Chloroform

This is a long rambling read that I had to get out of my head. I apologize in advance!!
 
 
First period was about to start, Chemistry.  But I needed to talk to you before class, so I asked if you would step into the supply closet.  You came, but you were closed off and distant, your hands wrapped around yourself as if to ward off the cold.  Could you forgive me please I asked, the demons inside of me laughing.  The truth of what happened didn't matter, what mattered was only what the whispers and jokes and pointing fingers said.  No, never, shaking your head, holding yourself even tighter as you back away.  You pushed the door shut and the quiet conversations in the classroom faded away.  But that didn't matter to me, all I heard was the demons cackling in my soul, come join us, you are one of us, no one here wants you but we do.  The tears streamed down my face, the self loathing like pitch black oil leaking out of my soul, swallowed my heart.  I fell to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been snipped. I couldn't join their dance, I wasn't who they said I was, I had to find a way away from them. For an eternity of moments I sat there lost in the corruption that sank into my mind.  But billions of moments pass so quickly in the real world and I arose with a certainty and conviction, I knew what the demons needed.  Scanning the shelves I saw bromine, chlorine, sodium, and iodine, so many glasses and bottles and beakers and packages.  One caught my eye, what was that, huh Chloroform, that would do. I took the brown glass jar and hefted it, almost full, that would do.  Unscrewing the cap I took a whiff, woah, sweet, but intense!!  I took a beaker and filled it up, 500 milliliters.  The demons cheered and jeered and pranced and danced, these were the games they loved the most!! Games for your soul!!  I was having none of that, my resolution was strong, and just like that the beaker was at my lips and the liquid slid down my throat.  God it burned, fire whiskey, stronger than the vodka I drank that was for sure.  I laid down on the floor and the sounds of class faded away as my heart began to bounce around the confines of my skull.  Jackhammers and car horns, engines revving and tires screeching, a New York City street traipsing through the inside of my cranium.  It was an all encompassing everything that became my being, a marching band of magnitude spiraling down inside me...........  Occasionally, like a gunshot or a whipcrack, a voice would careen off through the void, obliterating the thump-bump of my heartbeat.  That was all that remained of the world beyond.  The demons too were gone, silenced by the austerity of my resolution.  Minutes more and the war would be won.  But suddenly the crashing of the bell signaled the end of class and door opened and people yell and scream and shake me.  Questions and tears and confusion, just let me go, it is supposed to be over.  I am saving everyone from the demons in my soul!!  Time stutters and a question repeats, over and over, urgent and insistent, dragging me up out of the void.  Just let me go!!!!!!!! Over and over, what are the words? Take.......you......did.........take.........what......you?  Okay, okay, if it means you will leave me to die, but words won't come,  my voice is strangely gone, an arm points, so hard...  Chloroform? Chloroform? A slight nod.  Camera flashes in the night, sunlight, ambulance, darkness.... The next thing I remember is waking up in the ICU two days later.  They say the doctors told my parents they were waiting for me to die.  I guess it was a ghastly game that the demons weren’t going to lose.


 
1.6 ounces is a lethal dose of chloroform, I drank 10 times that much and somehow came out the other side.  And every day as I go to sleep I hear the demons laughing in my soul.