Reconstruction Memory // Sweating out the Fever

A sudden jerk of my body results in a near full trash can. I lay back down engulfed in pillows and blankets, trapped under an immovable force. After a few moments of suffrage, I become fed up with the boiling of my body. I twist and roll but the boa constrictors refuse to letup. Too weak to call out, I assume the house is empty. The faint hall light illuminates a world light years away. My head sinks back into the ground.

A cold hand placed on my forehead sends my head into a downwards spiral. I arise to a serengeti, the mellow breeze follows the commands, the grass, revealing a group of men. They’re all circled around a crackling beast. All of the sudden they begin to fling their sticks at the creature, only stoking it to lash out directly at them, swallowing them whole. I turn away from the suffering men but I’m forced to stay.   

In the blink of an eye I find myself in a world of color, the room I’m in was drowned in color. The walls appear to be comprised of granny smith apples, the floor made of oranges and finally a sky blue ceiling to pull it all together. This feels much more like I’m awake but some surreal feeling doesn't resonate quite right. The world begins to spin and I begin to overheat, I unwillingly disappear once again. My head throbs me into another world. Icy water flowed down my throat, it begins to freeze my body from the inside out. My mind refuses to thaw and I’m left looking at the face of a giant pillow. The darkness begins to swirl and blotches begin to turn to light. The instant rattling of a train along it’s tracks is heard until I’m engulfed in light. I lay in silence until I once again fall back into a swirling sleep.

Authors Note:

In my piece I draw great influence from Ken Kesey and much less than Atwood. Much like Kesey my novel is surreal and is a trip. Although a lot of my novel is very psychedelic it has real life translations much like Ken Kesey's. Kesey uses a lot of descriptive language in order to convey events in the book. Like Chief, my character is not mentally stable so he describes what he sees. For example when the boa constrictors are wrapped around me, it actually translates to blankets draped over me. Kesey's character in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Chief Bromden doesn't have a sense of time. My character doesn't have a sense either. 

The little I do derive from Atwood is her ability to use Offred as a platform to convey facts in the novel without anyone down right saying it. Like when my characters body is freezing, it's actually the character drinking cold water from the sink.