Drift

He drifts slowly from consciousness, slipping from crisp coherence into a soft, shallow haze of semi-awareness. The clot of tangled detritus upon which he rests floats down the street, snagging a street sign, then a tree branch, then a lonely balcony ripped by the flood from a magnificent old house.

His mind adjusts to the confusion and chaos; it allows the world to flow by without concern for the gravity of the flood. Corpses floating by don’t register; they just happen, as if bodies swept along in a rush of caramel-colored water were normal. Kneeblood, if he hadn’t been battered by debris, dehydrated, and almost cooked by the relentless heat of the sun, would have known things weren’t right.  He had suffered as much as anyone, but hadn’t admitted it.  He had no one to whom he could make that admission.