With friends to a city we didn’t knew. It was good funny went to cool party, or disco? it was a party, i could see the sky just at that slight perfect timeshot of the day where the sun just peeks enough to give the sky the blue color and the streets the calm soft shadow. And all good. Except. For some reason it was a bit hard for me to keep up. Our leader told us we had to go to the next place. I started having moments as if very tired? As if my muscles were not responding to my brain, similar to those nights your mind is so occupied and consumed, you simply cant aknowledge what you do with your arms and legs. When we exited and crossed the road, I fell down in the street but luckily my buddy Ian didn’t let me down, but that caused us trouble since the leader was getting ahead. so much that we ended up on a club, strip club. And we didn’t like the vibes, it was getting dark. We couldn’t go back home. So I told my buddy Ian, I could call mom to pick us.
Just as I pulled my phone. A fatty man saying the looks of a traveler told us that he was alone, asked if he could catch the ride with us. Obviously as we still waited in the entrance of a strip club I didn’t like it and said no. But it got weird as he just tapped the screen of my phone while I was trying to get into the call. For some reason, my fingers seemed to be doing a mess, a whole mess in the screen, I couldn’t type correctly, and pop ups in my screen were a bit hard to read. My buddy said too, he was trying to get a call, but he was taking too much time... too... the tension started to grow. and it was just a slight misalignment to the agenda. Then a girl came by, and sit down right next to the fat. We were getting really worried it was coming to night. And i realised that I simply was unable to use the phone, the UI and my fingers were as if changing constantly, I could differentiate between calling mom and writing in note pad. Searching her name, and texting the group chat her name. The fatty was with his girl giggling while talking. And as I just took a glance to see around the place I snapped back seeing that the fatty had my phone and he was fast spamming the same touch on my screen. As if intrigued in what should happen next. I took the phone out of him and the dread settled.
I looked a my screen and it was ilegible. It seemed like I could still interact. But now the letters were mixed among shapes and colors rotating and animating. My ability to focus to simply call mother or to write was destroyed. I couldn’t do anything concrete. Just then. I watched my buddy Ian. He calmly approached near and sitted with a calm and eerie face considering I expected him to be scared of frustrated. I told him man, we gotta get out here, we got drugged surely. But his face, only turned into a slow motion of questioning. Hmmm could be…
That moment I realised, I was far too gone. My buddy wasn’t there I was seeing my whole reality shifted. The fatty and the girl… they scared me with their dark grin. And as I was loosing track of what I was even doing I felt into the deepest fear. What if I was kidnapped, what if I was going to be organ harvested. What could I even do. Maybe the got my friend already. I can’t rely on anything I see, because it’s not real. My whole reality is false mirrored illusions and darkness engulfs me. A bright shallow very little and poor lightbulb lit the only visible thing in front of me. A gritty small metal frame with a shuttle the size of a small person, just enough to let someone pass like in the metal windows of stores. I couldn’t die. I couldn’t let my twisted reality become my tomb. When was I drugged, when the man tapped my screen? later? Was it in the air? Was it at the club?
I could feel myself shifting through, like trying to wake up from daydreaming, focusing on the touch of my real hands, realising in layers into layers into layers of delusion, I manage to barely see through the veil just enough to know there is another one behind. I felt alone. Truly. I had been kidnapped. And drugged and no one could help me, not even my mother, not even my friends. Not even me. A deep ingrained fear devoured my hope and left a pit of despair in me. I took the wrong choices. But I didn’t accept them. No, I can still fight, I want to fight. The fear slowly turned into energy, into reaction. I have woken up from dreams before. I can wake up from the is one. I focus, hard. so hard, I channel in my mind the muscular memory of breaking through daydreams. My rush of blood, my feverish angst and my survival kicks in. I can’t die. I can’t die even without seeing the reality.
With a stone in my hand, I hear the giggles of the man and the girl, right across the metal frame. I snap the entrance a hit it hard at an angle with the rock in hard, the metal lock seems to loose and falls some parts, I grab one and push it deep into the lock frame, the sounds of giggles and laughs turn into worries and yells. They got surprised and so I turn around and ran, just ran far and fast enough, I hear see them following me tracking me, if they get me I’m done. It was night but I exit and see the sky and it’s morning, I cross the streets and see the places to fit in a fantastic way, impossible way, the streets lead to corridors they get narrower, they make impossible turns, as I cross some ceilings I see the day change to night then morning by then night then noon. As if my path was constructed by a computer shifting and molding every texture trying to guess what is how the world really looks like. like those ai generated hallucinations. I climbed obstacles, walls, I knew that I was not real so the only thing to do was to keep running, in a turn I stumble right in front of a group of swats, I just know, it wouldn’t make sense for them to be here, and I pas them as they dissolve. I take the paths that make sense, the impossible turns begin to fade and the sky aligns with daylight. I cross jump and ran as much as I could following a final corridor where a child with a bike goes through, the flashing sun covers the end of the tunnel. And just as I approach it…
My eyes open, I’m laying in the sofa… I’m safe and sound… I’m in a familiar place. A safe place.