Here the story takes yet another profound and unbelievable turn. The nineteen-year-old tells of the bizarre and amazing experiences that create the extreme defining transition from her childhood to … ‘where am I now?’

She is being carried. She can have no idea what will happen next. Thank you, Dear Readers, for witnessing her journey ‘down the rabbit hole’.

 

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is dark.

I cannot see.

I drift.

I am unconsciousness.

I have no memory of coming back.

I have no memory of gathering my clothes and dressing.

I have no memory of getting up from the mattress.

I do not remember making my way down the steep stairs.

Dark.

There is no one.

I find the bathroom. I am on fire. I am torn and bleeding. I throw up.

I make my way down. I reach the kitchen. A small lamp on the table by the window creates a soft glow.

My eyes are pulled upward to the addition of heavy black marks overhead. The high kitchen ceiling is spray-painted in gigantic scrawl: Chains, Bouncer, Hulk. The same words stitched over their pockets.

I gently sit sidesaddle on the bench attached to the picnic table. Fireflies blink and drift outside the window.

I have missed my curfew.

I must drive. I must get mom’s car back.

I promised. By dark.

I am a problem. I disappoint. Again.

My fingers touch the burning, rubbed raw tender skin on my face. The welt.

A car door closes. Footfalls on the back porch.

What now?

The back door opens. He sees me and his eyebrows go up.

He asks if I am okay.

He puts his briefcase down on the opposite bench, moves around the table. He has kind eyes. I recognize him. He is a regular presence at La Cave. I have watched him circulate, stopping to chat table to table. Always well dressed. He smells of spices, cinnamon, and clove. He sits on the bench, leans toward me placing his hand on my arm he speaks softly, with care, he asks, “What happened? Who did this?”

He brings a glass of water. I sip slowly. He gently takes the glass out of my hand and helps me to stand. He guides me, talking softly saying, “You need to lie down.” Back up the stairs, he turns to the left, where the dog was kept. Opening the door, he supports me as I lower my body to the mattress on the floor covered with bright paisley patterned fabric.

I lie on my side.

Tears slide into my hair.

He wipes matted hair back away from my face.

He says, “Rest.” He tells me again and then again, “Rest.” He leaves and returns with a warm washcloth, he carefully dabs the tears from my face, the filth from my hands.

I doze then suddenly wake in a pool of sweat, panicked. Something is chasing me. Sitting on the floor he sets aside the book, turning to help me sit up, I lean against the wall.

Distraught, I tell him that I must go! I must get my mom’s car back! I promised her I would be back before dark. I ask, “What time is it?” He replies, “Late. You need to rest. You should not drive. You need to sleep. Your mother will want you to be safe to drive. You need to rest.”

He’s grown-up, gentle, and kind.

Panic drowns me.

I must go.

I must go now!!

He leaves the room. I hear him move down the stairs. Minutes later he returns with the leather briefcase. Placing a small key into two metal locks he opens the case saying, “I have something that will help you.”
He rearranges the vials and black containers, opens one, removes something invisible, extending his hand to me saying, “Take this. Just put it on your tongue.”

I protest. I do not want medicine. I need to return mother’s car. I cannot continue to be a burden; I have broken the promise to be back by dark.

I say, “I have to go. I have to go now!” He insists, “Then at least take this. It will help. You will feel better.  You will feel better.” He extends his hand. “Take it.”

I reach out as he places a tiny transparent square onto my right index finger. He motions put it on your tongue. I do. It dissolves with a sweet taste.

I am late.

My body is raw.

I slide into the car and instinctively lock the door. Carnegie Avenue is a seedy corridor. I slowly begin the twenty-minute drive back to the house on Lincoln Avenue where mom is either waiting up for the return of the car or else fast asleep.

His soft and gentle voice goes with me; I will feel better. I will feel better.

As the car moves down Carnegie a strange sensation begins. Halos. Halos appear. Bands of light pulsate around every neon sign. Pretty. I notice that no matter where I look light is changing. There are sparkly metallic shards of splintered lights that bounce off parked cars. Odd, I see light creating streamers on both sides of the two-lane street. The storefronts seem to be moving as I drive past. The buildings are animating. The windows wink open and close like eyes watching me go by.  So strange.

I feel not me. That feels okay. It’s as though I’ve been wrapped in a warm blanket. Soothed.

I feel unfamiliar. I don’t recognize myself. I feel disoriented in the softest and most unusual way.

I feel different. I feel like never before. So soft. So comforted.

Sensations are rising and washing over me.

Here comes another.

Again. Again.

I feel light. I have become buoyant. My eyes are telescopic. The view is wide and deep, I feel that high is now higher. I can see underneath the road. I can see beyond the surface of things.

The car glides onto the entrance ramp. This is a new stretch of highway that shortens the distance back. The road is empty. The car stretches out long, snake-like as if it has sensors and is exploring the wide-open disserted late-night road sensing to make its way home. The four lanes of concrete undulate, rising and rolling, the car is a boat on large waves. I watch entranced as they rise in front of me, recede, roll-off disappearing into the distance.

I am spellbound.

I am mesmerized.

Drive. Do not stop the car. Do not stare. Keep driving.

The streetlights bend deep and curve over the road, weaving together forming an infinite arched tunnel.  The elongated nose of the car stretches, stretches, stretches out melding into the light of the tunnel. My hands visibly vibrate like musical instruments being played. I have a microscopic view of my interior. I can see the make-up of my bones. I watch the stream of my blood dazzle and dart quickly. I watch the brilliance of cells dancing making the shape of my fingers.

 Drive. The car is taking me where I need to go.

My fingers dissolve into the steering wheel, which is a swimming circle of bouncing molecules. The circle oozes into the windshield. The windshield spreads out as a glimmering and shimmering snakehead leading further into the tunnel of arcing light. Every part of me and the interior of the car is an explosion of ricocheting miniature rainbow arcs now melding with the atmosphere. There are no more edges.

Drive. There is no car. There is no road. I am drawn further and deeper into the tunnel of light.

Keep moving. Do not disappear into the rainbow shards twirling off in all directions.

Keep moving.

Exiting the freeway, I lose my ability to identify with the surroundings. Houses vibrate, sinking into trees, and seeping into lawns. Sidewalks glisten, writhing streams, rolling away.  Everything glows with layers of halos. All and everything is made of shimmering, glimmering translucent rainbow lights.

The beauty is beyond breathtaking.

I keep moving toward the house where the car lives. Everything is pulsating, throbbing, pumping as vibrant colors radiate and swirl out of my skin, which is no longer skin, spreading in all directions. I have no hands. I have no head. I am turning into the driveway and the driveway is roiling, bucking, yet quietly opening to receive the car that no longer is a car now a shimmer of moving light carrying me into the back yard that is no longer a backyard. The trees and grass are glittering with explosions of light and strobing life.

The beauty is beyond imagining.

I am the beauty of every drop of dew gathering on the grasses exploding past my body as if they have been growing their own jungle of pulsing light forming a canopy that embraces me, no longer me and car, no longer car. All one. Everything glimmering, shimmering, rainbow glow telescopic, microscopic all alive.

I am new and in a different realm.

He was right. I feel better.

My eyes are telescopic wide taking in the microscopic layers and bursts of delicate mind-altering technicolor exquisiteness.

The keys drip and melt into my multicolor open palm, my feet sink down through the blacktop surface of the driveway which is composed of layers upon layer of diamond dust glitter. I watch the back door move away from my approaching hand. The door is teasing me. I reach and my hand falls through the frame again and again. I make my way over to the stool that holds mom’s purse.  A gaping and ravenous mouth swallows my deposit as the legs of the stool twist and dance.

Outside I move across the small patch of lawn that is sliding like lava up to the neighbor’s house. The fireflies rise slowly from the jungle grasses and thrum celestial tones. I stay outside my head resting on the water-like lawn that holds and lifts and carries me. I reach for the stars. My hand slides into the net of glistening tree branches. Each leaf flutters and writhes turning into a cicada. Issuing their loud pulsating calls they erupt and fly off.  I twirl among the clover that is growing tall over my head making floppy umbrellas that plop dew onto my shoulders seeping into me creating the most extraordinary breath-taking beauty that I have never known to imagine. Ever. I am everything. 

Doing my best to make not a sound I move through the front door, across the carpet. Mr. and Mrs. are asleep behind the door an arm’s length from the stairs. Slowly. Quietly. I open the door and begin the climb in extreme slow motion. The stairs are no longer stairs and when I place my foot onto the surface, each, in turn, becomes a cloud. I sink through the cloud surface and continue upward. I keep moving as though floating as if being carried. I make my way slowly to where I can lay down. I want to stop. I am pure vibration. My eyes dance and dart swiftly through layer upon layer of shifting, swirling luminescence.

There has never been such beauty.

I remove my clothes and slip my vibrating-cells-dancing arms into the sleeves of the floor-length terrycloth robe. Each snap up the front is a circle of quicksilver. As I snap the two circles together there is an electric spark that showers cascades down around my bare feet. The robe’s paisley pattern swims like fish all around my body. The weight of the fabric drags like a wedding dress train as I move across the wood floors. My entire body, which is no longer my body, radiates a pulse and vibrates in magnificent multi-color ribbons. My skin, which is no longer skin, melts like crystalized snow into the watery surface of the mattress. The mattress is a magic carpet with no weight, no substance.

Magic.

 I lay my head on the pillow which surrounds my head like a flowered sea of marshmallow. My iridescent  rainbow arm reaches for a marker. I begin to dance a long black sinuous line onto the white watery surface of the sheet. Lying on my side drawing out the graceful, flowing, winding, flowering line.

Until.

I need to hear music. I need to connect to the soundtrack for this amazing experience. I must move to the house next door where my sisters, my brother, and my parents sleep.

The pulsing, vibrating, undulating throb is escalating. I need to be with music and the stereo is in the living room next door.