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The thing with thoughts is they dance and sparkle and dissipate. The thing with brains is they aren’t meant for this. The thing with his eyes is that they really hurt. Everything really hurts.
Kevin has had panic attacks his whole life. He knows what happens when the panic gets too large and consumes the corners of his introspections and swallows his whole perception. He knows the way the edges of reality sway in the breeze. Everything always mattered so much. He cared so much.
He can’t bear to think about it. How he’s been destroyed. It’s not even that he’s trapped or that he’s at risk (though he is). It’s that everything he would have killed himself over has already turned to flames. And maybe he could logic his way through it, find some other route (his mother was always so good at that. At trying to encourage his over-achieving perfectionism while nullifying the ways it always felt like the end of the world. That he could find something else.) But it’s moot now. Those he loves will die (have died--). He knows what it’s like to have his finger chopped off. He knows what Hell is, and he knows the feeling of celestial electricity.
Maybe he sees things in black and white sometimes. (He’s never going to be president: the world is ending. He’s a failure and he’s drowning and everything he’s ever done amounts to nothing). But what else has become of him? There’s no framework. Nothing feels real. His thoughts speed and fizzle. He’s lost inside a nightmare. He even tries eating meat just to see if it’ll turn the lights on properly.
He misses music. The emission of tones when his heart’s just right feels like the concentrated essence of the lightning strike.
It rewrote his perception. Maybe it’s the agitation maybe it’s the panic maybe it’s the amount of sleep he’s getting because he knows goal orientation, and he knows pushing himself beyond the limits and maybe at some point your brain frays too far maybe you lose it maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe.
Maybe he’s translating God’s word, and he’s the only one who can. Maybe he’s saving the world, and isn’t that better than being president? (It’s not it’s not it’s not. He’s not able to reframe. He wants Channing back he wants to be in his room with his mom making him food that he can actually stomach to help calm the terror spinning in his chest. He wants it all back he wants it all back he wants the sky to stop turning desaturated nonsense and the world to stop spinning off its axis.)
Can’t he take the lightning strike back? Can’t he be unmade? But it doesn’t even matter because the comprehension in his brain surpasses it. He can’t escape what he must do. Morality or not (morality, alright, he wants demons gone...). It has to mean something. He has to succeed.
His dreams are shallow and scary and sparse. His head hurts and fractures. There’s always some bad taste in his mouth. He’s going to die young; he’s going to die soon. He knows it. Why did he have to be special like this? Why did God make this what he is just to leave him unprotected? Why won’t God protect those he loves?
Maybe the language fundamentally changed the way his mind works. Maybe he’s just a receptacle. Maybe he was never real at all. Maybe he’s a ghost. Maybe he’s a ghost.
It hurts his head, the words. He forgets how to move in an expanse of hollowness. He used to be a person. He used to--
His head is a crescendo. The universe is singing faster. The ringing spittles and chuckles and chimes and increases. He’s barely hanging on to the edge of the Earth.
He sleeps an extra hour. It doesn’t help. He stares at his hand and loses track of time like it’s an enemy or usurper like he’s sinking in quicksand.
He’s so good at goal setting; he’s so good at killing himself for perfection. He’s so good, and he can’t, and he’s so so.
But thoughts are not supposed to dance and sparkle and dissipate.
The fate of the world scorches his brain.
(He thinks he sees Crowley in his peripheral; is that Crowley? Is that Crowley?
Is that Crowley?)