I was on a light jog as normal, just enjoying my day. Some of my favorite bands blasting in my ears. I smile and wave at passing cars letting me cross the street. The air was nice and warm, normal early Fall weather, honestly my favorite because of the small nip in the air, the whistling of the wind through the branches that are starting to become bare due to the changing of seasons.
Another crosswalk is coming up, and a biker coming my way on his beat up old mountain bike. I wave at him as I do anyone else. But, he isn't coming closer to me nor is he biking the other way. He is facing me, his feet pushing the pedals as if he was riding normally. Only he isn't, he isn't moving. As I get closer I see that his balance is almost perfectly identical to someone riding normally. His helmet is loose and he seems to look like there is nothing going on.
I kept getting closer and closer hearing the chains rattling still as if moving. Once I was about five feet away from him he vanished. Confused by this, I look around quickly and behind me I can clearly see the biker riding away, moving farther and farther away from me.
“What the..?” I rub my eyes and keep on going but I could barely hear the music that was just blasting in my ear only a minute ago, it stopped. I stopped a few feet away from the crosswalk to look at my phone. Something is different about the screen before me, the lock screen? No that's not it, jazz, I never listen to jazz, not to my liking, so why is an hour long blues song paused? I shake my head and open my phone to change it back, the biker still on my mind.
I kept jogging for an hour more before turning around, the road just like the bike path is scarily quiet. I'm used to the bike path being quiet but the roads are always busy, everyone always has a place to go or somewhere to be. Yet again I pull out my phone, 5:27 PM, shouldn't the road be cramped now?
“Ok.. today is getting too weird, I need to get home.” Right as the last word flew out of my mouth my head felt weird, fuzzy almost–I blinked to try and get it away. Every blink caused a flash of light. Almost like I was in a doctors office under operation, or maybe in a police station being interrogated by a couple of officers. I open my eyes again but this time I'm not in front of the tree that I always turn back at, I was in front of my complex.
“How the..” before I could finish my neighbor calls out for me with a worried look on her face.
“Hazion, get up here, you will catch a cold if you stand out there for too much longer.”
I look at her, confusion must have riddled my face. “You have been out there for three hours now, get inside already.”
“What are you talking about?” I say looking up at her as I start to walk up the stairs of the complex to my apartment, getting closer and closer to the familiar baby blue door. With every step my body feels heavier and heavier, like the higher I went the deeper into the water I dove. My hand gripped the guardrail tight enough that my knuckles turned a snowy white.
“Are you ok?” My neighbor asked as she ran towards my ever heaving body on the stairs. My head was foggy and felt like needles stabbing every part of my brain. She carefully helped me up and took me to my apartment sitting me down in front of the door and started searching my pockets for my keys.
She's always been nice to me. Like a second mother–someone who is always there for me no matter what. I came home drunk one time and she said that she heard me struggling with the door, so she came out to help me. I still remember that she was there almost all night long until she was sure I wouldnt kill myself by choking on my own vomit.
“There we go,” she said and knelt down and started to pick me up grunting “and up we go” as she got me to my feet. She was pretty strong, though I wasn't too heavy either.
“T..thank yo-” i started before she cut me off
“I know, I know. You are welcome. What happened today, Hazion?” She gave me a disappointed motherly look but I couldn't tell her. I didn't even know what happened today. I’m not sure anyone would after what I saw.
She sighed and shook her head helping me into my apartment and sitting me down on the couch. It hurts to move, it hurts to breathe, it hurts to even look around. Why is this happening? No, the better question is–what is happening? I was so lost in my thoughts I didn't realize that my neighbor had poured me a glass of water and was holding out in front of my face until she cleared her throat. It hurt my ears. I saw the glass and struggled to take it into my hands, but I did so victoriously.
Raising my arm to take a sip was the worst mental and physical pain I ever felt. When I finally got the glass to my lips I took a long sip, it was much colder than I expected, and tasted like iron too. It dribbled down my lip as I pulled the glass away, still cold even while not going down my throat. I carefully set the glass down on the coffee table and almost actually sink into the discomfort of the couch.
“Are you sure you're ok? You look like you've…” all of a sudden her voice seemed drowned, empty, void of any noise. I looked at her worried, then the pain stuck harder than before. This pain felt worse than getting hit by a bullet train at max speed. My body went limp and my eyes shut.
Once my eyes opened again everything was painfully bright. I looked around and the cold metallic walls encased me in what looked like some sort of examination room. There was still that weird iron taste in my mouth, my body was tense and felt tight. I gulped slightly before looking down at my own body, strapped down to a metallic but no longer cold table. Even though my table wasn't cold and the room was at a moderate temperature, I still had a shiver go down my spine as I looked over my own body, cut open, my intestines, heart , liver and bladder all still attached and working well, but not inside me. They were strung up on pedestals, as if being preserved for further examination.
I struggled and tried to scream, but something was wrong–I couldn't move my lips. Being unable to move my hands I moved my tongue around my mouth searching for my lips, but I could only feel the non separated skin that now replaced where my mouth was.I breathed as heavily as I could through my nose, though no matter how much I tried nothing was going to calm me down, then from the silence of my struggling, a sliding door squeaked from behind me. I couldn't see who it was, let alone what it was but next thing I knew I felt a stab directly into my brain. Something small, like a needle injecting some sort of liquid into me. There was no struggle through the bones, skin or hair. In fact it felt as if it was all gone.
Another poke made my eyes shut and when they opened I gasped and touched my lips–I was back home. I smacked my lips and the taste of iron was still heavy. I pulled my shirt up still soaked with sweat from the daily jog, no scar? Now that I think about it, I wasn't in pain at all. I stood up and hooked my phone to the stereo and started to play my favorite song. As it began to play, I sat down on the couch again. I started to relax, breathing in a deep sigh of relief as the next song started, blues. My absolute favorite.
