Cancer

He lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been sprinting in a hundred metre dash. He had awoken from a vivid nightmare, into another day of tiresome ordeals.

His hands were pressed against his head; his head, burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.

Staccato. Bursts of pain.

He didn't want to open his eyes; didn't want to surrender his soul to another day in hell.

Crescendo. The throbbing in his skull was on the ascendency.

Memories flashed by; unrolling like a film reel on fast forward. Sound clips reverberated in his head, rebounding off the inner walls of his dream box. Echoes - a reiteration of the past. A reflection, a reply. Repercussions in repitition.

Climax. The agony achieved its acme. Cerebral activity overload. The torment and the heartache, the anguish and the affliction.

Spreading like a malaise.