The Lot, The dream, Close calls and Hospitals 01/23/07

I think I'm fairly detached to deal with this. Here I go:

So I did jump. It felt like the sound of a wrench falling on running gears. The last conscious morning was the day of the last blogpost. Woke up with IV tubes attached to my wrist and ECG nodes all over. Nice. Now I am definitely screwed up.

The ticker went rotten earlier than expected. Around twenty years ahead of schedule. Well you stand against the onslaught of life; that is, you do, until life decides to throw something the size of a buick. Makes you realize how futile everything is.

There was a huge abandoned lot. There was an equally immense yet crumbling structure in the middle of it, a squarish stone edifice which may have been a school or a factory; it's paint was stripped, windows smashed, and stamed on it was an aura of disrepair. The lot itself was filled with junk, garbage, weeds, grasses and undergrowth, the chicken wire fence rotting or had completely disappeared altogether in some places. It was a lonely, desolate place and my heart sank underneath its shadow.

It was odd though, how it did not feel deserted. Usually these places were shells. This one did not seem at all dead. Rotting maybe. Dead? Not yet. I was getting major league goosebumps. Having had the most disagreeable experience of seeing and talking with some dude who died on a road accident through the rearview mirror on a midmorning drive home, I was of course concerned about them. The goosebumps I had before that dude popped up was peanuts compared to this.

There was no sense in waiting outside. If you ever play RPG's you know what I mean. There is a door or a path which inexplicably, is better lit.

I can't clearly recall everything that occured inside, as most of it is a haze, focusing with crystal clearness in one instant and swirling into a mist of jumbled colors the next. I've always been particular with using doors, halls, windows for verbal imagery when I write. They stood clearest in recollection.

There were doorways; yet only tattered splinters of wood attached to rusted hinges remained. There were people inside, milling; like after periods or during voting time. It felt so much like a school now, it seemed organized by age.

I went around and around the decrepit moldy halls, with its chipped paint and dirt caked walls. As I progressed deeper, the floor slowly turned from cracked tiles to mud, and one with a sickening stench. It felt colder too. Damp and foggy but I was still able to see clearly. There were rooms still, and people inside. And rats. Almost as big as cats, scampering and squeaking about.

All of a sudden there were two kids on either side of me striking up a conversation. The girl on my left side had dark brown skin an curly hair which was tied up neatly with a ponytail and she wore a green and white dress that looked like it could be a uniform. The other kid, a boy, had fairer skin and was wearing tattered shirt and shorts. They were chatty and curious the way kids usually are. I stopped cold when I realized they were leading me on, the conversation a ruse to keep me walking.

I turned and looked back, wondering how deep I was inside the building. The girl (I'm not sure if she told me her name) tried raising her voice to drown my thoughts. Something about a need to go on. That did it. I started to walk, then trot, and finally broke into a dead run. It gets hazy here; both kids kept pace without effort, gesticulating fiercely about how I needed to rethink.

This memory is clear: A focused glance at the rooms revealed what should've been obvious before I entered the building. They were all dead! A child with eyeless sockets in one room, and one with half her face scraped off in the other. That's why it didn't feel empty! I was crying by then, how could I be so stupid as to walk in? The kids were still beside me when I finally reached the door. For some reason, their eyes held immeasurable sadness when I walked out. And fell. Fell a little longer.

And woke up screaming. Kissing tubes. Electrodes on my chest. Scared shitless.