My feet sped over the jogging path beside the river, a madman in
hoodie, jeans, and backpack, racing toward the setting sun. Winds of
change gusted behind my eyes, and the world tilted off kilter. The
ribbon of asphalt that lead back to Centralia, Kansas city center
disintegrated into a storm of silver glitter. Aw, hell. Another
psychotic break coming to a neighborhood near me.
The
Dark Place sucked me in. Fire peeled back my flesh until my skin melted
away. Then muscles scorched, enveloping me in a sickening stench. Heat
bent my bones, shattering them into a thousand shards. Only my
hysterical thoughts remained. Songs of demons wailed in my
consciousness, and I wondered if this time I'd go permanently insane.
Maybe I already was.
"Not real," I chanted, clinging to sanity through the hellish pain. "Not real, not real."
The
tattooed runes that circled both my wrists itched worse than a million
spider bites. Clouds of nightmares scudded away from hideous fairytale
trolls, giant two-headed snakes, and a three-headed dog. They all fled
from an enormous demon I thought might be Satan himself. He strode on
cloven hooves through a landscape of fire and crystal and inside-out
structures that couldn't possibly exist, where up was down and down was
up, but none of that mattered because the creatures inhabiting the space
simply ignored gravity.
"Not real. Survive. Done it before, do it again," I whispered as I streaked through the aberrant landscape.
After
what seemed eternity, another onslaught of blinding silver glitter
whirled around me. Like a kaleidoscope being twisted, the glitter showed
first a late autumn pasture, then a dark, rain-swept alley, followed by
an apocalyptic cityscape, all soot-covered ruins. One of them was real;
the others not. Which one?
"Please let it be the pasture," I prayed. "I like cows. Cows are nice."
A
bruising thump against my chest signaled the return of sanity. It could
have been worse—I could have landed on the asphalt of the rainy alley
instead of the garbage pile. Cannon blasts of pain throbbed through my
head, a trickle of blood ran from my nose, and my heart raced. I waited.
Right on cue, my stomach arrived, twisting in contortions that made me
retch.
I rolled over on a mountain of garbage-stuffed
plastic bags surrounding an overflowing dumpster that backed up against a
two-story brick building, typical of the style in Centralia's older
downtown district. Yep, garbage collectors out on strike again. Lucky
me. The rain turned to sleet, and I shivered, my toes and fingers aching
from the chill. Despite the cold and the need to get up, I lay there
unmoving, too exhausted to make the effort.
Down the
alley to the west, a single light above a door marked Soo Ling's Chinese
Take-away struggled valiantly against the darkness, and I took stock,
just to reassure myself that I was intact. Two feet, long toes. Two
scrawny white legs none the worse for wear. Hip bones jutting against
skin, stark ribs you could play a tune on. Thin arms, dark blue wrist
tattoos still itching like mad. Male body parts intact, not that I had
any chance with girls. What woman would date a psychotic schizophrenic
who woke up naked in alleys wondering where he was and how he'd gotten
there?
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