Over-Caffeinated, Underwater, psychosis

I come to you from a pirated copy of Microsoft Word, allegedly.  The phones are tapped, likely.  That doesn’t cause me much grief.  I’m a notorious non-answerer.  There’s something about a ringing phone that makes the backs of my eyeballs hurt.  It’s not a nervousness, or a fear anymore, just a painful biting noise behind the eyes, like maggots chewing their way out of a plastic grocery bag filled with dog-dirt.  So I elect to ignore phone calls, religiously.  Text messages are hit and miss.  If my text messages are being read by the authorities, I’ve got bigger problems than I expected.

I’ve taken on a bit of a psychosis, as you can tell.  This is not drug induced.  This is not drug induced.  This is probably not drug induced.  It could, however, be caffeine induced.  This morning, I drank cold coffee out of a beer mug, for breakfast.  For lunch, I floated coffee beans in milk and ate them like dirty cereal.  I drank the polluted milk afterward as a reward.  To wash it all down, I had a mountain dew and snorted two crudely crushed caffeine pills.  As far as psychotic episodes go - I’ve never had one more pleasurable.

Last night, I dropped my iPod in the toilet.  (Don’t expect transitions here.  I haven’t got the time or the rational for them.)  I predicted the iPod’s demise.  There was nothing fortuitous about it.  I saw it the way the profits in the bible saw global floods and locust.  Only, my vision came with much shorter notice.  I was a foot away from the basin, approaching, preparing myself for an urgent caffeine piss.  Most of my headspace was at capacity, squeezing the urethra muscles, preventing an accident.  It was that moment, precisely that moment, that I imagined the iPod falling from the waistband of my pants where it was tucked.  I saw it falling - in my head, as a premonition.  I ignored the message.  The iPod fell, floundered, and made the sound of a soup-spoon being dropped into an empty clam chowder bowl.

The caffeine has shifted from nagging to a bearable lull.  A cat with one chewed ear has arrived, seemingly out of thin air, to tangle itself against my legs.  It’s hair is sticking to my pant legs.  Normally, I would disallow this type of encounter with strange animals, but under the circumstance, I’ll welcome the unsolicited affection.  It’s purring now.  Or I’m purring.  I cannot differentiate.  Perhaps we’re both purring.

The iPod.  The poor, drowning iPod.   I watched it there, magnified, beneath five inches of toilet water.  Then, without conscious thought, I reached in and retrieved it.  If it weren’t for the psychosis, this would be a detestable act.  An act that should be punishable in the same way that thieves were punished in biblical times.  A butcher’s blade at the wrist joint.  The spurting wound cauterized in hot coals.  

In real time, I thought nothing of the act.  It was no different than retrieving a lost nickel in the street.  The water dripped upwards, against gravity.  It rolled up my arm where it was absorbed by my sleeve.  Still, I remained composed.  My attention was perfectly and absolutely on the rescued iPod.  It shook like a wet dog.  More water dripped skyward.  To assist in the resuscitation, I wrapped the gadget in paper towels, clutched it close to my chest and hummed a number of songs to it.

I understand the absurdity in retrospect - humming to a soggy iPod - but it seemed to be a soothing action at the time.  The iPod had always delivered music for me, without complaint.  Why not return the favor?

For minutes, maybe hours, I treated the iPod like a victim of hypothermia.  I kept it wrapped fully, in paper towels.  I changed them often.  I hummed and blew hot breath on it.

The cat has vanished.  In it’s place is a dotted line of black ants.  They are carrying tiny white eggs over their heads.  Navigating around my foot.  Somewhere, an angry Queen ant sits in a solid gold throne, waiting, belching, pushing out a diarrhea stream of larva.  I only assume this is where these ants are headed.

With the caffeine waining, my concentration and hand-eye coordination are recalibrating.  Have I finished my story?  The iPod.  It survived the near drowning.  This morning, after my unleaded coffee, I unwrapped it like a christmas gift.  It lit up when it saw me.  It works.  One hundred percent, it works.  One hundred and twenty percent, it works better than before.  The brush with death has rejuvenated it.  It plays music in double-time, louder, with more bass, perfect treble.  It lives.  It thrives.

As for the urgent piss.  It never came.  To this exact minute, some eighteen hours later, I have yet to urinate.  I fear my bladder has expanded like a helium balloon inside my abdomen.  It is likely to burst at any moment.  Or maybe this is more psychosis.  

When I am finished here, I will lay on my back beside the battalion of ants.  I expect to find an ominous bulge protruding through my abdominal wall.  The iPod will hum Spanish music in hyper-speed, to comfort me.  Pending my survival, I will brew a bathtub-sized pot of coffee and sit naked in it.