to hide from a hiccup

 “It is not you that is the problem;

neither is it drowning.

You drowning; now that, is the problem.”

As I was coming out of the big black building, texting an old colleague of mine, I set a man on fire.

I know that you're thinking all the wrong things now. Stop. It's not about that. None of it matters. Just go with it; take it easy. It's just a man; he’s having a luminous day.

So I look at this burning man, you see, and feel all these feelings. What do you mean? It's a human person, on fire! Don't you feel any sort of way you monster?

Well, I do.

I'm disturbed looking at this situation. I'm devastated. I don't feel like going home. So I say right there on the sidewalk. Since feeling this intense grief can't be good, I try thinking of something else. Something good; happy. There was this fantastic piece on youtube about the rotary vane engine and it's mechanical superiority over a reciprocating piston engine. But the screams just cut through like a samurai sword through smoke, just as the housing market crisis video was almost done.

Ok, now this is getting serious. I'm panicking, I can't think straight. There's a man, ON FIRE, burning his flesh away in front of me for god's sake! As a reasonable person, I go into shock. My buddy is on the line still, concerned, sending texts asking why I left mid convo. I ignore her. Now she's mad. She tells me I'm a terrible friend, that I always do this. (I swear I don't light people on fire on the regular),

But she leaves. Understandable.

My brain is still racing, trying to find fixes, strategies, calculating contingencies.

Mom called. She was saying, asking? something. It wasn't clear. She got progressively more shouty every time she repeated herself, but it did not make it any clearer. She hung up. I called her back. Seven times. The calls just rang themselves to death.

By this point, I'm fixated on this burning object. A kind of still fascination took over. If I just keep looking at it, thinking about IT, I won't have to think about how it makes me feel. But I did realise that something had to be done at some point.

So I call up my girlfriend. She arrives, and is pretty shook. She takes me to dinner at the restaurant right across the street. We eat; or rather she eats. I'm just hungry. And the more she consumed , the more empty I became. As we sit right by the huge glass window, she's talking.

I am listening.

I am sitting.

It's air conditioned; cozy. But I can see the guy standing right outside on the street, burning in the rain.

I'm listening.

Wait what? It's raining, like pouring. How is this dude even?

I am sitting.

I can feel the warmth waiting for me as I step outside the doors of this fine dining institution. Seeing as how I was still distracted, she invited a couple of our close friends there. We had a good time. Chatted a lot. There was more food. I quietly finished the housing market crisis video, and like seventeen more. Some of them even gave me great tips. One of them gave me his sunglasses to help ease the hot white flames on my eyes. There was this detailed roadmap of lifestyle and wardrobe change to cope with changing climates; how I should wear more cotton, ideally tank tops, to ease the heat. They even spared me a tube of burn cream if I got too close. Overall, the theme of the gathering could've been… thoughtful. I was listening to huberman labs, so I missed a good chunk of it.

As we were about to leave, my girlfriend pulled me aside, and told me that I should consider getting professional help, that these morose thoughts I'm having are not healthy, that a person better equipped with dealing with these can guide you on how to eliminate these bad feelings you're having. This was a much longer conversation, I guess, because the others had left by the time we were back on the street. It could've happened at a later date too; it was daytime inside, and nighttime outside. So…

She said her goodbyes, threw her tissue (from the restaurant?) into the flames, and turned around to leave. Wait what?

“YOU CAN SEE THE GUY ON FIRE?”

“Ofcourse I can, how does anyone miss a burning man in the middle of the street?”

“And what do you… do?”

“Do? Nothing. You just let it run its course, or not. But you can throw your trash in there, and it gets burnt up too, so the city doesn't care”

“I..

  I don't want to be with you anymore.”

I walked home. I rang the doorbell. Nobody answered. But the front door was unlocked. So I let myself in. But the house was full of strangers. I thought the living room looked familiar. Did I get the wrong house?

But the next one over had strangers too, and so did the next. The entire street was full of houses with strangers who do not lock their front doors. Okay. Something’s seriously wrong. I might need help.

So I went to the big black building where the help was.

They asked me for money.

I told them that a man was on fire.

They told me to show them the money or there'll soon be two.

I won't bore you with the details of the financial fraud that I committed to buy help, for your sake and mine.

(It's truly scary; the kind that would have a questionable biopic made about you if it comes out.

You see, I was not stupid; just haunted.)

They gave me pills to ease the situation. Now I don't see flames. 

I don't think you got that right.

I am now physically incapable of seeing flames. It's just a grey rectangle that I see instead. I have to use a thermometer now to check if my stove is on low or high.

There were occasionally, subliminal messages that I thought I saw on these grey boxes, but I'm not sure.

I did spring for the third most expensive help, and they did say that it was free of “hallucinative marketing material”, mostly.

But the help wasn't of much help, as you might've guessed. You block off specifically the things that you don't wanna see, you know they're there when you can't see something. So now random grey rectangles became the new fire. I would like to add, to your kind attention, I am seven years older and considerably richer since the beginning of this gong show.

I was laying down. The app said, in a soothing voice, “now, slooooowly fall asleeeep”...

I've been falling for years now; why am I not asleep yet?

It didn't particularly get worse, per se, but neither did it get better. It just settled itself in as the new normal. But then you have those days of grandiose pain, where you feel like you're so distant from other people, like you're on top of the world, and that you're there just to jump off? It's one of those days that I ran back to where I left it.

There, standing in a chilly alleyway, surrounded by a heap of trash, was a grey rectangle, which faintly said something about a pre approved credit card on it; there, like a small found and lost bin of convenience. At this point, I wanted to look it directly in the eye; I wanted to see; to see the actual thing, not this fricking dilution of it. I did not notice I was screaming in the middle of the street till the police? The medics? I don't know, some figures of force started peeling me away from the scene, getting a syringe ready to sedate me (I hope). I was screaming, I knew now,

“ATLEAST LET ME SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE!

LET ME FACE THE CONSEQ….”

Sweet dreams.