Detox

My only visible human characteristic was a pathological craving for alcohol. Chemically lobotomised. My job lost, my family far away, a philosophy degree piss up a wall in a metaphysical liquidation. Only a word to cast into the dying void, an aching liver a dried up soul. Something had to give, so the drinking stopped...An epiphany, perhaps?

I drifted towards the dark heart of detox with a trembling fatigue, stretched out on my bed sweating out my soul, braced for the lance of a five-year boil. The alcoholic depressant was drawn out in a steady stream, as five weeks issued out in fragments:

Week 1: A circle of pain seeps around the cranium, submerged in an entanglement of blackthorn and vascular vines. Voices whisper as the light bulb glows intensely bursting like a blister - flickering pink butterflies in a flutter out into the atmosphere. Head dipped into the bucket beside the bed, his cackling retch igniting an acrid smell of sulphur as his stomach consumed itself - catalysis combustions – insomnia the works.

Week 2: It started with a sneeze - several times in succession – flecking the bedsheets in luminous snot - peppermint green. Demented hallucinations enmesh the bedroom walls - creeping ivy - beryl moss and belladonnas - coiling dreams - chills shakes, a cyst the size of crystallised oyster. His flesh tissue now fluoresces yellow, and an uncontrollable tremor – insistent. As for Sunday night sprouts into Monday morning.

Week 3: The sheets were filthy – incrustations, streaked with silt. The bed frame creaking with the rhythm of the spine, twisting contortions. A myriad of memories festering in the corners of his mind, encrusting crabs crept across his flesh. A conical lampshade protruding from the steaming vegetation of the carpet - casting a huge moth upon the ceiling fluttering dry dust in a fine skim across an otherwise sticky week. What little sleep he did get - was imaginable in its delirium.

Week 4: Uneventful, but for two points in particular. 1) Unfurling from TV screen in an amusing manner, a pink tongue flaccid and furring over within seconds like a piece of ripe fruit, decaying in fast-forward. 2) A Venus flytrap rising from a bundle of cables - serrated teeth, glistening green it's spongy lungs exhaling a sweet smelling vapour..The week concluding with epileptic fits and more green puke. A Phosphorescent worm burrowed in the fifth, as the withdrawal dwindled.

He Gazed at the once white lilies on the window ledge - a shade of cognac brown now. The ingrown psychosis somewhat cropped...Sickness subsided...delusions, just a seep - clearing up with the cysts...his reptilian cackle – a distant hiss... Friday fermented into a soft vegetation. He lay there shimmering away in his own juices, a smile creeping across his face. The worse was over.

He Rolled in his bed from left to right, right to left, twisting the sheets into a moist cocoon, and fell into a deep perverse sleep. Hours of vomiting, ending in a strange euphoria.