Jim has a range of relevant memories to choose from; the memory of boredom stays with him as clearly as anything else. Too clearly, sometimes, especially when the next round is coming.
(There is always a next round.)
He picks the most recent one to have lasted for days, after he came down from the high of the pool and realized how long it would be before the next phase of the plan, or even before Irene's would be ready to go. That was especially bad, the worst it's been in a long time.
It's a whirl of useless information, no filter, everything given equal weight and filed and sorted and crossreferenced and irrelevant, nothing new, nothing ever ever new.
It's banging at the bars of a cage with no key.
(He used to try to start calm, to wait it out, but he gave up on that long ago.)
It's nothing that can be appeased by picking up a book or putting in a movie. They only call it boredom because there's no other word in existence that even begins to describe it, because so very few people ever know what it's like to sit helplessly and listen to your mind devour itself from the inside out.
It's the only thing that can make him feel despair, and it happens all too often, and it will be what kills him, because someday there will be nothing left worth enduring it for another second.
The only thing that frightens him is the thought of an entire lifetime of it. Anything, anything that can feed it and quiet it for even a moment - he'll do anything.
no subject
(There is always a next round.)
He picks the most recent one to have lasted for days, after he came down from the high of the pool and realized how long it would be before the next phase of the plan, or even before Irene's would be ready to go. That was especially bad, the worst it's been in a long time.
It's a whirl of useless information, no filter, everything given equal weight and filed and sorted and crossreferenced and irrelevant, nothing new, nothing ever ever new.
It's banging at the bars of a cage with no key.
(He used to try to start calm, to wait it out, but he gave up on that long ago.)
It's nothing that can be appeased by picking up a book or putting in a movie. They only call it boredom because there's no other word in existence that even begins to describe it, because so very few people ever know what it's like to sit helplessly and listen to your mind devour itself from the inside out.
It's the only thing that can make him feel despair, and it happens all too often, and it will be what kills him, because someday there will be nothing left worth enduring it for another second.
The only thing that frightens him is the thought of an entire lifetime of it. Anything, anything that can feed it and quiet it for even a moment - he'll do anything.