Inside Out

The smell was potent, like that of alcohol soaked fumunda cheese and stomach bile. Sebastian didn't seem to notice, however, as he had become all too familiar with this ever lingering stench. The malingering of foul air clung to the insides of his nostrils, as a fly to sticky paper.

He looked down towards the steaming pile of swirling browns, reds, and yellows of long ago curdled half digested vomit before him. This nightly purging had almost become a religious sacrifice to his decadent porcelain goddess, whom he had been worshipping nightly since Julianne had left.

He slowly raised a shaky unstable hand to his face and splashed a handful of water upon it. He looked up only to meet his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. What a sad image this was staring back at him, he thought to himself.

He tiredly blinked away several tears, which had been forming and returned to his bed, which was still perfectly made. Once again he laid down upon the soft quilted blanket and waited. Sleep had to come sooner or later he thought.

This sleepless pain of the broken hearted had taken him hostage. He had become a prisoner inside himself and if one were to peer into the great abyss of Sebastian Hatt they’d see for themselves all of these prison bars crashing down around him.

Whoosh! Bam! Tight knots were forming in his stomach, as the bars seemed to continually come crashing down. The constant worrying, which weighed heavy on Seb’s abdomen only helping to cause more quarter sized ulcers to form. His stomach acid had taken over his entire mid-region leaving its damage not only here in his stomach, but also trailing up his esophagus. With a final slam of these prison bars, he jumped up and ran back into the bathroom.

Typically Seb’s stomach was like rock, as steady and resilient as the earth itself, but lately it had become a bubbling volcano of visualized poison, which his body deemed necessary to rid itself of through violent eruptions.

It wasn’t his stomach soley, which was responsible for this activity, however, but a series of linked events. Just as the earth couldn’t stand alone in all of its glory without the assistance of the ocean, the air, and the sun neither could Seb’s volcanic abdomen stand on it’s own.

Crash! More bars slamming. This time they were in his heart, which was closely linked to his stomach through millions of, veins carrying the same blood supply to both. He collapsed to bathroom floor and desperately tried to hold back inevitable tears. With every thought of her his heart seemed to shatter into a million pieces. Of course it hadn’t shattered it was still there, in his chest, after all beating.

It was faint from all of this wear and tear he had been going through. The barely audible, whoosh, as it pumped in and, whoosh, back out again. It was more difficult to feel with each passing moment, but still he heard it beating. Whoosh; whoosh as waves upon the beach.

At one point Seb’s heart had been the deepest cerulean blue, as it pumped healthy blood to all of his vital organs. Still it possessed that blue flair, as though it were the center of his bodily ocean, but it now somehow seemed deeper and darker than the ocean itself. This heart was somehow now a great abyss, where thoughts like sea creatures could be swallowed whole and lost forever. His heart had become a never-ending whirlpool where feelings circled round and round.

This time the prison walls would lead to Sebatian’s head. Smash! More bars were slamming. Violently his eyes flew wide open and the sobs quieted as he sat and stared through pools of tears. It was his physical exhaustion, which had lead to this immobility, but while his limbs had become useless, his mind hadn’t ceased to run. The mind of Seb could easily be compared to a raging tornado spinning a path of destruction. His thoughts raced so quickly that even he had trouble keeping up with them.

Seb’s head was usually light with occasional thoughts floating in and out as a gentle wind on a summer’s day. Currently it sounded like a locomotive had decided charge through his skull. A tornado of thoughts was tearing his life apart. It went where it wanted, while it picked up thoughts like rag dolls to throw helplessly in mighty clutches. Sebastian sat and waited out the storm, eventually it would quiet down it always did.

By this point Seb’s face had become paler than the faintest crescent moon. Once it boasted and beamed all the light of the sun in an otherwise dark existence, but now, without her he was losing his color. The circles under his dark, once majestic eyes were familiar to that of a cratorial gray shadow on the surface of the moon.

Like a chain reaction his inside disquietude had found it’s way to his outside, exposing his condition and vulerableness through his outward appearance. His face was swollen face and cheeks stained with tears. His frame appeared thinner than before due to his lack of nourishment. His clothes had been lived in for days and days, and his hair was as disheveled as his the scruffy beard upon his once clean- face.

Ding dong, the doorbell rang, it was her, he hadn’t gotten up, he just knew. What should he do, he wondered, as he sat motionless on the bathroom floor. He struggled to rise to his feet but all of his efforts were useless, physical exhaustion wouldn’t allow for it. Instead he turned as he grabbed the half-empty bottle of vodka from off the floor beside him and began to drink.