Slippery

It's slippery.

It's also so very dark.

You close your eyes, although you know it doesn't make a difference; no light could penetrate this darkness that hugs your every curve and angle. But it helps... it makes you feel more in control of something that is taking you in its grasp.

Usually, it's not a problem. You don't have to worry about it because you never fall victim. It couldn't happen to you; others, yes. But you? Not even if you wanted it. Not even if you prayed for it.

But tonight.... it's different. You can feel it in the air, the tangible, cloudy air. You can taste the blackness, something you never really appreciated until this very moment, when you're on the brink.

It could be pleasant. You will never know until you try. But what if trying turns out to be too much... What if it's the last time you ever try, for anything in your life? The risk seems silly and insubstantial, but is it? Is it really?

You make several futile attempts to pull yourself back. You conjure images, thoughts, emotions. You drag the secrets out of the dark corners of yourself. Did this confining darkness come from your head? If you open your eyes, will the whole picture change? Does it matter?

Soon, you've dragged out so many things, so many feelings, so many thoughts that you had already sent to bed. All of the events of your day, even your life. And just to be sure that you have stoked this misfitted mob into a frenzy of bees, stinging at your mind, you drag out your worries and fears and plans for the future. It's just the kind of thing to completely infuriate those mind wasps, enough to keep you alert, if it's the last thing you do.

But to your horror,--or could it be relief?--you find all of that slipping away. Like I said: it's slippery. The tighter you hold on, the more it alludes you, deliberately distorting itself just to scramble away from your greedy clutches. You may not have any guilt over using yourself in this way, but your self certainly objects.

You make one final attempt to catch it and hold on; something is running around loose in there, skipping past your mental fingers with such dexterity, you could only glimpse flashes of it dashing by. But, nevertheless, you dart for it.

And you catch it. You let out a huge sigh of relief, of triumph, because now you've won!

But then, the most peculiar thing starts to happen, something straight out of a Lewis Carroll novel...

It shrinks.

At first you think it's a trick of the light, or rather, a trick of the UN-light. But, no. It really is getting smaller, and smaller.

Smallersmallersmallersmallersmaller......

And then a tiny, slick sensation, something only a slippery thing can create, occurs between your mental fingers. You can feel it sliding along the vee in between your appendages, inching down around that place on your hands that never seems to get touched. And with such an intimate, foreign touch, you know that you're helpless to the tickle.

You're lost to it.