Chapter 5- Friday

Friday?

Escape.

–verb
1. to slip away from or elude (pursuers, captors, etc.): He escaped the police.
2. to succeed in avoiding (any threatened or possible danger or evil): She escaped capture.

I woke up in the woods. Shafts of light cut through the canopy above, a creek meandered through the ground below.

I walked. And walked. Everything was blurry, morphed as if viewed from alien lenses. After some time, I stopped. Not knowing why. Just understanding it was of great importance I do so. On a fallen tree I sat and rested. And after a time, an indefinite amount it seemed, down from the branches floated a bumblebee. It ceased its activity on a branch near my face. The eyes stared at me intently, as if bubbling with a hidden intelligence. Breaking our temporary vision lock, the bee rose from the branch and flitted near my ear. The buzzing increased steadily, making the hairs on every inch of my body stand at attention. I sensed the delicate legs of the insect graze the insides of my ear and burrow deep into my lobe. All the while, an incessant, steady, irrevocable buzz surged into the right side of my cranium. It made my eye twitch half shut. And the noise didn't stop. It clawed my insides out until time and consciousness melted away. Then there was nothing. It was gone. Relief. Something, a slight noise, barely discernible from the white noise. Then the volume increased. It became audible. A buzzing. A deep echoing buzz that caused me to rock back and forth as my eyes rolled back into my head.


I woke up in my bed. Rays of light forced their way through the blinds, miscellaneous trash scattered the floor. Warm relief seeped through me like whiskey on a cold night. The buzzing was gone.


Time between pills, between trips, was slipping together. Dreams became reality. Reality became hell. Escape.

A frail 10 speed in my garage served as my getaway vehicle. I made my way with nothing but a healthy amount of pills and a water bottle filled with Black Cherry Kool-Aid. I pedaled. Sweat dripped down my nose, my muscles strained and cried out for rest. I came to a point where the path diverged into a forest. Setting my bike down behind a Chokeberry Bush I took a deep draught of sugary drink and added milky white medication. I felt the pills floating like boats on the Kool-Aid in my mouth. I ported the ships home, to my waiting throat, and continued on foot. After some time I came to a tree that rested horizontally on the ground. Sitting, I removed pills and drink from the sack on my back. Drink, pill, swallow. Drink, pill, swallow. Repeat. After the fourth repetition. I heard a noise that made the hair on every inch of my body stand at attention. Deja-vu jolted me like a cold shower. I met eyes with the slight creature, the bumblebee. It drifted lazily from above me, stopping on a branch. Time stopped, or sped up, or slowed. I'm not sure. The bee, having sufficiently stared through me, alighted upon the ground. As I focused though, I saw it was near something that shouldn't be in the woods. I wasn't aware the United States Postal service delivered to forest paths.

"Hello from BEEautiful Hidalgo, Texas! Killer Bee Capital of the World!"

How fitting.

Embrace it, lest beauty be mistaken for the repugnant.

Before I had an opportunity to consider the words, I felt the lightest of touches on the inside of my ear. It was followed by an unbearable buzzing. A drone, in more ways than one. And my eye twitched, and I was staring at the inside of my head. Then, nothing. I passed out. I woke up. Time was nondescript. I began though, at a certain point, to truly listen to the previously insufferable hiss in my ear. I focused my sense of hearing and closed my eyes. The buzzing finally made sense. Realization broke me like a sunrise does a dark sky. As I lay there on the forest floor, everything was clearer. In my head I did not hear the ocean, I heard the bee. It was no longer the intolerable noise, but a symphony. Whether the sound had become an orchestra, or if it had been one all the while, I did not know. The only feeling coursing through my content mind was appreciation, because the music was fucking beautiful.