Runaway Body

      My soul fled my body, leaving its vessel out in the open as I stood onto the doorstep. My breaths condensed into fog, fog that seeped through my brain and paralyzed my thoughts. 

      In the midst of everything, a sibilant voice suggested,Why not just run away? and everything fell silent. 

      Another voice answered, brittle in its barely-contained excitement: Sure. 

      Some impulsive creature dwelling inside had risen from its depths to respond with a vicious snap, snap went my sense of self-preservation, preserved in a jar was only a indescribable longing to shatter glass and break free into the wilderness, wild was I as my body burst out onto the street, greeting the freezing night with only a threadbare jacket and torn jeans--

       The cold slammed into me sluggishly, sluggishly like my rationale, shoved into a pool of ice, that flailed about, shouting: "You'll get hypothermia!"

       Good, the creature answered as it wrapped itself around the helm of my body's ship, hurling the consequences out of the window. 

       My body walked for over a mile in the cold, singing songs to the stars, along the road with its metallic beasts and beckoning opportunities, opportunities to escape to the point of no return---

        ----but I did return. Eventually. Someone picked me up along the road and drove me home, delivering me into warmth, safety, and rationality. The creature submerged once more.

       From time to time, my body still shivers, remembering the cold. 

      And ever since then, I've discovered that I hated first-person.