Restless

 (I really cannot decide whether I absolutely loath this piece or not.)

Restless, they would call it when she got like this. She scoffed at the word. Restless didn’t begin to cover it. That simple word spoke of the things tangible, explainable, and real. It brought images of over excitable children fidgeting at the table while the grownups finished their Christmas dinner and their presents called from the next room. It was something more real than that, yet somehow less concrete.

Restless couldn’t account for the ants scurrying through her veins. Their tiny little feet, if one could even call them that, traced criss-crossed paths through every inch of her being, hurrying just below the skin. She could feel each of their legs move independently through her. Every one was an explosion of nerve endings, a sensation like nothing she’d felt before. If she didn’t get up and move with the beings, allow each step of theirs to take her two of her own, she felt they might consume her. Fill up her insides and spill out her ears in impatient ocean waves. So she let them take control. The room was only so big, though.

Her mind buzzed with due dates and to do lists stretching for miles. In her saner moments she might have realized she needed to do none of those things, but for now they flew past one by one, each becoming for a second the most important thing in the world, and the most stressful. She played games to calm it, counting the blocks on the tile floor as she passed them. Twelve blocks there, twelve back. And again. And again. Restless. But this couldn’t keep hold of her attention for too long. She began to take the steps in twos, then threes and fours. Four blocks there, three blocks back. There she went, white-washing wall to white-washed wall. She had needed to move the dresser against her closet door to give her a straight path between each wall, though the test of her strength quieted her demons for a few moments.

Her mother called from the downstairs kitchen. Dinner was ready. Sure she felt her stomach give a soft growl, but she couldn’t fathom for a moment the idea of sitting down at a table. They might catch her, whatever chased her across those floor tiles. And even worse, the idea that she might have to face her parents’ eyes glancing sideways at her subtle rocking back and forth in her chair while she lifted the fork over and over, never once letting it linger long enough to pick up any food, sickened her. Restless, they might call her. Just the thought of hearing the word again shaped her hunger into overwhelming nausea.

She let the ants carry her to the top step, where she shouted down something incomprehensible that vaguely sounded like “homework” and hastened her step back toward her bedroom. She shut the door just in time, as the first tidal waves rolled in. She had been expecting them, though never was she fully prepared. Bugs raced from her pores, darting out across the carpet until it was stained black. Restless each one repeated at a slightly different beat, so the word overtook her senses. Restless. Restless. Restless.  The walls swell outward as the waves beat against them. She wants nothing more than to let a scream crash through her bones, rip the bugs from her lungs and spray them out with the sound. She wanted nothing more for them to leave her.

As her feet fell one after the other to the ground, she heard them crunch beneath her shoes. One thousand bodies crushed in a single step. But plenty more soon filled their posts on the carpeted battlefield. Soon the walls began to crawl with them. So many she could soon hear the legs move one by one, needles poking holes in the wallpaper as they pass. The sound, silent by itself, overtook her ear drums and pricking those pinholes in the thin film of her eardrum. When one tiny pin lifted, another immediately took its place. Over and over. The sound restless.

She felt the room grow smaller, as they gushed in and spilled outward from her. Soon she’d be breathing them in with the air. Soon they would crawl on every side of her, inside and out, darting in and out of her eye sockets and under her toenails. Soon she’d be nothing more than a floating object in that sea of restless legs.

Finally, it forced its way out of her. A final wave crawled up her esophagus and she spit them out with a long shriek. She felt choked, yet never once did her body reach that way. Breathing insects felt natural, more beautiful than air. In an instant tides shifted with a beautiful inhalation. Time slowed finally to a painful pace, much closer to that of the world around her. Though she felt every tiny creature which crept in and out of her innards, their march seemed calculated, flowed softly, the trickle of stream more than the gust of a waterfall.

As the waters fell, the blackness shrinking around her, she caught sight of a shadow beneath her door. The harsh clack of her father’s footfalls on the wood floor broke through the needle sounds and the doorknob turned. In the short seconds before the door swung inward, she watched the ants recede and then cease to exist, no longer running restless through her.

“Are you okay?” Her father seemed concerned, catching sight of her crouched there on the tile, clutching her knees to her chest as if protecting herself, or hiding away.

“Just fine” It was unnatural the way she shot up from her position on the ground and scooted towards her desk, feigning interest in the papers laying scattered there. As she did, she felt a single ant making its way up her arm beneath her sweatshirt sleeves. “Really. I’m alright.”

“Are you sure? You seem a bit…” He studied her for a moment, mulling over his next word, “restless.”