12: Insomnia: Saturday Night
549 Words
Mom and Dad stood at my bedroom door.
"We hate to leave you when you're feeling so miserable,”Mom said.
"But with Grandma having that stroke, we really need to be with her,”Dad said. "We don't know how long we'll be gone, but we'll keep in touch, ok?”
'You need to go.”I gave them both a hug. "I'll be ok. Give Grandma a hug for me.”
After the front door closed, I crawled into bed and pulled the comforter around me. The pad of paper and a pen was on my nightstand. Last night scared me. It scared me so much that I couldn't sleep all day. I wanted to sleep now, but I was too tired to close my eyes.
Not only was I scared, I was curious. What world was behind that line on the paper? Who or what was trying to keep me there?
"It's just a line, just a line,”I said out loud. I picked up the pad, and stared at it. "Just a line, see? Nothing to be upset about.”
The line opened up, almost like a zipper. And light flashed through the opening.
"Not again!”I took a deep breath and put the pad on the bed. "I can toss this pad into the trash. I don't have to go through the hole again.”
And then I heard my name. No, felt my name.
Without another thought, I crawled through, head first. The hole opened wider to let me in. I crawled into the light.
When I was completely in, I floated, just floated, bathed in goldenish light. The hole above closed into white light.
Swirls of purples and yellows and reds and pinks and oranges flashed and tinkled, disappearing and reappearing at odd intervals around me.
Ahead of me, I saw another line, and floated over to it. I touched the line with both hands, and it opened up, wide enough to let me float into a garden filled with flowers growing upside down and sideways. Some of the petals were bigger than my head, and some of the flowers were smaller than my little finger. The clash of fragrant, woody, fruity, minty, sweet, and lemon aromas made me dizzy. The profusion of colors hurt my eyes. I almost gagged.
In the center of the garden was a rusty lamp post. I kicked off of it with both feet and launched myself out of garden so fast that I smacked into a wall and began to somersault.
The wall crumbled. I grabbed some crumbles as I flipped around and put them into my mouth. They tasted like buttered popcorn.
I flipped and twisted, willing myself to slow down. Instead, I spun around faster like a little pinball. My stomach was never going to forgive me.
Someone, something called my name again. I was spinning towards my name. I was spinning towards darkness, and I couldn't stop.
Whatever was calling me smelled of decay. I wind-milled my arms and legs in different directions to stop the spinning, to get away, to climb towards the light.
Suddenly I dropped. I dropped so fast, I lost my breath.
I fell onto my bed.
The bed collapsed onto the floor.
And the sun rose.
- Writer
