Aren’t You All Aglow In Your Thousand Yard Stare
Chapter 6
ProvidenceMine
It was the smell that woke her up; Sweet, heady, musky, medicinal, metallic. Hitting her nostrils, it snaked its way through her nasal passages and enveloped her brain. Rand’s head reeled, the lightness pulling her upward like a sky lantern floating towards heaven. Her vision was like a descending elevator, the floors rising above her until, on closer watch, she realizes that her cell and the whole cellblock was being submerged in water.
Rand could feel panic as the surrounding water threatened to engulf her. She scurried about, slamming herself against the walls like a trapped animal, her body growing hot and shaking uncontrollably. There was no escape.
None.
Rand collapsed in the corner next to her cot. She was frightened, helpless alone. She had stopped fighting as the water rose reached the ceiling of her cell, and then the ceiling of the complex itself.
Everything in Rand’s vision was blurry. The silence was deafening and stretched out for what seemed like forever.
Then, seemingly from a distance, Rand spotted a swirl of colors begin to make their way through the haze of the water, wavy, slow and ghostlike.
The rays slivered their way towards Rand, ebbing and flowing around like a snake trapping its prey. These colors flash before her, alternating between low and bright, first fast and then slow. The slower the flashing, the more Rand was being pulled into the light and out of her body, reaching higher as an eerie monotone strobe pulsed followed her, getting louder with each beat. The colors themselves got closer until she and her cell became completely engulfed as they stretched into wide expanses, undulating into curving fiords and rising into mountains and hills thick with flora that had hues unlike anything Rand has ever seen in her life.
Surrounded by this alien flora was a glistening black lake, shining like an obsidian mirror that reflected back at Rand’s suspended body. She looked down at her reflection, transfixed by the reflection of her hovering body, laughing as she saw herself bobbing and swerving in the air. Then, without warning, she fell from the sky. She screamed as she plunged into the frigid water.
Rand struggled as she felt herself being pulled deeper and deeper in, the surrounding water becoming warmer the further she was pulled, the blackness of the water so entrenched she couldn’t see anything, not even her own arms waving about in panic.
In the mist of this fear, something suddenly hit Rand. She stopped waving her arms about and inhaled deeply.
She could breathe.
Rand had stopped falling. Her feet hit soft, spongy ground.
WTF?!
Rand took slow, careful steps, her arms suspended on either side of her. As her sense of safety grew, the quicker and more relaxed her stride-in spite of the fact that she was still encompassed by complete darkness. After a while, her relative calm started to get shaky, and she wanted to get the hell out of wherever this place was, this dark. But how could she, when she didn’t know where the fuck she was going-she could have been walking around in circles for all she knew.
Then, against this pitch blackness, she spotted it.
A thin crack of light formed in front of her, creating a small horizon that opened like a lid. Two shadows emerged from the light, coming closer to Rand until she was able to make out that they were hands that gripped themselves onto the light.
As the light widened, a lean sinewy man pulled himself up. He slithered himself out of the light and fully materialized in front of Rand.
He was a magnificent man with long, straight glistening black hair. Rand stood where she was, not able to take her eyes off the man. She was both sexually aroused and frightened. The man glided towards her like he was riding a cresting wave with his whole body until he towered over her, seemingly making himself sexually available.
Rand looked into the handsome angular face, which returned her gaze, the dark almond-shaped eyes piercing, intense. She could feel the man’s fingers trace their way along the arm until they rested in the crux of her elbow. He tightened his grip. Rand opened her mouth, ready to speak, but before she knew it he lifted her up and tossed her, her body hurdling back into the solid darkness, which seemed to go on forever until she saw them up ahead.
Clouds. They formed one whole blanket over a glistening, obsidian sea. She hurls closer towards the clouds until she hovers over them and then plunges in accelerated speed into the black ocean, which is seductively and surprisingly warm.
She swims upward to the surface where she found herself in a hot spring surrounded by a mountainous snowy landscape with little snow monkeys at different stages of play; frolicking in the trees, on the shore, and swimming towards Rand. She is bobbing naked in the water, her arms fluttering at her sides while she relished the warmth of the clear water. The snow monkeys surround her and begin working their fingers through her hair. The feel of the monkeys’ fingers relaxed her, soothed her.
Rand was content. Everything was perfect as she felt herself sinking and ebbing into the warm water and the working of the monkeys’ fingers through her hair. Comfort and bliss held her, surrounded her. She was safe.
Or…was she?
Rand looked around her; the monkeys, the water, the snowy landscape. She was suddenly jolted, away from the lulling of the warmth of the water and the attentive grooming of her simian companions.
“No,” she said as a rise of panic surged through her. “No! This is not real! This is not real!”
Rand’s vision started to double, and she could feel the back of her eyes contract and the pit of her stomach leaden. Her head was now pounding mercilessly, and she closed her eyes. The warmth that had been around her was replaced by an icy cold, the attentive fingers were gone, the water replaced by a cold floor, her naked was now covered by the stiff fabric of prison guard. She opened her eyes and she was back at her cell, which was still submerged in water among the swirling, strobe lights. Her body heaved and jerked as she covered her mouth and ran to the toilet where she threw up.
End of Chapter 6.
