Fun With Brain Trauma

I'm not quite up to fiction just yet - my brain still seems to be operating at about 75% standard, and telling lies seems to require more brain power than not. For me, anyway. I don't mean to slight non-fiction writers by saying they only write non-fiction because they aren't smart enough to write fiction. I mean, I hear that Seabiscuit book was pretty good. Even if it didn't have actual Sea Biscuits in it.

But for me, alas, my soul burns bright with truth, and it goes against the grain to lie, even if it is more fun.

So instead of a story, I thought I might try to chronicle a few of the hallucinations I still remember from my surgical recovery. I think most of them were due to lack of sleep, though the narcotics may not have helped.

First, there were the heads. Sometimes human heads, usually not. Mostly the heads of horse or donkey-people. These would be integrated into any surface that had texture. Curtains, blankets, walls, skin. They didn't usually move, and if they did, it was just to chew cud or blink or something. They never talked to me, the arrogant freaks. Mostly it was like I was discovering hidden images that no one else could see. Hidden images of the heads of horse people.

Also, socketed fabric. As I spent the first week of recovery either in bed or wanting to be in bed, I became quite familiar with the sight of blankets and sheets. When these blankets would get bunched up at the bottom of the bed, it was quite clear that they were made up of one or more ball hinges about the size of an orange. What a blanket would need with ball joints I cannot say, but I'm sure it's something wicked and unnatural.

Apparently during days 4-7 post surgery someone in my circumstances is usually at the greatest risk of popping one or more blood vessels in their throat and subsequently bleeding to death or drowning on their own blood. So during these days I stayed in my in-laws guest room, as their house is closer to the hospital than mine. While I was there, I developed a very clear impression of some Thing that lives underneath the guest bathroom and watches television from the 70s and 80s between the hours of midnight and 5 AM. It is a small manlike thing about the size of a toddler. It has wide bloodshot eyes and wears an unwashed brown suit. I never actually saw the thing clearly as I crouched on my hands and knees at 3 AM peering into the air vent in the floor of the bathroom, but there WAS something down there. I heard it watching "All In The Family" and "Battle of the Network Stars." If I'd had the energy, I think I might have tried to pull up the floorboards and expose the fiend in its lair.

I think there was another recurring "hallucination," but it is possible I've integrated it fully into my experience and no longer perceive it as non-real.

I'll ask my wife tonight if she can see the satyr on the bookshelf too, just to make sure.

Comments

[Gretchen]

I don't know about ya'll, but I *never* miss an episode of Battle of the Network Stars...

[Laura Z M]

If you're at 75% brain capacity, Dean, that still puts you miles ahead of the rest of us. Or yards, anyway. Or meters, if you prefer, since most geniuses think in metric. At least I imagine they do. I wouldn't know.

That satyr will fit in well with the wife's anniversary plans, I'd bet.

Let us know.

[Enna Isilee]

Oh.

[Liesolotte]

*looks around dazedly*
I drift over here occasionally from Shannon's blog, and each time I'm scared away for good...until I come back again. So, um...happy anniversary?

[Q]

Don't worry, Liesolotte, you'll get used to it. Or stop coming. Or end up in a psych ward.

[Shawn]

There's a saying that truth is stranger than fiction. I am currently debating whether it applies to dreadcrumbs.

[Burning]

Or both.

I remember rather fuzzily my post-surgery days. I remember waking up in the front yard (I sleep walk), and throwing my tonsils-in-a-jar out the window.

And mine was a centaur.

[Bohae]

Er... *swallows carefully, just in case*
The Thing sounds very...companionable... ;)