pain

It was splitting. Gut wrenching. Mind blowing. Innards flying out of the stomach. It was splitting. It was absolute. It caused the darkness, it took away the light. It brought a high pitched scream, an intensity that was in decline, but it brought it back to full force, and with full strength. His stomach too, was in pain. It was empty, yet he wanted to throw up. Air. Again, and again, and again. Nothing but air. The pain was mind consuming. And he knew that it was a thing people said, and people had rubbed raw the meaning, rubbed it away, like rain on a stone, a stone by the shore, but this was the real thing. The pain was blinding, all-consuming. His forehead was breaking out in a sweat, his head was throbbing with pain. His heart was having palpitations. His palms were moist, sweat forming, even though it was a chilly morning. There was a sinking feeling in his heart, his lungs collapsing in on themselves. He was terribly afraid. Of this feeling. It was a symptom, not the cause. It was a symptom of self-preservation, not the cause of the other problems. He rubbed his forehead with a thumb, it rubbed against rough skin, like a gravel road, that’s what his skin felt like. Every indent, every pore, it felt magnified, and then there was the sweat dancing around some of them. Particles, crowds of sweat. All breeding in numbers far beyond his understanding. Exiting through the womb of his pores, and breathing in the oxygen and light. The air outside was fertile, and more kept swimming out, being birthed by the splitting, gut wrenching, mind blowing pain. He felt he would drown in the ocean of his own sweat. It was crawling up, or out his nostrils - he could not tell. He was breathing in pain. He was breathing out pain. His eyes hurt, they were red, raw, tired, exhausted. In pain. The whites of the eyes could barely be seen behind all the criss-crossing zig zags of red. Writhing. Terrible. He collapsed. That was not the end of it. His mouth was dry, his tongue, instead of wetting his lips, was rubbing them raw. Instead of absorbing the sweat, it could taste it, it seemed to be getting dryer. Enlarging. Engorging on itself. He looked up at the clear, blue sky. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the clouds formed in that picturesque scene often shown in drawings by little children. The greens were greener, the blues bluer, the sun was bright. He was writhing on the ground. Worms. Eyes. He felt a hot, sticky liquid climb out of his nostrils. He touched his fingers to them, and they came away drenched in blood. He closed his eyes weakly. Tired. This was it. The last hurrah. Lying still on the ground, he felt the world spin him around dizzyingly. He smiled, a smile covered with cracked, uneven teeth, blooding spill out of his mouth.