Pleasure in Hell

I try to think of a pair of discarded ladies' jeans, a banned books bonfire, or an example of a run-on sentence, but tonight I have no thoughts, just a gray blob above my head where words and images would normally - pop! - in seemingly random sequence, though psychiatrists might say otherwise. This is odd, considering I live almost exclusively in my own mind.

Great! Without thoughts' encumbrance, I can write about that ghostly black-haired girl who hovers over me in the early morning hours. I can write about my feelings, my terrified love. But wait! There are no feelings either -- just a landscape of gray ovals where one would expect people to be.

I don't even feel hunger. Hunger is a feeling, right? One feels hungry...for reduced-fat potato chips with homemade French onion dip, for a ripe banana, for oatmeal-raisin cookies with a dollop of cookies-and-cream ice cream and a half-dollop of Cool Whip on top of that.

I feel nothing but a curious warmth, possibly from climbing the stairs twenty minutes ago. But it grows warmer. It is hot. It burns in my forehead and in my cheeks and in my back. It is too hot. I wonder if I died earlier, there on the stairs. Maybe I slipped. Maybe I fell. Maybe I fell into Hell. Maybe my heart just exploded (I won't be donating that organ. Someone need a penis?).

Nope, pinching still hurts.

And I think pinching would be considered pleasure in Hell.