I had a lousy day.
First of all, I didn't feel well. You know- I didn't sleep well the night previous and as a result felt all tired and empty and headachy. My feet felt like they were barely touching ground and I didn't hear what everyone was saying to me. I remember people kept asking me if I was OK, and I kept not answering.
So I went through all my classes wearily; I locked my shoes in my gym locker and went halfway to my next class without realizing I was barefoot. I failed one test that might have been English and might not have. I stared at a math worksheet for ten minutes before spelling my name wrong and doing every problem incorrectly.
"Diamond?" my teacher said, looking over my shoulder at the paper- misspelled name and badly done problems.
"Yyyy-es?" I asked slowly, concentrating dizzily on the numbers on the paper.
"Are you alright?" she asked me. She was probably the seventeenth person that day who'd asked me the question. "Because you don't look well."
I tapped the paper lightly with one finger, trying to think of an answer, since I couldn't very well ignore the teacher. But my head felt stuffed. Way too stuffed to provide thought.
"No," I said finally, as the teacher stared (and a couple of classmates joined her- thank you, classmates).
The weird feeling had increased in weirdness all through the day. When I'd first gotten up that morning I hadn't been so badly off- just a touch of a headache over my left temple, and just a little more trouble than usual getting out of bed. I thought I was coming down with something, and had contemplated staying home that day.
But that was about it. So apparently, these are the first signs that you're about to cross over to another world. A headache and a little dizziness.
It gets nice and worse, though. Back to the math class:
Well," said the teacher, looking down at me, "do you want to go to the nurse?'
I hadn't looked up at her throughout the whole semi- exchange of words, but something made me decide to do so.
I lifted my head slowly, muzziness in my vision, and looked her in the face.
I screamed.
"Diamond? Diamond?" I could vaguely hear a voice, maybe hers and maybe someone else's, as I began to push back my chair and get up to run. I'd been spacing out, as I'd stared at the paper; I'd had this continuous stream of feverish images going on in my head of a couple of curly-haired people dressed all old-fashioned. You know, the sort of weird thing dreams show you; kind of pleasant.
Except, when you suddenly look up and see a real, solid person with the exact same face as one of your dream folk, it kind of spoils the pleasantess.
My teacher was an old, ugly lady- big and fat and monstrous. She had tremendous glasses and dyed hair and a tendency to wear see-through tops- oh my god, so nasty- but anyway, suddenly she wasn't beastly. She wasn't old.
Her face was of a middle-aged woman with curly brown hair, pointy features, and gray eyes. She was wearing a checked red dress- I mean, a good old-fashioned, rustic, lace-up bodice dress. I'd seen that dress not ten seconds ago in a woman in my daydream.
And now I, who in the past hour had been getting dizzier and dizzier, stumbled out of my seat and away. I had vague notions of getting out the classroom door, and was vaguely hearing exclamations from the kids in the room. I can't tell you how horrible it was to see what I had seen. I mean, it doesn't sound scary, admittedly; looking up and seeing a half-rotten demon face would be scary, so an ordinary human one would be not nearly so horrid.
But- I've never exactly been the type to hallucinate before. I've been sane- well, some of my friends call me weird but that's a big joke- I've been healthy, I've never been on shrooms and never played let's-inhale-the-chemicals-under-the-kitchen-sink. Think about this- really, think about it- this minute, if someone familiar- maybe your mother, or your boyfriend, or your sister or just anyone- were to approach you, to say something, and if you were to glance quickly up at them, recognizing their voice, but then see that their face was the face of another person…don't tell me you wouldn't lose it like I did.
I ran. Getting up had made the blood rush from my head, and my vision was brown with dizziness, so I didn't see where I was running to, but I could feel my feet moving.
"Diamond-" called a voice after me. My teacher?
I kept running. My heart was racketing. I had a brief memory of this morning. Goddamn, I thought, why the hell didn't I stay home?
I guess running with your vision all blurred isn't the most brilliant action to take when you're having a semi-fit, because as soon as I thought this, I heard a smash and realized that I had crashed into something. The lockers.
My vision began to clear. I was in the empty hallway, feeling a little nauseous.
I sank briefly to the floor to rest.
I glanced to either end of the hall. My math classroom was at the end farthest from where I was now. Realization dawned on me- had I really just done that?
I rubbed my eyes to clear up my vision a little more, and stared at the lockers across from me in horror. I had! I had just had a monstrous, enormous freakout. In front of twenty-two other people.
"Goodness," I muttered, squeezing one eye tight shut and shaking my head furiously. What the hell had happened there?
You need a doctor, you freak of nature, my conscience informed me. My conscious is always telling me crap like that. Actually, it's usually useful crap, but I usually ignore it. Now, however, it sounded like high-quality advice. I got up slowly, pushing on rattly metal of the lockers to propel myself. Steady, girl. I would walk to the nurse's office, slowly, and I would demand to go home or, even better, get to a hospital immediately.
I started up, my legs shaky as I walked down the hall.
I gave a weary sigh. Math class after today would, without doubt, be extremely-
I stopped dead. Oh, hell no. Not again.
The hallway was changing. It wasn't filling up with people, it was actually changing. The gray-speckled-blue of the walls seemed to sort of…melt. The wall, and the corner, and the stairs, they were all just…melting. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. They were sort of shimmering, and then it was like they were made of dust, and then slowly and steadily, they were turning into something else altogether, and I could only stand there and watch them do so.
I saw myself surrounded by green. I was in the middle of the outdoors; not only the outdoors, but a beautiful landscape in the middle of summer. It was January.
I knew there was no logic to this whatever, but I felt dazed, and took a step forward. There was grass under my feet. I could hear it rustle, very, very softly.
This place was warm. I looked around, almost enjoying the sun on my shoulders despite the fact that it should NOT be there. There was sky above me- gorgeous, sunny sky! And birds were chirping, and around me, trees grew and flowers were scattered all over the little hills.
It was like heaven. It was perfect. It was also way too trippy to be real.
Especially since there were doors in all the hills.
I think I forgot to mention that.
Every single hill, I noted with calm, stupefied acceptance, had a round, brightly painted door built into it. Like the door to a house. And there were also steps leading up to the doors, and fences around the hills, and cute little gardens and windows. Round windows.
I wondered briefly if this was what getting stoned felt like after all.
If it was, I'd have to consider getting ahold of some mind-altering drugs, because this wasn't half bad. It was like a really nice dream.
Forgetting everything, I kept going down the lane that I was now standing on. I didn't think about it, I just did. Just walked, liking the daylight and green grass and loving the feeling of peace. I didn't usually feel peaceful. I get nervous, I can't help it.
"Diamond!" called a voice behind me. I turned mechanically, unsurprised, as in a dream.
The same woman I'd hallucinated not five minutes ago was there behind me on the road. I regarded her with stupefied acceptance.
"Mother…?" my voice flowed out of my throat without my meaning it to. It was a strange voice, a little garbled. Like I really was stoned, or maybe severely retarded; anyway, I suddenly realized that I didn't like this much after all.
"Diamond, dear," said the woman behind me, putting her hands on her checkered frock clad hips. Her voice was low and sensible, the quintessential mommy voice. "Where are you going without anyone to help you? You know you still can't walk far, my love. Come back indoors."
"Don't…want…to…" my voice said faintly. Trapped in my own head, I felt mildly panicky. This was getting far too weird. Why was I speaking like this? Why couldn't I talk normally? "Mother…the rider…"
"Come on, dear," my not-mother came up to be and took me gently by the shoulder, steering me back down the road to one of the larger little hills. "It's almost time for tea-time, anyway. You must eat more, you've gotten far too thin…"
And as soon as that was said, the green all faded away.
I was standing in the hallway, just like that, and I looked once around the empty corridor before bursting into frightened tears and running for the stairs.
I guess my teacher called the nurse and told her that I was coming, because I was expected. I sat numbly on the edge of the paper-sheeted little bed as my mother drove out to the school, beyond terror that the hallucinations would come back. I couldn't think about it, because the thought that I might slip out of reality, without warning, at any moment, scared the shit out of me. And there was always that chance that the next time, I wouldn't come back.
"I…felt dizzy," I explained to my mother as she and the nurse stood in the doorway of the office, watching me with matching expressions of concern. I felt like crying again out of frustration, because I was too stuffed-up and spaced-out to find the right words. "Really dizzy. And my head hurt a lot."
"And you told me that you thought you were seeing things?" asked the nurse in her little, gentle voice.
I hadn't wanted to mention the hallucinations, afraid that would make them start happening again. I nodded, though.
My mom and the nurse exchanged looks.
I was taken to the hospital, not speaking the whole way and clinging fearfully to the seat of the car like it was a horse that would throw me. Every second I felt on the edge of slipping into my dream realm again, and struggled like crazy to stay in the present and in reality. Like fighting to stay awake when your eyelids are too heavy to keep open.
My mom opened the car door for me and I slipped a foot out cautiously, and then lost balance and fell out of the car to the mucky slush-covered ground. I heard my head whack the concrete, had one quick, flashing image of huge, slimy horse's hooves crashing down on the ground while a thin black something like garments flapped about somewhere nearby, and then I blacked out altogether.
I didn't wake up in the hospital, that's for sure.
A.N) DUN DUN DUN! Wherever could she be???
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