Floated

I was tightly pressed like toothpaste being squeezed out of its plastic sachet by both thumbs. Forcefully, I inhaled the warm air, heavy with exhalations from hundreds of despairing souls. From behind, heavy breasts radiating heat were digging into my sweaty shoulder blades, and in front, my chest was pressing on a rigid back.
This wasn’t the kind of a queue you’d see outside the Uptown Stabilizers. They had silent and sterile entrances, and their individual chambers shimmered with bespoke light. This was the line for Downtown units, the ones I could still afford, barely.
That day, the line reached the horizon, not just with newly unemployed, but also with the grieving souls whose eyes still held the echoes of the cold void of a loved one that ceased to be. The Fungus thrived in those places. It fed on the quiet terror and grew on the sorrow. I felt it jumping on my own fresh wound.
The crawl beneath my scalp started, not really physical. It was a mental one, subtly nudging me to scratch the scabs off my latest hurt. I slowly brought my eyelids to close, trying to avoid the thought, but it tightly clung. ‘Just like last time, divorce papers thrown on your face again,’ a smooth and almost familiar whisper, cut through my confident internal monologue. ‘Just like last time, even worse. It’s a dead end.’ I pushed back, attempting to anchor myself in my confident thoughts, by my wall, dissolved like salt in water.
The queue slowly moved forward. As I dragged my heavy feet ahead, the unspoken and unasked connection sparked. It was the density of desperation, maybe, or my own threatened defenses, perhaps, the Fungus.
The cold memory of the woman behind, whose quiet sobs dripped through my spine, clearly appeared in my mind. A child’s face. Pale and small in the sterile light of the medical bay. By their side, the face of the medical officer was looming, denying the emergency credit. The sobs carried the loss of a loved one, through a system that deemed some lives less worthy. The grief flooded me, almost feeling like my own.
The story of the hulking figure, whose stillness felt heavier than his actual weight, became a torrent in my mind. The flickering screen of his work pad, announcing discontinuation. An empty and messy apartment. The drone of the dictatorial regime’s propaganda was a constant reminder of how much he was no longer useful. Loss of purpose, of livelihood, stripped away by an indifferent government.
Both paths were diverging, yet converged there, in that suffocating line for the same ‘hope’. The wounds collectively slithered its spiky nature on my own scar. The fungus in my mind freshly and strongly pulsed. It was feeding, not just on my despair, but on theirs, funneled through the unspoken connection. It bloomed, growing stronger, like an invasive weed watered by collective misery.
Ahead, a faint luminous glow started showing. The itch intensified, a feeling of something with undefined shape uncoiling was now behind my eyes. I gripped on the worn edge of the cold railing, desperately attempting to distract it. ‘It’s only going to sooth the surface,’ the voice came back, and this time it was sharper with a touch of cynical knowing that it wasn’t mine. The soft hum from the Stabilizer that was meant to be calming, now seemed to resonate with the buzzing pulses of the Fungus in my skull. Its phantom claws were now on my neck, and slowly digging into my wind pipe.
A sudden loud scream slit through the queue. It came from somewhere ahead. A man was violently dragged out of the line by two uniformed enforcers. He was shredding the faded fabric of his shirt. His eyes were widened and his eyelids were struggling to keep them inside. The Fungus had sucked the brightness off his face. He lost the battle to the Fungus, and now, the Stabilizers wouldn’t be of any help. They dragged him away. I couldn’t imagine losing it. I released the railing and forced my legs to take another step forward.
Finally, it was my turn. I stepped into the dim chamber. The warm fluid of the Stabilizer lapsed on my ankles, then my knees, rising to my chest. It smelled faintly of damp earth, not pleasant or unpleasant, but alien. I leaned back, my tired limbs slowly rose through the dense liquid, and I floated. A low hum designed to realign started deep within the chamber.
The Fungus exploded. Its tiny phantom roots frantically burrowed through my neural pathways. The muscles that should have relaxed in the fluid’s embrace turned rigid. A laugh that didn’t feel like mine bubbled up with a rasping sound. Then, the soft healing glow of the fluid pulsed with a sickly green warning in my vision.
‘See?’ the voice hissed loudly, ‘The weakness runs too deep. You can’t escape what you are. Just let go. It’s easier, so much easier than fighting.’
My heart pumped harder. I tried to push against the feeling, to remember the resilience I once had. I pictured a memory. My son’s milky and nicely arranged teeth, his smile whenever I arrived home. The Fungus was swift, consuming it and replacing with a grey crumbling ruin. I felt my vibrant thoughts being forced out of where they should be.
I floated.
The mental and physical exhausting settled in my bones. The phantom roots still pricked. The green haze in my vision faded, leaving the fluid’s soft glow. I slowly blinked in the soft hum.
I was stabilized, yes. But the itch was dulled, not gone. I knew it waited patiently and coiled within the shadows of my mind, ready to bloom when the world’s weight got too heavy.