Can't Go Outside - A Tale of Depersonalization

My shoulders shivered. They shouldn't be. It wasn't that cold at all, maybe fifty degrees Fahrenheit, perfectly warm for December. Or was it November? Can't remember.

But why would that matter? The sun will set anyways, every day, no matter the weather, no matter the season, no matter how much I cower under the suffocating bedsheets that were the only embrace of warmth I could ever have. The sun will set soon, at 8 AM, its fingers of antilight piercing through my windowpanes, through my bedsheets, drawing out shadow-blood. People don't know it, but the sun is the most powerful vampire no one has ever known. And we see it every day.

Some foggy distance away - was it foggy, or was it just a blizzard-ghost? - rang the bells of academia. One, two, seven, eight... eight days until Brother rides up in his silver engine-horse, the carriage's back open, eagerly awaiting for my things, and I would leave and embark on just another winter break, back to my parents', back to that house, that oh so elderly house that wanted to sheltered but instead pampered me. Always the same house, always the same city, the same streets, the same Safeway, the same post office, the same insurmountable distances between any two localities.

Is home there? Or here? Sure doesn't feel like home here, but I can't go outside. The view outside my window looks pleasant and tempts me to step out the door, but I can't. Once my foot passes the doorway, the sky will spiral into a blueberry cream swirl, the trees will cry timber and splinter on the sidewalks, the pedestrians will clutch their heads and scream. Scream like I do. Scream like I want to.

Too many days I just wanted to scream. Days where I felt like a ghost drifting over my body, a camera over my head, whirring left and right and projecting everything onto the screen of my mind - and below me walked my body. Whose was it? It was mine. Or so everyone said.

But if I could scream, if I could bleed, anything, anything... just to shove myself into that shambling body with the too-big white jacket and plain black hair...

Can't go outside. The world will implode if I do.

Can't go outside.