Seriously Not All Right by Ron Capps

Author:Ron Capps
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.
Published: 2014-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Seriously Not All Right

I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR and my brain is broken. I go to work, and after I’ve been at my desk for about half an hour, while I am transferring some files to Guantanamo over the Internet, I notice that my hands are shaking and my breathing has shallowed and quickened. My heart sprints. I feel Vaguely Not All Right, but I’ve had a cold, and figure I’m just a little feverish. But things around me are losing their clarity. I haven’t lost track of what is happening, it’s just fuzzy, and things are asynchronous, loopy. It’s like I’m moving in waltz time while the rest of the world is in common time.

My arms are numb but I can still type. I feel like someone is tightening a metal band around my ribcage. The guy at the desk next to me asks a question at the same time Microsoft sends in a message informing me that the system has no more memory and I need to close some windows. So I say ohforchrissake to the laptop, and mumble something in response to my colleague so he’ll think I’m listening, and I close off some of the windows so the program will execute and the files will transfer and the whining at the other end of the system will cease.

So, while I’m sorting this out, I’m dealing with my own little glitch; my brain is not functioning well. Just as the computer system has a fault in it, I seem to have one as well. I still can’t feel my arms, but I watch my hands shake, and the guy next to me is reading an article to me off the Internet, and he’s laughing and I don’t think it’s funny but I nod my head so he’ll think I’m listening while I’m staring at my hands shaking, and I can’t get enough air so I take a really deep breath. I start to cough, and someone at the other end of the room calls me a vector for disease and everyone laughs and, again, I nod my head so everyone will know I’m listening, and so everyone will think I’m All Right. But it’s pretty clear that I’m Not All Right because I can’t breathe and I can’t feel my arms and I’m banging my knees together like I’m a one-man band.

Only there’s no music, just static, and something keeps trying to come onto the big screen in the Drive-In that is my mind, but it won’t come on so the screen is gray and I want to be nonchalant about it and blithely go about my day, but I’m scared and I’m shaking and I just want whatever it is that’s out there to COME OUT AND SHOW YOURSELF, YOU GUTLESS FUCK, because I’m starting to hyperventilate. I can only breathe with the front part of my chest and I’m rocking back and forth in the chair like I’m listening to the goddamn Velvet Underground and Lou is singing “Heroin.

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