Burridge Unbound Read Online Free Page A

beautiful in
The Graduate
, but why did she go for Dustin Hoffman? He was bad news for her in that movie. Bad news or good news? I would’ve crashed the church at her wedding too to get her. That final look as they pull away on the bus.
Now what?
    Now what? Now the night stands before me. I’m pacing again. I take the uneaten portion of Joanne’s stir-fry and mulch it in the trash compactor. I’d go out for a walk, but the storm is blowing too hard. A cold rain like that could land me with pneumonia. Just what I need. I sit back at the computer but my leg jumps –
whack! –
within seconds. A hot bath. I head for the bathroom, change my mind, pace some more. If only I could sleep. It would make everything better. Maybe I’m on an even keel again and it’s the lack of sleep that’s throwing everything off. If I just went to sleep I’d be fine.
    I try to clear room on the bed. It’s covered in old newspapers, magazines, Action Alert printouts, Death Penalty logs, and the like. The slaughter of the Kurds. Ethnic cleansing in Albania. Sixty-three bodies with slit throats in Algeria. A crackdown on religious minorities in China.
The Silent Slaughter
. I push them all aside and lie with my face in my pillow.
    This isn’t how to go to sleep. I have a vague memory. I need to take off my clothes and put on pyjamas. Sip hot milk, take out and brush my teeth. Read something light before turning off the lamp. Any one of the above would be an improvement. But my body doesn’t move. I need to take off my shoes and socks.
    I think I’m rising to do some of this, but it turns out nothing like that. Part of me rises but my body stays immobile on the bed. I should’ve eaten more. Then I’d have the energy to getup and do all the right things and fall asleep properly. But now I’m split and watching myself, not properly asleep at all. My leg starts twitching. It’s amazing to see. Still one moment, jerking out the next. Articles scatter every time. Soon there’s going to be nothing else left on the bed. Everything will be out of order. (Is it in order now?)
    There should be an order, but there isn’t. I shouldn’t be able to watch myself sleeping, but here I am hovering near the ceiling. Sometimes in the hood in the closet with the heat and insects and immobility and starvation eating me slowly slowly I’d hover like this above my body and feel a great sense of lightness because of how close to freedom it all felt. Release. This isn’t the same. (That wasn’t the same either. It was all wrong. Every bit of it.) This is disjointed. If not for the ceiling I’d just float off and never be heard from again. Now I want to be joined. I want to be part of that body and make it sleep properly again. Not articles on atrocities raining all over the bedroom.
    I want to, but I can’t. And now the ceiling is opening up into blackness. The ceiling opening up and I try to get back to my body. I try to turn and that works, I can turn, but I can’t get anywhere. There’s nothing to push against. I try but my limbs have no substance. No substance but all the pain of my wretched body. Who rigged the rules in this universe? If you don’t have the substance you shouldn’t have the pain either!
    I need to call Joanne. If I could just get to the phone but there’s no way to move and anyway they have the phone they pull the strings I couldn’t even remember the number
just hit redial
a voice says clear as anything if I could just get to the phone and hit redial she’d know and she’d come but there’s no hope of it they have everything attached and are asking me again in Kuantij I can’t understand a fucking thing I shouldn’t have gone I shouldn’t have taken the damn car it was justbadminton an accident a flat fucking tire and if I hadn’t stalled the gears that one time when I was almost away I wouldn’t I wouldn’t I wouldn’t …
    Her voice again. Jesus. They’ve got Joanne. I can’t believe it! I writhe now spit scream