Inside Out

My latest in the weekly Flash! Friday contest featuring the above photo as prompt and the prompt to “include a monk.”

The monk, at least he looked like what I thought a monk would look like, brown-robed figure with a shadowed face, shuffled his feet, rummaged inside my chest with his rusty metal instruments, some quite sharp, others blunt and blood, my blood, covered his hands; we were surrounded by what appeared to be a metal shelter and my head was still, as if clamped by a vice, and all the while, the monk with the shadowed face shuffled back and forth with feverish, spastic movements and sweat pooled at his brow; he muttered things, like, “need to find the source of…this,” and “need to for Him,” but it was a weird sensation to see your body being drained of blood, numbed, really, especially to see your own heart, no longer pumping, as it had done for so long, between the monk’s fingers; he still mumbled and muttered about finding “it,” whatever it was; an infinity compressed into mere seconds.