The Midnight Excursion

The cuff of my right pant leg had only moments ago, been caught in the rusty railroad tracks by the river behind our house. What was I thinking running away like that? I had panicked, hunkered over, and clenched my eyes shut, waiting for the worst. When moments passed, and I realized I was still alive, I slowly opened my eyes and surveyed the ground around me. I was standing nowhere near the tracks. I was in front of a sleepy little moonlit village with naive looking houses all lined up in immaculate rows. Weird. This is like something out of a story book or some dream I’ve had before. Tall, spindly pines seemed to bow reverentially towards these perfect and undisturbed dwellings. Tiny twinkling lights danced in the windows of a dozen little white squares, perfectly placed in one linear line. Shadows formed on the ground where trees hunched over, but they never seemed to touch the walls of the houses. Something inside of me began to unwind. I should have been scared. I should have been confused, or blindsided, or just plain curious, but all I felt was...calm. I could feel the shadows in me slipping away. I could feel myself becoming like the sterile-looking sides of the cube-like structures in front of me. Impulsively, I placed one foot forward, feeling a magnetic pull towards the house at the farthest end of the row. Whispers began to form in a circle around me. They were reassuring me. There was a pulsing tenderness beginning to push me forward. I slowly made my way to the house on the far right, gaining momentum with each step forward. A small red door in front of me waved in and out, and I lifted an arm to reach for a gleaming door knob. As my fingers grasped cool brass, I felt an odd sensation in my fingertips that washed over my arm. It’s so comforting. I felt naked all of a sudden, and looked down to see if the wrecked cuffs of my pant legs were still touching the tops of my feet. In their place, was a long white gown. I felt lighter, free and hopeful. I carefully turned the door knob, and a dizzying tsunami of bright hot light spilled out, knocking me over. I was being melted down, and sucked into some invisible vacuum, and then reassembled into one compact piece of flesh. 

-“Evah?...Evah, Darling! Oh my sweet baby! You’re awake!” a motherly voice choked out in between sobs of gratefulness.

My head felt like cast iron and there was sawdust in my throat. I challenged these new and unpleasant sensations by rocking my head from side to side, and peeling my eyes open to put a face with the voice. Was I dreaming?

-“Oh Evah...the doctor, he--.”

The blur in front of me struggled with it’s words as it sobbed.

-“He said...well, you see...we were going to have to pull the plug, but you’re really awake aren’t you? You really are! Oh Evah!” and with that there was a fresh round of tears.

So it had all just been a nightmare. A nightmare that lasted for a year and three months apparently. There had been an invitation to a senior party, and an argument between my mum and I. There was a plan. My friends would pick me up at approximately 10:00 p.m., after my mum's night cap had assumed it's affects. There would be boys, liquor, stargazing, dancing, and the whole experience...I mean you just have to come Evah! Everyone who's anyone is going to be there. A midnight excursion they had said. And who is they? I had resigned to go, even though I could remember even now as I listened to the story, that I had had my doubts. There were what-ifs, and guilty feelings, and fears of being found out. My dreaded executioner was really just a broken mom, glad to see me awake after almost a year and a half of hospital walls, IV's, and stone-cold silence. And that sleepy little village I had happened upon, that must be the place between dreams and waking. If I closed my eyes, and focused on the lines of the houses long enough, could I tunnel back through to the past? Before the village, before the train tracks, before the tangle of shadows, before the walking corpses, and the ripples of time...could I go back? Could I bring it all back? I needed to pick up the missing pieces. My mum must have seen something like panic in my eyes because she called for the nurse to bring the doctor in. He arrived momentarily with a practiced expression of concern and a mocking bedside manner:

--“And so you see Evah, that is why you should never get into the car with your friends when they have been drinking” and “you were lucky, but the others…”

The others, oh my god, there were others....

-”I’m so sorry”, the grave-faced doctor recited.

I had to stay under the watchful eye of the nurses for a few more days, before they would agree to wheel me out of the hospital. The day mum came to pick me up, I watched the hospital shrink into one white box behind me. The farther we drove, the more it looked like that peculiar house I had fatefully approached a few nights ago. I hugged myself tightly. I'm so sorry Evah. I'm so so sorry.

I wanted the moonlight back, and that quiet rushing feeling that erased all doubt. I wanted the hereafter. I wanted the tsunami of light, and the moments before. I wanted to reverse the steps, and cement the future. I wanted that hospital to have been that sleepy moonlit village. I wanted the moment before waking, and the moments before sleeping. I wanted the green boughs framing that village in my mind, to rock me back to sleep.

My mum opened her glove compartment, and pulled out a bottle of something. Stars danced in my head.