In the Seam Between

In the Seam Between

by Eric Olson

Sometimes we wish for things that we do not truly want to happen. But, in the moment, we feel as though that very thing would solve all the problems we may be facing. This is just the way of things, and these thoughts often fade in place of more logical ones that lead us toward thoughtful, informed decision making. But sometimes wishes can come true, and not always in the manner of which they were initially conceived.

A thing like this happened to me once. It was the single most strange and unexplainable event of my life. Well, my life so far. I speak very little of it to others because most don’t believe me, or they just think that I never outgrew the childish habit of fibbing for attention. In any case, I’m recording my account of the event here as I remember it, which is quite clearly. I could never forget something like this, and I know at least two other individuals have experienced it. Hopefully these words will someday lead to any sort of understanding of what this phenomenon is.

It happened when I was younger, I was only fifteen at the time. There were no warning signs or anything unnatural leading up to it, nor have there been any traces of anything like it since. It was a Tuesday, and I was walking in a hallway of my school toward the lunch room. On this particular day I was feeling very nervous, and a little embarrassed. It definitely wasn’t the first or the last time I would feel this way in my teenage years, but they were certainly the emotions dominating my mood at the time. It’s silly to think about now (even without acknowledging the other thing that happened on this day) but I was feeling this way because of a girl. I had just mustered all of my inner courage to walk up to the pretty girl in my history class and ask her to the homecoming dance. In case you forgot, this was still quite a big deal in the ninth grade. Looking back, I do give myself credit for putting myself out there, but I must have misjudged the level of charm and charisma I had in high school.

She turned me down, explaining how she intended to go with just her friends. This was fair enough, and definitely far from the worst-case scenario of how she could have responded.

But, as I headed to the lunch room, I passed her locker. There she stood huddled with a group of her friends. Her back was to me, but I was well within earshot to hear her laugh and tell the others how the boy in her history class had thought he had chance with her. I don’t even remember the specific words I heard, but I remember the pit that formed in my stomach as I heard them. I tried to walk on without her seeing me and knowing I had heard, but I was painfully aware of the brief moment we met eyes as she swung her head around just as I turned the corner. I felt like the biggest fool on the planet. Once again, hindsight allows me to understand that it was no real thing to become so upset about, but my young brain was still constructing its sense of self confidence and worth. In that moment, I felt a horrible flood of emotions wash over me. I remember just shutting my eyes tight for a second and wishing for nothing else but to be gone from where I was. To disappear. I opened my eyes after a second and my vision was blurry, yet everything around me was the same. Then I blinked again, and I was gone.

Well, I was still there and everything else was gone. I looked down and saw I still wore my clothes, and my shoes were on my feet. But I was in total darkness, as if I had my eyes closed. There were no dimensions to where I was, I couldn’t tell if I was in a confined or an open space. No horizon or point of light, just blackness, an absence of color all around me.

I immediately knew I was in a different place than I just was. It felt like realizing I was dreaming, but somehow the opposite. Instead of gaining lucidity while in an unconscious reverie, I felt that I had “woken up” out of my reality, and what I had awakened into was more like a dream. I stumbled and found that my feet sank into the ground slightly, like I was on a plush carpet. But, nothing could be seen, the ground was indiscernible from the space around me.

I was terrified. I spun around, looking for anything to help discern my environment, when I spotted a small figure in the distance. I realized they were coming toward me, and I could begin to make out that it was another person. Soon I could see that it was a girl, slightly older than me, dressed in normal clothes like myself. I didn’t recognize her. She had light brown hair and wore a blue hoodie, and as she approached me, I instinctively took a step back.

“It’s me, it’s…” the girl began to say, but then she saw my face. She almost made an expression of disappointment, but it quickly changed to sincerely reassuring.

“It’s ok.” She said quietly.

           I had no idea what was going on.

 “What is this?” I stammered out.

           The girl looked around the void we stood in. “I have no idea.” she said softly. “But I’ve been here once before.”

           “You… what do you mean?” I asked her. She did seem much calmer than I was, but she was still wary. As I looked closer, I could see her eyes were red and puffy, as if she had just been crying.

           “Three years ago.” She whispered. “I came here somehow. I don’t know what it is, or why, but… this is the same thing. The same place.”

           “How do you… stop it?” I asked her. This girl seemed my only hope at surviving whatever this was, and for some reason I felt like I could really trust her.

           “Get out, you mean? It just… ended after a while last time, maybe ten minutes or so.” The girl responded. She still spoke in a low tone, as if we were in an empty cave, but there was no echo to be heard in this place.

           The girl took a step closer to me. “Let me guess” she said, “Something stressful was going on.”

           I was a bit taken aback, but it was true. My hands were still sweaty and my heart was beating fast from what I felt was a humiliation in front of my peers.

           “Sure,” I said, looking down. “You could say that”

           She smiled empathetically and wiped at her own cheek with the sleeve of her hoodie. “Yeah, I guess that’s the… ‘trigger’ for it, I don’t know…” she trailed off.

“This has never happened to me before.” I said.

The girl sat down on the nonexistent ground. “When it first happened” she said, “I was with someone else as well. At first, I thought you might be him. But, he was a bit older, and it was his second time, too.”  

We were silent for a few moments, and I sat down as well. The ground wasn’t cold or warm, neither was the air. Only a pitch-black void. If I couldn’t see my own body and the person next to me, I’d have thought I was simply blind.

“What do you think it is?” I asked eventually.

“Well,” the girl began, “I’ve thought about it. Haven’t told many people because, because who would I, right?”

I nodded.

“But I did talk about it with the guy I met here the first time.” She said thoughtfully. “He thought it might be people… somehow breaking out of reality, caused by certain stressors, and who knows what else.”

I must have still looked quite confused, because she tried to offer more. “The way he put it, is when a person experiences certain intense emotions, within certain conditions, at certain times, maybe they sort of… break a seam in reality, and wind up in this… in between place.” The girl shrugged. “Like I said, who knows?”

I still couldn’t believe what was happening, but I tried my best to think. “But why us? At the same time?” I asked.

“No clue” she said. “We go right back to normal after a few more minutes.” She said, gesturing around her. “If it happens the same way, of course.”

I thought for a moment, and neither of us spoke.

“I guess I did sort of… want to, I don’t know… disappear? You know?” I said quietly to the girl.

She smiled at me. “Yeah, at the time.”

Suddenly, bright light once again met my eyes. Nothing was visible for a moment, and then I was right back to where I was ten minutes go, walking down the hallway of my school. It was so quick that I stumbled a little, because all of a sudden, I was standing up. It’s been years since that day, and I still think about the strange occurrence every night. This is the first time I have written down a complete account of what I experienced. And, if I’m right, I expect I may someday return to this broken seam in reality. Maybe I’ll have the chance to relay a verbal rendition of my story to someone else. We shall see.

The End