storms and lab coats that are too short

[thedogofsputnik.livejournal.com]

Just as the header says. I figured I'd combine both topics into the same piece and see what happens.

It's storming out and my lab coat is too short. The clipboard in my hand is telling me that I'm supposed to check off the list of expected results to show that the experiment at hand, is a success. What the experiment is and what it's for, I can't seem to care about now. Energy efficiency or something like that. My mind is obviously elsewhere, immersed in the hypnotic clatter as the rain beats down in many splintered fists in revolt of the solid ground. Perhaps to them, we're the upside down and we're the sky that they pray doesn't come crashing down on them and this is just their way of keeping their side afloat. Gravity might be not exactly what it seems.

There's a gentle crash of lightning in the distance and it's becoming quite clear I can't keep my mind directed towards the task at hand. It's beneath me at this point. My mind is wandering and I'm not sure exactly where it is, where it's going and when exactly it left. The only active thought that seems to linger in the empty space right now is that I'm aware that there isn't the usual flap of fabric beating against my knee as I walk. Damn cleaners. It's not like I have a common name that could be easily mixed up with others. The tightness around my shoulders is annoying me slightly. It feels like every step is stretching the stitches in my coat to the point it might start unraveling as I pace.

The rain is starting to become heavier. Perhaps the earth is rebelling and insisting on ascending onwards, ready to crash into the right-side-up of the rain's scope of the world. There are flashes of lightning still glowing in the windows. I don't notice any bolts and the thunder is far and few between. The drops beating against the glass of the windows make it seem as if the building itself is weeping, girders of steel and concrete stoically sobbing like a weeping statue of the Virgin. I set the clipboard down and decide to call it a day. I don't care if the work isn't done. I simply can't function right now. I don't know what it is but suddenly I don't care about the work or the place anymore. A void is beginning to well inside my mind and it dawns on me that it had been there for quite some time and somehow, just now, it's only begun to surface, devouring my thoughts. Actions and purposes have become meaningless in its wake. They dissolve like light being absorbed into a black hole.

The thunder becomes more and more apparent and as the void in my mind begins to dominate the space, the thoughts remaining scramble desperately to assess the damage, the when and where and how this came to me. The remaining thought processes tell my conscious mind, what's left of it now that this void was always there, from the beginning and that with each day, the repetitiveness and the boredom and the lack of change between the days had been feeding it until it grew out of control of my conscious and unconscious mind. It was the work, I hated the work but I couldn't think of anything I would rather be doing. I simply accepted the course of events as they were, not thinking of the toll that it could possibly be taking. But there it is, a hungry maw, somehow sustained by those unconscious thoughts and feelings.

There's a crash of lightning and my point of vision changes. It takes me a moment to notice that I must have collapsed onto the floor. Honestly I didn't feel a thing and eventually I become aware that somehow I can't feel a thing. Except for the lack of fabric from what should be the normal length of my usual lab coat. Somehow that sensation or the memory of it is still there. Then a warm sensation begins to fill my left ear and from my right side of vision, a black mass of ink-like substance oozes out, leaving a kind of hollow feeling inside my head. The ink-like mass begins to take something of a shape, but it's still very amorphous; not quite like a blob but not quite like a defined creature either. I notice that I cannot move somehow and the sensation begins to trickle away. My eyes are still open somehow but my body has lost the will to even close them. As the black mass seeps away, out of my vision, all that is left is that memory of the fabric from my proper lab coat felt like. The rain continues to beat on in its rebellion. Another crash of lightning follows.