Rapid Switching

Radiology Department - 20:24

I am in knots tonight; my chest feels like it’s bulging at the seams. I am nervous, doubtful, lazy, and have an overwhelming feeling of being stuck in mud up to my waist. Despite feeling like my heart is running one-hundred miles an hour. This anxiety is killing me, and it affects everything. It is the first form of the beast to make itself known tonight.

I have tapped my foot until the muscles in my leg are sore. I am not sure if it is the tendons or the ligaments in my ankle and foot, but both have definitely seen better days. They are all now screaming as I begin to pace the floor of the X-ray room.

I do not like the way that nurse just asked about a X-ray. “Yeah, I’m calling because I need the report on that chest X-ray you shot of my patient in 616 earlier.”

First of all, Helen, you do not need a damn thing. The doctor who ordered the X-ray, and who is also diagnosing the patient, is the one who needs the report. This is Diagnostic Imaging, after all. Of course I can’t say that to poor Helen. It has to be, “Yeah, there is no report. The radiologist doesn’t read X-rays in the middle of the night. The doc will have to call and wake him up.”

“Oh okay, bye.” 

Damnit, Helen, why must we go through this every time?! That woman is slowly chipping away at my sanity, day by day.

There it is; there is the anger. Like the anxiety, it’s bound within the chest, but it’s a different kind of animal. This is the second form of the beast. Anxiety is held in place with fabric restraints; the ones with the velcro at the wrists and ankles. Anger gives the beast the power to burst through most of the straps. It is still restrained, but it can reach farther. My thoughts have picked up a bit, and anger quickly gives way to rage. This is like a delicious appetizer for the beast. It is not rolls with butter though; no, it is finer than that. This is a beef tartare, and it is only priming his appetite. The beast nearly drools considering what’s coming next. 

The suspense is working him into a frenzy. He is thrashing through my chest cavity like a wild animal in a cage. The beast is tromping all over my lungs and heart. I can feel my heart beating the back of my sternum, while my lungs move faster and faster until it is like I’m running out of air.

The beast is now shaking my spine. It jostles my spinal cord, causing my brain to thud and ricochet throughout my cranium with each twist and push and pull. This is all apart of his plan.

The beast has awakened the machine within my mind. As the gears in the machine begin to turn, a mass of blue smoke emits from its exhaust. I feel the beast’s influence growing within me. It is horrid. The thoughts move faster and faster with the machine; they’re relentless. With each revolution of the gears, he becomes more powerful, more complex. He no longer has a domain just over anxiety, anger, and rage. The beast now has dominion over love, hate, ecstasy, violence, lust, greed, my ability to take part in rational thought, and even the perception of my own reality. 

He easily breaks free from his remaining restraints. He grows larger, and his reach becomes even farther. His next form has manifested: mania. 

With the power and juice produced from the machine, and the beast, I feel invincible! I feel as if I could make love to a bus load of women -one at the time or all at once. I would serenade them all with my wonderful guitar playing and singing. Then, before I made love to them all two to three more times, I would push the bus over on its side with one hand, just to show off.

Mania is the best form of the beast. It is actually the only enjoyable form. Except for the fact that it makes me want to beat the hell out of that guy for simply looking the way he does. I can feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I don’t care that he is 6’5”. I can almost feel his blood on my knuckles. He is so irritating. He needs it.

No, not her, damnit!! I could literally think about anything else in the world. The last thing I need are memories of her.

The machine jerks and rises off the floor as the gears come to a halt. The force from the inertia of the sudden stop throws the beast. It is a long drop as he plummets from the striking peaks of mania to the dank inky den of depression. 

He lies there on his back. The den holds a darkness only some are unfortunate enough to experience. You can almost feel it on your skin. It is all consuming. The blackness makes him wonder if it even holds air. He becomes overwhelmed, trying to find his wind, because it feels as if the absence of light is slowly pressing down on his breast bone. 

While lying there, he feels them beginning to be fastened to him -the chains. I know for a fact that they are chains from the weight. God, I despise the weight of it. It causes the soles of my feet to sink farther into the earth.

The chains are anchored, now. This form of the beast has been returned to his original place -in the deep darkness somewhere within me. Those chains are anchored to my brain and heart though. No one can convince me otherwise. I can feel the beast pulling as I continue to sink lower and lower. There is no fighting though, so I simply just sink. How does one fight being pulled down from within?

In this form, the beast is still able to cause plenty of pain, even with his restraints. He is applying more tension to the chains. He pulls the brain with such a force that my frontal lobe compresses my eyes, forcing water from my tear ducts. 

The weight of these chains is too much on my heart. I feel it stretching out my aorta. I only wish to lie down and think of her. I want to lie still on my back staring into nothingness. I want to sit in the darkness too, be engulfed by nothing, hopefully feel nothing. I long for anything other than this soggy blackness draped over my soul.

The squeezing of the brain, the never ending tension he applies to his chains, our chains, as you can imagine, makes it quite hard to think. I find myself in a mental fog. It is all very hazy, and I can’t see my way out. It just feels like walking through a wasteland -a painfully familiar wasteland. 

Thankfully, the beast is beginning to tire and steadily shrink. The weight of the chains has wore him down, so the haze is dissipating. The horrific wrench of those chains is done, for now. I am drained of all my energy, but I am beginning to feel like a human again, and not some mad man who is a vessel for a demon.

It couldn’t have came at a better time in the night either. It has to be halfway through the shift, around midnight or one in the morning. I’ll go snag a free sandwich out of the Emergency Room, and I’ll have my second Monster of the night.

Radiology Department - 20:27

My other foot is now tapping.