Inktober #24: Dizzy

I used to spin in circles, as a child, in the hydroponics tent amongst the wheat. I would spin and spin and feel the grains soft and rough against my skin, staring upwards and watching the lamps overhead swirl around and around me like they were my stars and I was their planet.

I used to get so dizzy that I would fall down, watch the stars continue to move until they slowed, slowed, slowed, and stopped, and became lamps once more.

I thought, out here, spinning out of control as the station disappeared beyond my sight, that I'd be dizzy.

But there are no stars. The last of them went out years ago.

So instead I spin and spin but cannot feel it. It's like I'm standing still in front of a black wall, breathing, breathing.

I will be okay. The rescue ships will be here soon. Maybe when I see them I will feel dizzy again. I will watch them spin and spin slower and slower until they stop and I am safe.

I will be okay. I just need to keep breathing.

I look at my arm, just to have something to look at besides the vastness of black. The nanosteel glows bright white before me, between me and the dark. The wrist display blinks red, red, red...but I will be okay. The rescue ships will be here soon. I watch my fingers flex out, back into a fist, out again. I hyper-focus on each and every movement of each and every finger. And I breathe. I breathe, because I'm starting to feel dizzy.

I take my arm away and stare out again at this...Space, where I spin and flow and shoot through but cannot feel. And in that absence of feeling I am feeling dizzy, sick. I start to cry because it is too much.

I will be okay. The rescue ships will be here soon.

But I weep, and I stare, and I wonder if I am someone's star right now, spinning around them and making them dizzy. Maybe I'm not even spinning anymore, I can't tell, maybe I have reached a planet and it is holding me in its orbit, holding me still but too far for me to see in my own glow. I cannot feel it, so I must feel something, so I feel dizzy.

So I lie back, I close my eyes, and try to feel the stars around me, spinning and slowing, slowing, slowing, and I swear I can see them with my eyes closed. A universe of endless stars glowing and glowing and heating and getting brighter and dimming and popping in and then out and everywhere around me. And I open my eyes and I swear I can still see them.

I will be okay.

I just need to breathe.

I look at my hand again. The light of the nanosteel is fading. Energy going to other systems. I flex my fingers, I hyper-focus as I bend my index finger, out, in. My middle finger out, in. My ring finger out, in. My pinky goes out, in...but I only know this from feel. I flex my thumb, out, in, focusing on the only sensations I have. The pinpoint stillness of focus feels...

I will be okay.

I'm dizzy.

I'm suspended in the dark. But it feels like I'm lying down.

And I breathe...

And I breathe...

And I see a star...

And I feel dizzy, differently.

And I see it again...

I will be okay.