The World Of Surrealism And Madness

They tell you death is sudden. But mine was slow. Slower than waiting for a kettle that forgot it was supposed to boil.

It started in a motel room.

Wallpaper peeling like sunburnt skin.

A woman's leg slung over the side of a purple bed.

The TV coughed out static faces.

A rotary phone lay split open like an insect.

I was floating.

My face, God, my face was reaching the ceiling, no, the ceiling had become a surface of water.

Ripples. I kissed it. Or it kissed me. It was hard to say which.

The woman said something but her mouth was full of moths.

Leonard, she said.

Leonard, she cried.

Leonard, she whispered.

None of them sounded like my name anymore.

I felt the suit cling to me like a wet tongue. My tie was a leash, and the world was the dog pulling it. I wanted to scream. Instead, I reached the water ceiling. And then—through it.

I breathed in.

It was like swallowing a thousand mirrors.

The light twisted, became heavy. I didn't know it yet, but this was only the beginning of the world unraveling itself like intestines pulled from a bloated corpse.

You might think I'm being dramatic.

I wish I was.