They were hammering twenty-two screws into my head. One after another. I did not move. I did not resist. I could not feel a thing. It felt almost ceremonial, like witnessing my own reconstruction from somewhere far above myself. I remember the sound before anything else. A metallic rhythm echoing inside my head. They didn’t stop until they reached twenty-two. It had to be a dream because I couldn’t feel anything. No pain, no pressure, just a strange emptiness.
When I finally forced my eyes open, the numbness was still there. No ache. No sting. Just a profound weakness, as if my body had forgotten how to carry me.
They had done it. Twenty-two screws into my skull. And somehow, I was still alive. Unbelievable. I truly couldn’t understand it. But with time, pain arrives. Real pain, physical, sharp, grounding. And in a strange way, it felt like a relief. It made sense. Of course there would be pain; it wasn’t exactly a small thing to have twenty-two screws holding your skull together.
Pain has a way of shifting perspective. Acute physical pain is the body’s most primitive alarm system, a direct signal that tissue damage is occurring. But the brain uses similar pathways to process emotional states. That’s why fear, anxiety, and tension often resemble physical pain in the body: the same stress circuits activate, the same hormones surge, the same networks in the brain light up.
Because of this overlap, emotional states can feel just as sharp or intrusive as physical pain. They’re messages, interpretations of potential threat. A feeling is still just a feeling. It rises, it communicates something, and eventually it fades, even if the body reacts intensely in the moment.
And when the conscious mind rests, the body keeps speaking through dreams. The brain constructs vivid, strange, sometimes disturbing images not because they’re real, but because the mind is rehearsing threats, processing stress, or reorganizing memories. Dreams are simulations, not events. They’re the brain’s attempt to make sense of internal signals.
Dreams aren’t real.And if dreams aren’t real, then what the body tells you isn’t always literally true either. Sometimes it misinterprets, exaggerates, or warns you about threats that don’t exist. Heart rate rises. Muscles tense. Hormones surge. But dreams are simulations. The body is not always a reliable narrator. It warns even when warning is unnecessary. Take anxiety, for example. Anxiety is rarely about the present. It’s almost always about uncertainty. And uncertainty is constant. You can never know what will happen five minutes from now. Your reaction depends entirely on perspective: Do you meet uncertainty with confidence, or with fear?
Fear itself is only meaningful when danger is real physical, immediate, survival based danger. Yet most of our fears show up in situations where there is no actual threat. So what is fear trying to say?Is there truly danger? Or is your brain sending scrambled messages?
Often, we trick ourselves without noticing.And perspective shapes everything. If you see obstacles as challenges, you get to feel relief maybe even pride when you overcome them. If you see them as pointless burdens, then both the journey and the outcome become suffering. Then the headache returned stronger this time. Physical pain is real. It signals danger, injury, imbalance. But psychological pain?Sometimes it cuts much deeper.
When I know physical pain will pass, I can wait it out.But when I believe emotional pain will never pass, that’s when my chest tightens.Of course it tightens. They feel almost the same. The difference is what we believe about their duration. But feelings do pass. That’s simply their nature unless something keeps triggering them. I didn’t want to think anymore. I could almost sense the screws tightening again. Or maybe they didn’t move at all. Maybe they were exactly where they were supposed to be after all, there were twenty-two of them. They must have known what they were doing. I need to sleep.
I feel heavier now. Not just physically. Something has shifted. Maybe in my skull, maybe in my perception. Either way, I know I will not be the same again.
I guess I’m not the same anymore.
I’m a little heavier now.
I woke up. I woke into a night that felt heavier than my own thoughts.
Sleep has become a difficult place to reach. Almost hostile. The middle of the night again. The kind of darkness that feels heavy and unreal. Time moves with the stubborn pace. I can’t look in the mirror. Mirrors watch back. They stare. And I cannot bear another silent witness.
There is something inside me. Unpleasant, waiting to be expelled. You maybe assume I’m speaking metaphorically. I’m not. Anyone who has ever held something unsaid in their throat knows what I mean. Words can feel like living matter. They carry pieces of you. And when you finally release them, they are no longer yours. they become something separate, something exposed.
Tonight, I felt it on my tongue. This residue of myself. Disgusting. No, I’m not a disgusting person. At least, I do not wish to be. Is anyone truly “bad,” anyway? Everyone thinks they’re right. Everyone believes they’re good. Maybe I’m the only one left who doubts himself.
My mouth is numb. Speech slips away from me. I am not usually a talker, but silence should be a choice, not an inevitability. What meaning does silence have if it isn’t mine to command?
I try to speak. Nothing. My tongue refuses to move.
Words dissolve before they form. And then it happens. This thing inside me pushing outward, sliding away. I try to find a place for it, somewhere it won’t contaminate. I don’t want to make a mess. I just want it gone, away from me. I thought I would feel relief. And I do, faintly. Yet I still cannot speak. Not that I have anything meaningful to say, but the inability itself carries a burden. Being forced into silence is not the same as choosing it. If I measure this moment in Dirac units, my rate of speech is effectively zero. A strange comparison, I know, but appropriate.
My voice has collapsed into a quantum improbability. I am exhausted. Everything feels abrasive. I will try to sleep. If this state can even be called sleep. It is more like fainting from the weight of being.
I wake up again. Some time has passed, though I can’t tell how much. I remember when I used to complain about time not moving fast enough. How ungrateful I was. When time drags, I resent it. When it rushes, I resent it. What do I even want? Perhaps dissatisfaction is a human trait as fundamental as hunger. Or perspective, as I once said. But perspective offers me no comfort tonight.
I try drinking water. Drop by drop. You can barely call it drinking. I miss the days when swallowing wasn’t a conscious effort, when water had taste, weight, presence. Why do we only understand the value of things once we lose them?
I still cannot speak. Even when I want to. Speech can be difficult sometimes. Anxiety compresses the chest, stiffens every muscle, hijacks breathing. But this is different. This isn’t fear. This is mechanical. Something deeper than emotion. My tongue stays still. A trapped soul. Why can’t I form a single word? I don’t intend to say anything harmful. Harmful words belong to harmful people. And I refuse to believe anyone is truly harmful at their core. I am human. Therefore, I cannot be beyond redemption.
I don’t want pity. Spare me the sympathetic glances. I just want a moment of relief. Strength feels inaccessible. Even drinking water requires work. Appetite vanishes when I collapse. Days go by without hunger. This is not sustainable. I know that. I must remain. I must remain… myself.
My mind keeps echoing. Metallic clinks, like screws turning. The memory of the twenty-two screws is still alive in my skull. They are gone now. Long removed. The trauma is over. But the noise continues, replaying itself in my head. Phantom sound. Phantom pain. The brain is excellent at resurrecting what should have ended. I try to speak again. To override the noise with my own voice. Just one word.
Any word. If I could force even a fragment of sound into existence, maybe the ghosts in my skull would quiet down. I want to scream. Not for anyone else to hear, but for myself. A scream against the echoes.
Against the past. Against whatever in me refuses to move on.
A scream to prove I still inhabit this body. But nothing comes. Not even breath shaped into intention. I am not who I used to be. I repeat it internally. I am not who I used to be. Yet I cannot even say it aloud. Not because I don’t want to, but because my mouth does not obey. And so, the night goes on.
If this is who I am now, then I will have to grow inside this new skull. With twenty-two screws.
Category: Literature