Body Map

Sleepless, the body becomes a mind map strung out on a bed, color coded in degrees of pain. Each movement sends an update, a glowing patch of deepening red or a lava line of heat solidifying into a poker branding plunge with a white hot X. Staying still is only a temporary reprieve, a lull for nerves to reset and crank up for the next assault. Inhabited space pressurizes to send throbs pounding on the walls of each weary cell accompanied by waves of relentless ache. Thoughts clamber upwards looking for a way out but fall back into a dark gravity, consumed by that agonizingly slow countdown when the next dose of oblivion can be dribbled out of a pill which, with any luck, should get you through until morning creeps across your bed with another installment.