Locked In

Yesterday, as a writing workshop exercise, we were encouraged to escribe via the medium of sensory awareness. The remit to produce fictional prose relaying our experiences after being placed in an induced coma.

This state affording use of all your senses apart from sight and speech. So, in a nutshell, the literary challenge was to create a land and soundscape using what we imagined hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

It was an interesting examination of our penmanship… Errr, and penwomanship (Blimey, I don’t want letters!). 

The topic prompting a variety of interesting pieces from our assembled gaggle of quillers.

My peers scribbling wonderfully poetic locutions, telling of feelings, taste, sounds and redolence of their imaginary time with lockdown syndrome. My back of a fag packet notions written in the jocular format I ordinarily adopt when essay writing.

I went with the whimsical after earlier producing a more serious workshop submission for feedback. This excerpt from a novel I am writing, which strays outside my safety zone boundaries.

Yesterday’s piece even necessitating I undertake research!… RESEARCH for god’s sake!!… I don’t write to research stuff… Escribing humour doesn’t require me to bloody research!!… What is going on, Gary?!

Seriously, though, yesterday’s feedback on my more serious vignette is essential for my growth as a writer. Evolving as an author, as with anything worthwhile in life, requiring occasions when you’re metaphorically out at sea looking back at your terra firma comfort zone. 

Anyhow you may, or may not, be interested in what I was moved to write after Jackie (our tutor) set the mini literary project…. And even if you are not, here it is anyway 😉 …

Scene – A middle-aged man lays on an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) bed in an induced coma. The fella (Alan) has full use of his senses, apart from the power to open his eyes and speak… His wife (Linda), who sits in attendance, has full use of her senses and her hubby’s credit card.

Attached to various medical machinery, using his available sensory wherewithal, Alan endeavours to build a picture of what is going on around him. His thoughts going something (well exactly) like this: –

Blimey, those beeps from the machinery are getting louder and more frequent… Either my heart rate is up, or I’m on a submarine and we’re getting closer to a school of mackerel. 

God almighty, what’s that cacophonous slurping noise? It is even more annoying than the beeping ICU monitor… Oh no, I have just realised, Linda’s only gone and bought herself a packet of Werther’s Original boiled sweets… Oh for the love of God, she eats them one after the other, I am gonna have to listen to this sucking sound all bloody day!!

I tell you what, I could have done without eating a quattro garlic pizza bread the day before being put onto an induced coma…. The bloody thing keeps repeating on me… I imagine it’s not a great experience for the poor ICU nurse dabbing my dry mouth either.

I am not one to complain, but this flaming bedding isn’t the softest either. They obviously don’t use Persil Automatic with in built softener… Well, that is if these are bed sheets and they have not just shrouded me in a giant piece of sandpaper…. Also, I’ve no idea if this is a pillow or a stuffed hedgehog I’m laid on.

Oh no, a Cliff Richard song has just come on the hospital radio speaker in the room corner to my left… Please turn it off… Or give me something to make me temporarily deaf!!

What is that I can smell from a nearby nurses’ station. It smells like they have ordered takeaway pizza. What a lovely redolence, I wonder if they can give me a slice intravenously… Well, I assume the whiff of Italian food is emanating from the nursing desk. And they haven’t wheeled me out to Luigi’s pizza joint on Cambourne Street. 

What’s that I can hear the Linda saying to the ICU nurse Louise?… Oh no, she’s gonna pop into town to do a spot of clothes shopping… Don’t let her take out my credit card from the bedside cabinet, Louise!!… LOUISE!!, LOUISE!!, LOUISE!!… For the love of God stop her!!

At this point, Alan’s heart rate monitor speeds up to such an extent a cardio crash team are engaged!!