Hands shaking with adrenaline, I turned the page.
Halfway down, below a regimented paragraph of words in Calibri and a short, instructive sentence, there lay an image of a decrepit, stone tower. The disorientating bird’s view of the deep, hollow centre and the spiral staircase spinning down the length of it began to make my head dance.
All of the pre-planned scenarios, vocabulary, techniques which I had meticulously inscribed onto the walls of my mind began to wash away down that menacing whole of oblivion; the adrenaline began to surge through my vessels. The image burned itself into my eyes. As if a disk of white noise was spinning around my head, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. What sort of story could I write about this? All of my ideas sunk into the crevices of my mind like the garish, green moss of the tower. My mind was tensing, hardening itself.
I closed my eyes, put my head in my hands and saw that long tube of oblivion extending before me. Cold and unfriendly like a draught, I heard pens shuffling along paper, as isolating and disconcerting as the quiet tick of a clock. In my mind, I saw a small, muddy disk, lost beneath the hard bricks.
I opened my eyes and returned to the image. Each floor seemed to pull itself towards my searching eyes and then fall away precipitously, so that I couldn’t make out which window was parallel with which. I felt locked in a state of decay and disorientation. There was nothing I could understand or make out. At the very bottom, there was the clayish, watery floor…
How could I explain this to anyone? I felt frustrated and betrayed by the clouds in my mind, this sudden assertion of hopelessness. A patch of light reflected off that pool on the ground. If only I could explain…
Then I had an idea. I picked up my pen.
I began to write, “Hands shaking with adrenaline…”
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