Free Mental Shrillness by Todd Russell

brighter than a million connected floodlights. And the heinous skeletal fingers, that had once held her, slithered away like individual serpents, down the frigid tunnel. Her eyes never opened, she never once regained consciousness, yet she knew it was over.
    Or just beginning.
    Then there was gray. An image to let her know she was still on the boundary between reality, fantasy, life and death. The storm was not over.
    A different set of fingers grasped her, warm fingers from this bright place. She imagined hearing the soft melodic strum of a twelve-string guitar playing somewhere deep in the blinding white.
    A day passed.
    Another.
    And it was on the third day that the gray metamorphosed into shape, definition and color.
    The third day that her eyes opened and she took a first glimpse of her unfortunate surroundings.
    "You...made...it," a nervous voice said. "I thought...thought I was going to lose you."
    She dreamed the voice she heard was a doctor's, but her eyes—open with toothpicks holding the lids—saw differently. The man hovering over her was no doctor. He was as scraggly as a common bum, a vagabond, a total loser who survived on rat-like behavior. He had the unpleasant odor of dead fish, a salty, dank scent. He had a beard (if that's what it was) which looked as if it had never been shaven. His eyes were as worn and bloodshot as the town drunk's. His skin color wasn't even normal. It was gross, pale and thin. It bordered on translucent. She saw herself waking from a deep sleep to a dying, disgusting, useless bum.
    "I...I can't believe you made it." He held out hands which were as worn as his eyes.
    "Who...?" she forced through sun blistered lips, her voice box not allowing anymore. She tried to turn away from the man's anxious gaze, but her neck wouldn't cooperate.
    "Please," he whispered, bringing something to her mouth. "Please drink. You need fluids. You almost...didn't make it."
    She drank without objection. She doubted that she had the strength to object.. A warm, milky substance slid down her parched throat. Coconut? She compared the taste to her memory banks. Yes, coconut milk.
    The man pulled the coconut away from her lips. "Are you hungry? You must be starved."
    "I..." she began, the jaws, this time, not cooperating. He gave her another drink and she drained the coconut dry.
    The man took the coconut away again. He broke off a piece of it and offered it to her. "Hungry?" he repeated, as if she didn't understand English.
    She shook her head.
    "Okay." He put the coconut on the ground beside her. "But I must know how you feel. Please, if you feel feverish or sick or cold—I must know. How do you feel?"
    Her first sentence came, along with a loud discordant cough. "You...are a—" COUGH! "—doctor?"
    "No," the man replied, lowering his head. "No, wish I was. You wouldn't have scared me like you did if I was."
    "How?" she coughed again, rubbing her throat raw.
    "For now, let me ask the questions. I don't think you should talk too much right away. You had a terribly high temperature, it might have been pneumonia. That's why I need to know how you feel?"
    "Alive." she answered, for the moment not so gratified by that fact.
    "Do you feel nauseated?"
    "No—" COUGH!
    "Hot? Cold?"
    "Shitty," she replied.
    He grinned. "Humor, that's a good sign."
    A moment passed where she could no longer keep her eyelids open. She pressed on, needing to learn more about her surroundings.
    "Who...are...you?"
    "I thought I was the one asking the questions?" He took a piece of coconut and started munching on it.
    "If you aren't a doc—" COUGH! "—tor, who are you?"
    "A friend," he touched her chin, a loving gesture which made her cringe. "that found you three days ago."
    She looked around, trying to remember what happened to her, what had brought her to this unfamiliar place. Everything was unclear at the moment. She had a sense that it would come back to her in time. Right now she cared more about where she was than how she'd