Unreliable Narrator

    Seconds

     I tossed and turned for roughly twenty minutes before resorting to lying on my back. The frustration was almost worse than the pain itself. No matter what position I was in, I could not seem to lessen the intensity of the aching in my abdomen. 

     Turning the lamp on my nightstand on, I looked up to focus on the blades of my ceiling fan for distraction. I picked one blade and tried to follow it with my eyes as it made each rotation. One, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen times around. Or was it fifteen? I kept loosing count.

     Instead, I tried counting the seconds in between the sporadic bursts of pain in my stomach. One, two, three, four...all the way up to fourteen before I felt it again. The second time around it was sixteen seconds. I bit my lip as the pain intensified. Maybe if my lip started bleeding, I'd forget about my stomach. It felt like the excruciating aching was spreading everywhere. I could feel it running up and down my legs as if someone was scraping a knife across my limbs. 

     Now it was spreading to my upper body. I couldn't even count the seconds in between bursts of pain anymore. Each interval was so close to the one prior that my body didn't even get a break. I couldn't remember what it was like to feel comfortable. Up from my abdomen to my chest, the pain spread like wildfire. My lungs felt like they were being crushed. They probably were.

     By this point, my entire body was overtaken. I couldn't tell where my stomach ended and where my throat began. Did I even have a stomach anymore? It might as well disintegrate considering there was no feeling anymore. I didn't feel anything. It was all just one big mass of unbelievable pain. So much pain. My head was spinning and pounding. Focusing on the fan blade rotations was impossible as my eyes rolled back in my head. 

  

     I tried straining my neck to the left to glance at my clock. 4:14 am. It felt like I had been lying there for days- no...weeks. It felt like weeks. I didn't know my name. I only knew the pain extending from my abdomen. I don't even know how to end this thought.