My Mental Anarchy

He opened his eyes and sat up straight. His mouth twisted in a silent scream as he was assaulted by a blinding headache, and he fell down on the pillows again with his hands at his temples, trying to stop his head from exploding.

After some time, the pain went away, and he opened his eyes. He didn’t recognize the room. Slowly, he sat up again and gingerly got to his feet. His room was neat and tidy, with little personal effects, other than a pair of shoes and a backpack. He wasn’t sure they were his, but it hardly seemed to matter. The table next to his bed had a picture frame of some strangers.

He could walk, if a bit unbalanced, and found a bathroom across the hall. He bent over for a drink of water and cleaned his face. As he looked at the reflection in the mirror, the hair on the back of his neck stood rigid as he noticed the blood on his shirt. It wasn’t a lot of blood, but surely more than there should be.

Had he been hurt? He couldn’t see any cuts or bruises, and with the headache nearly gone, he didn’t feel any pain at all. Had he hurt someone else?

He rushed back to the room. In one of the closets, he found a white shirt, quickly changed and stuffed the bloodied shirt into the backpack. Without taking anything else, he ran out of the room and down the hall. His breath was laboured as he passed other rooms, too quickly to see what was inside them. As he reached the double glass doors at the end of the hall, he heard shouts from behind. Without looking back he drove through the doors and continued into a blinding white landscape.

There were a few people on the path and he heard angry, startled shouts as he passed them. His chest was hurting, but there was no way he could stop running. He might get caught. He might be in serious trouble.

He slowed to a steady walk and examined his surroundings. Everything was white with snow and he couldn’t figure out where he was. He figured that he would eventually reach a place he knew or find a bus station. He didn’t know where he wanted to go. He didn’t even know what he was leaving.

Daniel.

He should have taken the shoes. Walking through the snow in bare feat was painful and he had nothing on but a thin shirt. His pants were soaked and cold, and stuck to his legs.

Daniel.

The name disturbed him. He tried to force it out of his mind and focused instead on trying to find a place to get warm. Maybe he should knock on a door and ask for help. But he couldn’t. People might be looking for him – the wrong kind of people.

Daniel!

He startled as a hand touched his shoulder. A car had stopped not far behind him, and a pretty woman had left the man in the car to run up to him.

“Where are you going?”
“I need to get away. I think I did something bad. I have to get away!”
“No, you need to come back with me, Daniel. You’re not well. You’ve been in an accident, and you can’t be out here!”

Suddenly concious of the bandages around his chest, he nodded and started walking as the woman took his arm. She gently led him into the car and put a blanket over his shivering body. Strangers greeted him at the hospital, the people from the picture frame, and they led him back into the room, got him into some dry clothes and into the bed. “Try to rest”, they said. They were probably right. He was exhausted from the run and the walk and his head had started hurting again.

Just before sleep took him completely, he opened his eyes. He didn’t recognize the room he was in, the white walls or the picture frame on the table. He coughed, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

- Dan Poulsen