One-Shots: 4

It was quite easy for me to imagine a world without any of this…unbelieveableness.  That is of course I came from a world without any of this strange, mystical things.  Name’s Vic, and I came from your world, Earth.  Of course, that’s where I came from.  That’s not where I came now.  It wasn’t one of those things that I can really explain, fully.  But I will try as best as I can.

What I don’t know is the exact reasoning to why I came here, or why anything like this happened.  What I do know is that there was something that pulled me through time and space, and I came from Earth to something that is like Earth, but also distinctly not Earth.

It’s hard to explain.  I know you might be finding this difficult to read, but understand and sympathize with me.  This is difficult for me to wrap my head around.  One second I am at the end of my rope, quite literally, and the next I am hurtling through the air like someone had tied a rope around my midriff and pulled as hard as they could.  There was a sensation much like being squeezed through a bowl full of jelly, (another long story on how I know that that feels like,) and something akin to being scraped by sandpaper.

I remember falling into something cold and water-like, but not water-like.  It was thicker, like someone had tried to thicken it was not enough oatmeal.  I remember sinking and sinking and sinking and choking and drowning.  And when I woke up?

I was here.

I had opened my eyes surrounded by water as clear as those travel commercials for the Bahamas.  I struggled to my feet on sand as smooth and as white as new silk.  Wherever I was now, it was something different and beautiful.  And it frightened me that I had no idea where I was or where I would be going.

It was a stark difference between the water and the sand that I came to wake up on and the scenery moving forward.  Dark clouds of what looked like poisonous smoke billowed up from these large smokestacks.  The dirt and the grass before me were darkened and dying.  An acrid smell came to my nose and I remember gagging.

I looked behind me to the water and the cleanness that came with it.  Like it was some sort of bad daydream, I could see the clear blue and white changing into something less, something impure.  The water became murky and green and the sand became darker and red.  I could see something in the water that looked like it resembled a body.

I hurled.  I’m not proud of it, but I remember hurling and emptying whatever water I had accidentally swallows in my unconscious state.  Red and green came out from my mouth and splattered the sand below me.

I staggered to my feet, wiping at my mouth with the back of my hand.  That’s when I realized I was naked, and far younger than my forty years I had on this Earth.  I was back in the body of a young man, somewhere in his early twenties.

I brought my hands up to touch my face.  It was different, it wasn’t my face!  I whirled about to check the water, but it was two murky and green to be much use.  I stumbled, and fell right into the vomit I had just puked up.

“C’mon, Vic, back on your feet.”  I muttered.

I clapped a hand to my mouth.  My voice was different too!  Just exactly was happening here?  I came to my feet once more, wavering as all the thoughts came to my head.  I looked about, trying to get my bearing.  And nothing, nothing came to me.  I had no idea where to go, or what to do.

You see now why it’s so hard to explain what was happening?

Eventually I came to my senses.  After a period of panicking and wigging out, the thought came to me.  Smoke meant fire.  Fire meant technology.  Technology usually meant people.  And since there was a chance people were out and about nearby, perhaps someone would be nice enough to help me out.

I was speaking English.  So I had some senses at least.  If this was another country, I would be able to at least use the fact I was an American to help me out, I hope.  Of course if this was another world like my paranoid mind was coming to, I could be completely screwed.  But I was in a different body, and I was still speaking English.  My mind was mine.  Perhaps English was a universal?  Or maybe I was speaking their native tongue and I was just understanding everything in English?

Then the thought came to me.  What if I was either hallucinating or I had amnesia, and I was making up all of this?

I can’t keep that kind of thinking up.  I had to believe that at the end of the day that I was indeed still myself, and not someone else thinking I was someone else.  I had to have some sort of rational thought in me.  After all, if I didn’t have that rational thought then what was the point in trying to figure things out?

Assuming I wasn’t going completely mad, I had only one choice.  Find out everything I could about where I was, and return home.  I glanced at the water behind me.  As much as I wanted to swim back in that water and try to return home, the thought of which curled my insides and made my heart do something akin to jumping jacks.

No, my first step was to calm down and figure things out for myself.  I glanced up at the sky.  Smoke covered most of it.  I couldn’t see much other than dark smoke and dark clouds.  Could it be close to storming?  What would fall from the sky?  Would it be water or would it be something else?

I hurried about, going as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast.  I could feel my stomach tighten and turn.  I was hungry, I was terribly hungry and only now moving I could feel the hunger pains.  I tumbled as I fell, rolling down a hill.  I stopped and sat on the grass.  It was all brown and dark and dying.  Wherever I was, they weren’t big on environmental conservation.

“Who’s there?”

I got up as quickly as I dared.  My head swam.  My vision blurred.  I had to sit back down.  My head went down to lay on the grass.  Above me, coming from the side of the hill I had just fallen down came a burly man wearing something dark green.

“I said who’s there?”  The man came closer.

That’s when I noticed he had one singular eye in the middle of his forehead and four arms all the size of small saplings.  He pounded to me.  The earth shook as he walked.  I laid my head back down and closed my eyes.

This had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream, this had to be a dream.

This was also a good time to faint.

Goodnight.