From Wild to Walderingfield [FF2019:3rd]

[Tonight I attended Flash Fiction, I came third of twenty. I'm so unbelievably happy with that. It was my second Spoken Word event.
 
The prompt was Oscar Wilde 'We are each our own devil and we make our own hell.'  
 
We were given 30 minutes to write.]
 
 
 
From Wild to Walderingfield
 
I inhale salt, watch a wave shatter - broken by its own ferocity upon rock below my slate-coloured shoes. I imagine plunging into it, rolling between it's teeth as if it were a giant rinsing bile.
I've spent too long sat, bones cold to touch, enduring my own company, creating finality, engaging with the idea of it.  
 
I lift up my bones, wander back towards the car, toward you and all the real, swallowable truth - yours, made mine. I smoke in the car, haven't sparked up in years, breathe out between gritted teeth as if a dragon mocking, stare into the wing mirror, mill over swinging into the central reservation, seeing all red lights and glass and bleakness.  
 
Somehow I settle into a parking space outside Walderingfield House, the details of the arrival are somewhat skewed as is the dismissal of the fag end. I won't dwell on it.  
 
I fold myself into a presentable human, grab my coat from the passenger seat, change into flat, clean pumps and get out.  
"Miss Hall," a nurse, spent of pity, better slept than I, smiles, removing scratty, bitten fingers from her mouth. "Oscar's this way."  
She leads me down an apathetically beige-washed corridor filled with half-opened doors leading to isolated half-humans, laid or propped, in half-light. I fold myself further until we arrive at your shut door. I wonder, before it opens, if it's a good day - knowing it isn't.  
"Hi," I mumble, as if I know you, as if you know me.  
You, locked inside your own tailored prison, your brain has become a cruel, crafted devil, this room's a hell to burn you in.  
 
I fold myself further, recall that wave as it shattered on the weight of its own ferocity, recall you, way back when, peeling an apple in one with a pen knife, throwing the skin to the border collie and the rest to me.  
"You are a pest." I whimper, clutching the edge of your bed, wishing you could chew food let alone speak to me. It's been weeks of watching you die slowly enduring this beast that's our truth.
 
"No...you are." You choke out. In that brief moment, that short nothing, my lead balloon...it flies.