Writing Prompts (Week 1) - Surface tension

It was not as I imagined it. Breaking it, instead of giving me access to a magma red essence, was like finding a cold blue oil river. Another thing: it was not me who penetrated; it was it that did it in me.

The surface of the skin is nothing but vanity and illusion —I thought that many times— a frame of phospholipids, proteins, and salts, with a hang-up of... impermeability.

When I met Alice, my beliefs took a turn for the worse. I covered her being with an involuntary look, and I was bewildered that she was so soft but firm; her body was, at the same time, the most tender and most invulnerable place. She was all fortified, although she seemed accessible. Even though she was within reach from my fingers, not even my words approached her. Until then I had traveled without problems by sea and land, numbers and letters, theory and practice, laboratories and test fields, rehearsal rooms and auditoriums full of receptors willing to destroy anything. But nothing prepared me for her. Or for my instinct.

Alice, I present you Dr. Zaccary —said my colleague, when, just before terminating the first tour with her, he discovered my mute presence, while I thought I was little less than an insect—, which seems not to feel very well to say at this time. Everything okay, Doc? —He asked me and, without waiting for an answer, he continued on his way, taking her afar, leaving me there, stunned, with a drowning sensation I couldn't explain.

My head was spinning, or something like that. I used to have what I called a quantum for everything, for each fact or issue, an answer for all. That afternoon, I went strayed in my own silence; I felt that I deafened, and not only my keen intellect but my entire body had sunk into darkness, into a heavy scuba, with a heavier helmet.

Long hours of indecipherable torture badly condemned me to the bright morning of a new day, and I trembled like a child after a nightmare and wobbled as if in a state of drunkenness. I do not know how I did it, but I arrived at the Institute, only 45 seconds over the hour. Had he dreamed all this?

He didn't.

Alice was there. She was there!

I began to sweat copiously, and under my nose and my arms I felt meanders and deltas. An icy pin stuck in my forehead, and another in the back of my neck. The palms of my hands and the soles of my feet were, suddenly, those of a diabetic.

I tripped with the door of my cubicle and backed up surprised. In doing so, I collided with a bookcase and threw it to the floor. I was a terrified lab rat, and I wanted to escape because Alice got up and came to help me.

She did not take her eyes away from mine, and I was like intoxicated, with my guts loosening and my legs disappearing. Dr., I ... —I heard her say, hesitating, although she had not said a word—, I don't know what's wrong with me. Was she the projection of my own thoughts? Then, she hugged me. She broke me; I broke her. I don't know. We broke down. The surface tension broke. I saw myself, now as a colossal animal. I sank with Alice, taking her into the dense, restful darkness, unlike anything else. That: we immersed ourselves in The Whole.