I don't even know where to begin. The past few days have been….crazy to say the least.
After nearly breaking my neck by tripping and falling down the stairs in my delirium, I realized that I didn't have a choice but to take medication to help me sleep. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't sleep for more than an hour at a time, I was hearing things everywhere I went, swore that someone was following me, and knew that I was on the cusp of a full mental breakdown.
On August 4th after another night of tossing and turning and fits of a nightmare filled sleep, I decided to let Monsieur Lavigne know that I was sick and needed to go to my room before locking myself in and taking a dose of Ambien which my doctor had prescribed to me a year before but I had never actually used.
I knew that there was a reason why I had avoided doing this, I am a lightweight when it comes to medication, the pills that should have helped me sleep for 4 or 5 hours knocked me out for nearly 13 hours. I'm sure a good portion of this was also due to the fact that I hadn't slept for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time in weeks, my body had been beyond exhausted.
I woke up blearily after 1 am, stumbling into the bathroom to relieve myself and splash some water on my face. Once a few minutes had passed, I knew that there was no way I was falling back asleep naturally, after sleeping for so long I actually felt pretty good and coherent for the first time in what felt like forever. For over an hour I tried to entertain myself by reading or scrolling on my phone but after having spent so long asleep and laying in my bed, I felt antsy and anxious. I needed to get out of this room.
I realized that I was starving so decided to solve multiple problems at once and head down to the small kitchen on the first floor to see what food I could scrounge up. Doing this would get me out of my bedroom, get me the nourishment my body was so lacking, and give me the chance to wander The Palais at night with no one around.
Not wanting to bother anyone else on the floor I decided to use the flashlight on my phone. I head down the backstairs to the second floor then change direction heading to the main staircase leading into the lobby. My thoughts of food fade as I stood at the top of the staircase looking down into the empty lobby. There was moonlight streaming in through the windows above bathing the room in a soft glow and I once again marveled at the beauty of this building.
Remembering that there is a door at the base of the stairs that lead down into the cellars, I decided that I'd waited this long to eat so I could wait a little bit longer and use this burst of energy to explore. I carefully tiptoed down the stairs even though there was no one around to hear me, push open the door, and walked into the hot stale air on the landing of the rickety staircase leading down into the cellars.
I walked down the steps slowly, listening and watching. I didn't want to be taken by surprise by any rodents or worse spiders. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I reached the bottom of the staircase.
I had reached a long narrow hallway with cave-like rooms on each side. As I walked past each room I shone the light into it. Most of the rooms were empty but a few had what looked to be barrels of something, one room had shelves with rows of what looked like bottles of wine. It was very dark down there and the farther down the hall I went the darker and quieter it got.
There was also a chill in the air and the air felt moist, damp the way it would after a rainstorm. I pointed the flashlight up towards the ceiling wondering how far underground I was. I looked back down just in time. I had come out on the other side of the hallway onto a giant lake. The water was crystal clear, you could see straight to the bottom. The water couldn't have been any deeper than six or seven feet.
I knew that Paris was famous for its underground tunnels and catacombs but I hadn't expected this. How had so much water come to be down here?
This part of the cellars wasn't dark, there were giant candelabras sticking out of the water every couple hundred feet and chandeliers hanging from the low ceiling. I could just barely make out a faint glow of lights coming from what I assumed was the other bank of the lake.
There was no visible way across so it looked like I had come to the end of my adventure. Now not only was I starving but the damp air was also giving me a chill. So with thoughts of a hot cup of tea and warm food dancing in my brain, I started to turn around to head back upstairs but all of a sudden a hand wrapped around my mouth and nose from behind me.
I took a deep breath ready to scream and in doing so I took a deep breath in and before I could even get the scream out, everything went black around me.
