"'Everything I have ever loved is slipping away,' I say. And then the bells go off." -Zach Schomburg, from From the Fjords

Fast

I wake up in the hospital, and this is where the confusion begins. A nurse enters my room. Why hasn’t this cadaver been taken to the morgue yet she says. She walks out of my room in a huff, as if I didn’t know she was only joking with me. A doctor comes into my room. This body has been in here for weeks he says. It should have been taken away quite a while ago. I make eye contact with the doctor. Any word as to my test results I say. The doctor breaks eye contact. Yes, well, it isn’t very good he says. What isn’t I say. According to the tests, you are dead, and have been for some time he says. The doctor must be in on the joke, as well, along with the nurse from before. Very funny, sir I say. I just need to know about the test results. Something about high blood pressure. The doctor pulls out a clipboard, seemingly from thin air. It says here that you have no blood pressure whatsoever, therefore you must not be alive he says. I’m very sorry to inform you, but you’re dead. I think for a moment. I have been feeling a bit differently. Somewhat lighter. Not hungry ever. More interested in borderlands and other liminal spaces. That’s where I must be, now. In some sort of strange in-between, in a sterile hospital with anonymous doctors and nurses. Not gone entirely, but not there either, and not entirely getting the joke, whether it’s on me, or us all.