This darkness wasn't the familiar darkness I was accustomed to. It wasn't sleep, that was for damn sure. Y'know that completely sunken-in feeling that you get when you're dog tired and your eyes close after you hit the pillow? The feeling that the world around you slips away and leaves you to the inner recesses of your mind and everything around you melts into the black? This wasn't it. This was a little bit stranger.
I'm completely conscious here. There's no relief of the weary bodily shackles I cast off in my dreams, no deep breaths. I can't feel myself absorb into the covers because
I can't feel myself. At all. I'm drifting here in nothingness so complete I can't see, hear, sense, or even
feel my own arm pass in front of my face. I can move my head, but it doesn't matter. Everywhere I look is pitch black. I would be breathing heavily if I could breathe, but I can't. I don't want to anyway, there's no need. This must be what death is. However it happened, I died in my sleep and this is what lies beyond. I'm... a little surprised. I didn't think I'd actually be some sort of right about what happens when you die. Consciousness within nothing drifts back into the nothing, and time will pass and my mind will create it's own existence again. I'll probably go insane in the process, but there's not shit I can really do about that. The quicker I succumb and let my awareness dim, that's when I'll hallucinate another reality. At least, that's what I assume. If I have an fears at all, it's that I'm oddly okay with this. I'm dead, why aren't I upset? Maybe it's shock. Maybe. I'm only really worried about my father and my brother, mostly my father, but did they exist at all or did they only exist in a fleeting hallucination of the cosmos? Was my life before my death even real? Had this happened before.
It's small at first, but I pick it up instantly. Light. Light's incredibly easy to see in the darkness that is nothing. I must not be done yet, this probably isn't my final resting place. Reincarnation? Guess I'd find out. And then I hear the echo. Whispering, no, weeping. Someone's sobbing. I skim my head around as if I still had one looking for the source of the sound, but it comes from all places around me in the nothing. I'm a little frightened to do it, but I look into the light. It's blinding, but I'm not blind. It's like it's just there instead of radiating from a source. But it does have a source, a dark figure. It's covered in robes, as lame as that sounds, but it's like a priest or a monk in darker colors. I think blue, like a navy blue. The figure sparkles, and I recognize the twinkling. It's like water droplets through headlights. It must be the one who's sobbing. It gets brighter, but the figure comes closer, and I try to put my hands up defensively but they don't move. My head can't move to look down, and I realize that I never had them. As it approaches, I can tell it's a woman. I can hear her crying more clearly. I want to feel pity, but right now I feel all but frightened. This wasn't a good sign. If I'm wrong and this is God, then I've probably done something to make her cry at what she'll do to me. If it's not... I'm already fucked. I steel my resolve, I've already made my bed. Time to sleep in it. For good.
She's wrapped in chains. Second red flag. I want to run, but I get the sense that I'm the one that's moving closer and not her. I see that she's... smiling.
Smiling. My mind is clawing at me to sprint, run, get the fuck away from the woman smiling and wrapped in chains floating toward me in the void but I can't go anywhere, can't do anything oh fuck oh fuck ohshitohfuckfuck...!
It opens it's mouth.
"
Thank you..."
The whisper came in the echo, like it was everywhere, so soft and so quiet but deafening in the silence of the void.
And then everything stops and I'm screaming.
...
......
.........
"EEEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!"I shriek at the top of my lungs, shooting up in bed and attempting to get rightside-up as quickly as possible. But my right arm's asleep. I plant my useless arm down with force and fall, twisting my wrist violently and crashing off the bed. Reflexively, I roll underneath it if not for a little bit of cover. My skin is cold and covered in beads of sweat, as if I'd taken a short jog through the rain. My heart is pounding violently, threatening to escape my chest as I threaten to hyperventilate and dart panicked eyes across the room. It isn't mine, that much was clear. I don't even know if I'm alone in here yet. Dazed and confused, with sharp pain shooting through my wrist, I drag myself cautiously from underneath the bed. The satin of the... nightgown? O-o...kaaaaay... The satin of the nightgown I'm apparently wearing rubs against the rough carpet, telling me that I'm probably not dead this time around. I do a quick turn around the room to get my bearings, holding my injured wrist closer to my chest with my opposite hand out in a modified fighter's stance. No one else was here. And the room wasn't mine.
It was pretty small, a one room dorm much like my own if you filled in the expanse in the wall on one side. The first thing I noticed was all the color. Sunshine yellow plush rug on the floor, a single desk covered in stuffed animals and a few pictures, walls plastered with posters of... pop culture. I think. They looked like music groups, but they were filled with teen heart throbs. Whoever the fuck
Desire Dawn was, they were on most of the pictures. Looked like pretty-boy douchebags to me. I tip-toed over to the desk and single computer chair, holding my breath as if anything could jump out at me, and a gingerly picked up
one of the pictures. Now
that was freaky. All of the
pictures looked like
cartoons. And then it hit me. A streak of light shone off the surface of the glass for a split-second, showing someone behind me. I threw an elbow behind me with a grunt and turned around, but no one was there.
BZZT! BZZT! BZZT! BZZT!I hurl the picture in my hand at the offending noise on instinct, and a clatter and the sound of shattering glass rang out through the dorm room, although the alarm continued to sound. I missed. I was always a shit throw. Being careful not to step on any broken glass, I moved over to the purple novelty nightstand and complementing sunshine yellow bedspread where I threw the damn photo to punch out the alarm. I realize something. The alarm clock is a cartoon. So's the bed.
My hand is a fucking cartoon. I feel the panic set in once more as my heart sinks into the pit of my stomach, and I frantically dart my head around. I run to the window and look through. It's a sidewalk filled with what looks like highschool students in matching dress marching up and down the path that cut through a green patch flanked by hedges, one of the few points of greenery in the entire canvas of residential buildings and sky.
And it was all a cartoon. I search again, finding the head just behind me. Uncertain, I dash in to check my own image.
It isn't me. Whoever it is isn't me. It's a girl in the mirror, a young stickly little one, with short messy mauve hair that I can feel clinging to my neck and reflective dark brown eyes that I blink. I bring her hand to my face. Her skin is soft. I'm wearing the nightgown. I look down and for the first time realize that I'm missing something
veeeeeeery important, and check to make sure. Nope, nope, definitely not where it should be. I lean my face in close to the mirror, as does she. There wasn't anyone behind me in my reflection in the picture,
I was the reflection. I begin to laugh, at first a giggle, and then louder and louder as I hear the sound of my own high-pitched voice until I'm crying from laughter. This was fucked up, it was
so terribly fucked up that I just couldn't help but laugh at it. It was hilarious! In a cosmic sort of way. It finally happened. I've either completely snapped, I died and now the world doesn't make any fuckin' sense, or I'm lucid dreaming and this is how that happens. I continue to laugh and laugh, gasping for breath with tears streaming down my face as I sink to the floor and huddle myself into the bathtub.
I manage to calm down a little after a few minutes, at least I've stopped laughing like a schizo. I don't want to admit it, but I'm freaked the hell out. This is incredibly jacked up on a fundamental level, and I can only hope that this is a dream. My chest still heaving, I wander out of the head to find something to wear and what I find grabs me by surprise. Dayum, those skirts are
short. I don't see any kind of jeans or anything sensible either. What the fuck, belly shirts? I give up and go to start my morning routine. This isn't the first time I've woken up in a strange place, just the first time as a... girl. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Maybe I'll just... go back to the closet and find something to wear instead...
