Creep

I have this problem with creep. It starts about now, dreamtime, in the darkest hours of the night.

The hours when unearthly creatures stir and wriggle and writhe inside my flesh, my mind, after gym. It happens mostly after gym. And cheese: oozing brie, camembert, stinking bishop’s feet. At my extremities, tainting the snug duvet with sweat and body fluids, soaking the pile, wetting the tips of my long dark hair, until I wake.

If I feel my flesh creep, at dreamtime, my fingers and toes cramp and bend and sweat, my mind has nightmarish invasions: tentacles clawing into my memories: of warmth, and summer, and sun. There is no sun, no voluptuous rising at dawn.

Only creep. I can’t sleep if my body is crawling with lice and bugs, tingling and blushing puce with creep. I push back the sodden duvet with my legs, haul myself out of bed, and stand at the window, staring at my sheet white face, my lank dark hair, gagging at the taste in my mouth, of sour cheese, curds, whey, putrid fat.

I shudder to myself as I shrug on my ivied green night coat, wincing at its coarse wool weave. The creep sets in again sending palpitations of itches, bristles, irritation, shingles through my flaccid flesh. Anxiety thru social media: my psychiatrist explains it as, all that stress from social media, seeping out of my brain, dissipating through my nervous system until it sets off creep in my extremities. I know, I shouldn’t. I pad downstairs then logon: a message.

I have a new message, a girl who shares my sense of creep, tingling flesh, bristling arousal, pumping heart, heaving breasts, girl, who suffers the self-same creep as me. I must tear myself free of her, this, screen, social media, emails: they give me creep.

I write this flash as therapy - my counsellor tells me writing creep into screens relieves the symptoms: she tells me. My flesh creeps at the hunger, the need I have to satisfy. I stand, logoff: grope my way to the kitchen, boil a kettle of chill water, decaffeinate my gut with slush, toast the last remaining crust of wholemeal, and smother it with molten brie, picking off stuck-on bits of foil, as I eat, as I soothe my stress, my angst, my pumped-up heart, relax, then…

I go to the toilet. Comb my long dark hair over my face. Find my way along the papered walls of nowhere land, sleeping streets, until I feel the stiff frozen shards of grass under my bare feet, and hunch, shivering, free at last from creep, waiting for the far-off dawn.  

I have this problem with creep. It starts about now, dreamtime, in the darkest hours of the night.

‘Help me, won’t you?’