epileptic ghost. Whatever its route, up and down endless blind corridors, it never fails to return to me. It encircles me with ferocity. I am the object of its obsession. It orbits me, an increasingly manic fly orbiting my head.... It passes through me, in utter disregard of my substance, and I feel the echo in my bones and blood and guts, and each time, if only for a moment, my heart and breath lose track of one another.

How can it be that this place is expanding and contracting at the same time? The corridors stretch out forever, yet no matter what direction I take I find myself back here. How can that be? As the walls narrow and elongate I am a man caught in a straw, and my head throbs with too much blood and the reverberation of that last pistol shot….

I’m not the man I used to be, which is just as well. The man I used to be was a fool. My passage from that person to the one I am now is long and strange and, honestly, I wouldn’t expect you to believe it. Why should you? If you told me what I’m about to tell you, I wouldn’t believe you. But I am consumed. The walls are closing, in and down on me, and soon there won’t be walls, there will only be wall, with me as the mortar. My nerves are short-circuiting and either my brain is expanding or my skull is contracting. I can hear my blood pounding and I can feel my breath shortening. You probably already think I’m crazy, but really, that won’t win you a kewpie doll. I know I’m crazy, and I know why.