Daymares 9

Breathing.  I concentrate on the simple art of breathing.  I count my breaths.  I listen to them intently.  Each one making its slow passage in and out.  I work on varying the rhythm and then the pitch by changing how deep I let the air go from flow to flow.  I do not want to hear anything else.

I do not want to hear, see or feel anything else.  Breathing seems safe enough.  Anything else is terrifying.  The trickle that drips down my tubes seems to alternate patterns as I alternate the rhythms of my breathing.  Faster and the drip picks up, slower and it becomes methodical again.  It is as if it is feeding me according to my heart rate, which accelerates as I let myself listen to the clattering outside.

The click, click, click of heels has been joined by a smart tap, heel-toe, heel-toe of what sounds like a man's dress shoe.  Or at least what I imagine a man's dress shoe must sound like.  How am I to know?  Indeed, the clicking rap may not even be heels at all.  But, I can't shake the feeling that these sounds are tied to people and they keep pace outside my walls. 

Can they see through them?  It is this thought that has kept me glued here in one position, eyes closed, mind deliberately bent on my breathing.  Every now and then a color flicks under my eye lids, a random association that I cannot place.  Magenta, beige, teal, no color that is not tainted by the touch of another - like a painter's brush that never quite gets clean enough before it touces the next source. 

I am loosing the game I know.  The sounds outside are interfering with my counting and I am breathing too fast.  I take a long measured sigh and try another path.  I concentrate on the blades.  The light is strong right now in the room.  Strong enough that I know they will not harvest for some hours yet.  I let my eyes wander the shape of the blades.  I take in the mechanism that houses them at its core, its twists of thick cables and odd clear tubes.  Funny I have never paid attention to the tubes before.  I wonder what they are there for?  I suppose as I have never seen how the fragments are collected, they must have something to do with that process, though I can't quite figure out how.  I would feel suction, wouldn't I?  Perhaps not, the blades make me numb after a time each night, maybe that is all it takes. 

Cut anyone long enough they are likely to stop feeling soft touches easily.  I suppose I have lost that and more to the blades.

They are rather beautiful in their own way.  Clean, and sharp, almost pure in function - at least they only have one that I know of.  I may not appreciate it, but surely someone thinks they are doing something good? And pure can have so many definitions.  Like almost anything, it is really up to the individual to determine the meaning.

The click and tap are separating it seems.  Each drifting away  from my wall and from each other, and none too soon.  I am exhausted with the effort to be catatonic for them.  I hope I have given them exactly what they want.  Though it does occur to me to wonder why I should care?