388. Overheated

It’s half past five in the morning and he is awake. He has managed less than four hours of actual sleep. The heat in the room is already intense even though the sun hasn’t yet made it over the horizon. Hot energy is pulsing through his body, through his feet and hands, through all of his extremities.

He lies there knowing he cannot possibly sleep further. The heat demands action. It is telling his body to get up and do something. But he cannot figure out what. He is far from attentive and his mind is sluggish. He has not felt rested since before the heat wave began. He considers taking a shower, but then remembers there is no hope of cold water. It will be a lukewarm shower at best, which would cool him only slightly.

He imagines a swimming pool, or even better, a lake somewhere in the north, somewhere close to where he grew up. He remembers jumping into the lake in late spring, the frigid water enveloping him, the shock of genuine cold rapidly spreading through his body. That would be wonderful right now. A swim in cold water and then a long nap in the shade, two or three hours at least. Then he might feel alive again.

The heat demands action but he is not alive in it. He is only an automaton, moving and breathing but not really living. Living seems to require something more. Perhaps it is the coolness of reason that is missing. Everything happening here feels disconnected. His actions are impulsive and events are random. He feels like he’s losing his mind. It’s probably just the lack of sleep. He is hot but he is fine. For now, at least.

Still, he has never spent so much time in this kind of climate and he has doubts about how much longer he can take it. He feels a pressing desire to escape. He wants to get out of here. He needs to reach a place where he can feel alive once again.