unquiet night

The first thing he was aware of was his lower back hurting.

Was lower the right word? Was it more the middle? What counted as back pain, anyway? Was it just to do with the spine?

His bones uncurled, straightened as much as a human spine can. He sat up straight.

“Nice of you to finally rip your eyes away from your phone,” a nearby voice rumbled. It was one voice in a sea of noises. Noises of reds and browns, of cool blue music in the background. If he listened in on one colour then it all became a blurry, sludgy mess of thought.

One song ended, another began without a moment’s peace, a surge of bass splitting his head in two. God, it felt like an anal tear, something so sudden and sharp and constant, an unavoidable pain.

“Hey? You with us?” a different voice shouted. A hand shoved his shoulder, flinching away when it touched the spikes.

“‘m here,” he mumbled. Surely this would be the end of the conversation? There were too many colours to add more to the mix.

“What were you looking at, anyway?”

This was a more gentle voice. Feminine in its softness but not in its pitch. He didn’t dwell on that much further; what was gender but a form of confinement?

“I can’t remember,” he muttered honestly. When he spoke it was the orange of decaying autumn leaves. A smell of mulch wriggled into his nostrils, a reminder of disgust. When this other person spoke it was the pastel yellow of Easter. Familial, childish, calm. Complementary colours, if their saturations weren’t so askew.

“It’s okay if you’re zoning out a bit,” the yellow voice continued softly. He could hear them clearly; were their lips on his ear? How did he know this human? “I know I get overwhelmed sometimes in social settings like this.”

The voice drew back at the end of the sentence and smiled. Pretty pastel pink lips, deep dimples, a thin face. All just features. But when looked at as part of a whole, entirely beautiful.

“I’m okay,” he found himself saying. A sudden scrape suggested his chair had been pushed back, the accompanying swirl of indigos confirming as much. He was on his feet and staggering before the yellow voice would question him.

Wait, why was he staggering? Where even was he? Why the noise? It wasn’t a nightclub, he could confirm that. Not enough trails of hormones or sweat in the air. But there was still too much noise, too few people, too clear of an exit.

Oh. A pub.

A poor quality microphone bellowed out of speakers that converted sentences to static. Some kind of pub quiz, he assumed, attempting to ignore the fluorescent shapes that floated past his head in response to the din. They blended with the neon signs directing him to toilets, to exits, to private rooms, to the bar… everything was glowing.

The pastel voice hadn’t followed him. He felt lost without it, hunting for temperance in the chaotic atmosphere. All he could do was latch onto one swirl of light, one that left sparkles in its wake. Ordinarily it would have looked beautiful - like stars, or glitter - but all he felt was panic, the sparkles hitting like shards of glass.

And when did it get so warm? No, it was cold. He was cold. Was he outside? Why were there still all the lights? And water - no, sticky. It was sticky, or would be sticky. It wasn’t water-like in texture…indoors? Had he found the bar? Why was he at a bar?

His heart sprang into his throat as his eyes finally focused. Featureless faces were locked in pairs around a table, nobody looking at him. There was something broken by his foot.

Oh. A glass.

Oh yeah. He was in a pub.

“Got t’ leave,” he mumbled to himself. If he closed his eyes he could hear the wind, smell petroleum and almost taste the leaves. If he closed his eyes he wasn’t so entirely overwhelmed by the forces of colour that seemed determined to leave him curled up on the floor, broken.

But eyes are needed for vision. He needed eyes. He had eyes. Peeling each lid open was a torturous task as instinct begged him to hide in a corner, vanish from the lights. Somehow, his legs lurched forwards, following the scent of the trees.

A door. Shoved open.

The trees, refreshing, decaying, cold on his face, cold for real this time and not just out of nervous sweat. Outside. Freedom.

“Got any change, mate?”

Before he could reply a burst of fuschia hit him in the back of the head. Some girl’s drunken laughter, ear-piercing at the best of times.

Not free not free not free.

“I’m down on my luck, see, and need a bit of change for the hostel down the road?”

This voice used to be navy. It was deep and rich and the sort of voice you could lose yourself in, once. In the present, it was tarred with charcoals, blending into greyscale where hope once lived.

“‘m sorry,” he managed to mumble. “Nothing.”

“That’s alright, have a good one,” the navy voice sighed, trudging somewhere sideways. Why was he not cold? How was he still walking when the floor was on the other side of the world?

“Jack?”

The pastels. The pastels! He felt like he could weep.

“Jack, are you alright?”

The earth beneath his lips tasted like pastels. Cool, calm, grounding. Why he was touching the earth he wasn’t sure, but the sensation of mulch in his knuckles and the smell of autumn in his nose was soothing.

“What are you on the ground floor? Did you fall over? Are you hurt?” the pastels asked, concerned. A flood of warmth revitalised him - ‘Jack’, the pastel had called him - as hands scooped up under his armpits, attempting to rouse the supine man. He let himself be liquid, manipulated until upright.

“I think it’s time to go home,” the pastel voice said gently. Their volume was loud - competing with the cacophony of other stimuli - but their tone was loving.

“Home,” Jack muttered, nodding dumbly. The neons were fading. He could see that their tone was pastel, but their colour scheme was not; a dark coat, melting brown eyes, wavy oaken hair. Still beautiful.

“Still beautiful,” he found himself whisper.

The pastel voice smiled, seeming to reignite every star in the sky with one simple expression.

“Let’s go home, love,” they whispered back. “Let’s go home.”