RETURNI felt numb and alive at the same time. The flow, whatever it was, carried me through time and space; and infinite adventure. I saw stars and colors and neurons flashing above me. Below me was nothing and everything. Occasionally, the waves overtook my body and flooded my lungs. That’s when I realized I couldn’t breathe or move. It sat in my lungs like the oxygen that I heard once was supposed to be in there. I could feel it slosh like the flow around me. I floated for thirteen long years.
It washed me onto the shore. I felt my heart pump again and my skin regained its hue. My blood scurried back into the corners of my veins and I could breathe again. I picked myself up with my newfound strength and hurled out all the flow that built up in my lungs. Except when I tried, nothing happened. All that was in my lungs was air.
The sand below me was solid, unlike the sea(?). I tried shifting my hands into it, but they wouldn’t melt into it.
Suddenly, I heard a noise, like an opera singer. I looked to my side, where it was coming from, and a great indigo castle was built before me. It began as fog and slowly condensed into solid form. It reached impossibly high with gothic towers. Two giant doors, ten times my height, beckoned me forth with its singing. Enchanted, I picked myself up and stumbled my way towards it. It was hard to walk at first, but I got used to it.
The gates opened and I was swallowed into the darkness of the castle. First, I saw the windows. A soft white glow, like moonlight, bellowed through the glass and splattered onto the floors. As my eyes adjusted, I noticed impossibly tall pillars dotting the cathedral symmetrically. A muted-red carpet layed before me, and at its far edge, a woman.
It was hard to tell due to distance, but she was twice my size. Her hair flowed down from her scalp, circled around her face, and finally rested on her breasts. I approached her and called out in a language I didn’t understand.
Instead of words, she provided action; stepping towards me in perfect symmetrical motion and lifting me by the waist to her eyes. They were the blackest black I ever knew. Darker than the castle, than when I blink, than when I sleep. Then, I saw the sky, and it reached towards me and pulled at my hair. I closed my eyelids, like anger closes a fist, and screamed at the pain. My tongue was removed from my mouth and my eyes rolled into my head.
I disintegrated like sand and fell between the woman’s fingers into a pile of dust on the carpet. I felt numb and alive at the same time.