I woke up, groggy as usual. Yet another night without a good sleep. As I sat up and rubbed my already tired eyes, the room spun ever so slightly, as if I could feel the Earth rotating beneath my feet. I sighed, and placed my hand on the night stand next to my bed in an attempt to center myself. Fortunately, the vertigo didn’t seem to be too strong today, and everything stopped moving rather quickly.

I made my way over to the bathroom and turned the handle on my sink, but nothing happened. Really? No water? But after a few seconds, a deep, gurgling sound began, and something began to ooze out from the faucet into the bowl below. It was the color of cherry juice, and as this viscous liquid seeped from the nozzle into the sink, it reminded me very much of blood that had begun to coagulate. I cup my hands and splashed some of the fluid on my face. It definitely didn’t smell like cherry juice. I wiped my eyes and looked into the mirror, my reflection reminiscent of what I can only assume a cannibal would look like after attacking a fresh victim. I threw some more ‘blood’ on my face again, grabbed my towel, and brought it to my face. I inhaled deeply into the darkness of the towel, and removed it from my face as I exhaled. I looked down at my sink again, which was now running water as it normally should. I looked back up into the mirror at my now water soaked face, dried off the remaining droplets, hung the towel up, and make my way to the kitchen to make some breakfast.

As I poured myself a bowl of cereal, the shaking began. It wasn’t my body, like I was have a seizure, it was more like the vertigo I experienced earlier. I could feel it messing with my equilibrium as well, like my own personal earthquake. But I continued pouring my food without missing a beat, nor the bowl. Before I let this convulsive feeling get any worse, I shook my head violently back and forth for a brief moment. And with that, the shaking passed as abruptly as it had come. At last, I took my bowl and plopped it down in front of the tv, and began eating.

This way my life, and it had become normal for me. The spinning, the shaking, and those hellish mental images my mind would often think up. None of this was out of the ordinary in my day to day routine. Fortunately, I didn’t have any voices talking to me…well, often. Nobody in my life knew about it; no friends, no family, no one. Mainly because I didn’t feel it was worth telling them, because it was hard to explain, and even harder to understand or believe. And I never went to a doctor about it either, due to a combined lack of money and lack of care. I had it mostly under control now anyways, even if it did take a while and a large amount of unnecessary stress to get here. If I was gonna be a burden, I didn’t want to bring others into it, I could handle it. Besides, it hadn’t caused any problems or harmed anyone aside from myself, so I just decided to power through it on my own. No big deal.

I finished my breakfast and proceeded to go on with my day. I got cleaned my dishes and tidied the house with very little incident, just the occasional shake here or there. But no other imaginative events, which was always a nice change of pace. Later on today, I was supposed to meet my friend, Rebecca, which was a nice break from the monotony I had dealt with for a while. These instances I had been dealing with were nothing new, they had actually been going on for a few years now. But when they started to ramp up a few months ago, I kinda sorta excused myself from much of reality. I quit my part time job, bowed out of this semester of college, and heavily limited my interactions with my friends and family. Fortunately, I had a decent amount in savings, and a family who was always willing to help out without asking too many questions. Now that I found myself in a much more stable place, at least more often than not, I began to slowly reintroduce myself to the world again, one step at a time, starting off with my friends. So you could say today was a rather big step, seeing as this was the first meeting with any of them in a decent amount of time. I was definitely excited and more that a little nervous. So I started getting ready. I took a shower (no ‘blood’ this time), got dressed, brushed my hair, and put my makeup on. She texted me right as I was finishing up, and as I walked outside my apartment complex, her car pulled up into the parking lot. Perfect timing. We had a rather excited greeting as I hopped in her car, and off we went to go grab some lunch.

It was nice to see her again, and she had seemed pretty enthused as well, at least if her squeal and enormous hug as I took the passenger seat were any indication. It really had been too long since I had interacted with another person, let alone a friend, and Rebecca was a good one to start with. She had always been somewhat of a drama queen, and just loved to talk about it (meaning I wouldn’t have to talk much, which was a relief). So hearing her rant about the (more often than not) frivolous problems in her life helped me get my mind off my own. Sometimes it was just nice to hear someone else vent about their problems, and listening to her talk helped ease my mind on everything that had happened this morning.

As we continued to drive around, she began monologuing as she usually did, about school, her family, her job, the boys she was dating, and so on. I peppered in a question here and there, smiled and laughed occasionally (she always ended up in the strangest situations due to her melodramatic ways), and even told her how I’d been when I had the opportunity to get a word in edgewise (though I was pretty vague about what I said). It felt good to feel these rather happy emotions again; I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been part of such a light hearted conversation like this. The stoplight we were at turned green and, as we passed through the intersection, I began to tell her this story about what my family had been doing for their recent holiday break —

The sudden jolt lurched my body toward the window, which connected with a sickening thud and the crunch of glass. There was the reverberating sound of condensed metal, like someone stepping on an empty soda can, only magnified a thousand fold. As my head recoiled, I looked over at Rebecca. Her eyes were wide open and she seemed to be screaming, which I hadn’t been able to hear, because there was a ringing in my ears that happened to synch perfectly with her shrill pitch. It was at this time that I noticed the asphalt outside her window, the car was about to roll. I braced for the impact. I pushed my hands against the ceiling, closed my eyes, and clenching my teeth. As we landed and the roof hit the pavement, the impact blew out the majority of the windows with devastating force and noise. After a moment, the sound of scraping metal reached my ears, overwhelming any other possible sound in the vicinity. The car began to slow, lurching onto its side one more time, before rolling back to its final resting place on its the roof.

I exhaled, opened my eyes, and surveyed my surroundings. From the looks of it, a truck had hit us, a big eighteen wheeler, and based on our distance, we had rolled well over the one time I had felt. I looked over at Rebecca, and she seemed to be in about as good of shape as her car. Her unconscious body still strapped in, but her arms were dangling, one of which was contorted in a rather unusual way; it had to be broken in more places than one. A gash somewhere on her head had caused blood to spray across the side of her face and the dashboard in front her, and she was making a rather uncomforting gurgling sound as her body attempted to breathe.

But even seeing all this, knowing the situation we were in, for some reason I had remained surprisingly calm. Sure, my heartbeat had piqued somewhat, as well as my breathing, but I didn’t feel the slightest bit distraught or emotional. Maybe it was because I was so used to seeing horrific situations such as this? Had I become empty inside? Become hollow to the emotions I should be feeling? But those other events were all imaginary…was this as well? No, it couldn’t be, this felt more real than those other times, and I hadn’t had any precursor effects, such as the vertigo or shaking…

But now wasn’t the time to think about those things. From my hanging position, I attempted to move my arms. They worked, thank God, and I didn’t feel any pain, at least as of yet. I might be in shock, but I couldn’t tell; I’d never been in shock, so I wouldn’t know. I grabbed the rear view mirror, and adjusted it to face me. I didn’t see any external damage on my body or face luckily, seeing as I was on the side the truck had collided with. But as I looked further up, I noticed a mark on my temple, where I had collided with the glass. It was definitely swollen and discolored, but it wasn’t leaking blood or any other fluids…that was a good sign right? I decided to run my hand over it, just ever so slightly, and almost immediately became overwhelmed with searing pain. Coursing from where I touched it, it made its way through the rest of my head, and throughout the rest of my body, down to the tips of my fingers and toes. Every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire, and my vision started to go white. What was going on? Was I passing out? I couldn’t think straight anymore…

The sudden and abrupt yell of my name brought me back to reality. I looked around , and realized we were still in the car, stopped at the light where we had just been hit. I glanced, wide eyed, over at Rebecca to see her giving me a look of slight annoyance and definite worry. She asked me if everything was okay. I paused briefly before answering her, as I tried to collect my thoughts. I ran my hand over my temple (no lump, no damage, and not an ounce of pain) before replying that I was okay, I had just zoned out for a second. Everything was perfectly fine. It had all been another hallucination…what the fuck? I heard her let out a sigh, and she decided to continue on with her original monologue. Once again the street light turned green, and once again she accelerated, not paying any particular attention to the road as the car continued on pace. I felt my hand clutch the armrest as we entered the intersection while I paid close attention to the surrounding cars stopped in opposing directions. But nothing happened, and we safely made our way through and down the road as though nothing happened.

Because nothing did happen.

I relaxed my grip and exhaled. I hadn’t even realize it, but I had been holding my breath as well. I hadn’t been ready for that, my mind was now very high strung, and I felt jittery. It was unfortunate, but talking and listening to Rebecca had eased me, caused me to lower my defences from what I was used to, and look what happened. It took no more than a few minutes to relapse back into this state that had become so commonplace for me. Even worse, it had felt real, much more real than those other times. Maybe because Rebecca was in it? Or maybe it was because I felt pain? As least, I thought I had. It had obviously been my imagination. We pulled up to another light as Rebecca continued to talk, but I wasn’t able to pay close attention to what she was saying. I was too lost in thought.

I looked out the passenger window, and noticed another truck coming up to the light on the road intersecting ours. It wasn’t as large, just a medium sized delivery truck, but it was moving relatively fast. Our light turned green, and Rebecca began to accelerate the car as she continued to talk, but it was then that I noticed the truck wasn’t slowing down. At this rate, it wasn’t going to be able to stop in time for the light. Wait, it couldn’t happen again so fast, could it? Another hallucination? The truck would hit us if I didn’t say anything…but it just couldn’t be real. What would happen if I screamed anyway? What would Rebecca do? What would she think? She’d probably think I was insane. Well, she wouldn’t be wrong I guess…NO! STOP THINKING ABOUT IT! There wasn’t anytime, I had to make my decision. There was no way this could be real, it’s too much of a coincidence. I closed my eyes and inhaled, hoping, praying that when I exhaled and opened my eyes, the truck would go away. I heard Rebecca call out my name, probably in an attempt to get my attention, but that’s when she screamed. This made me realize two things: she must have now seen the truck as well, and her scream sounded much different than it had in the previous scenario. I finished exhaling and opened my eyes, only to see the truck was within a few feet of impacting the car.

So was this it then? Was this real? I could’ve stopped this…no. This isn’t real. This can’t be real.

Right?