Deception Trance

“Back. Off.” Him. With his dark hair and navy-blue eyes, he was getting on my last nerves. 

“Would I really make up all that ‘bullshit’ to you out of all people if it weren’t true?” He shot back, narrowing his sapphire eyes at me as his lean figure stood across from me on the indigo roof. The blue in his eyes… oh so blue. Like an ocean. And I was being sucked in. 

Drowning. I was drowning, becoming lost. I was diving into those eyes to be suspended in the depths of the ocean. Which way was up or down? When did I hit the sand? Why was I surrounded by water but not at all wet? The vast midnight blue sea surrounded me completely, nothing else in sight. Panic began to filter in, quickening my heart. Turning my head one way then the other, all I could see was darkness and depth. 

Someone grabbed my wrist as I floated, suspended still, in the gloom of the sea and pulled me up to the surface. My body was heavy as it dragged behind by whatever tugged at my arm. It pulled me up and up, wading through the water that bubbled and echoed in my ears, up and up. 

Oxygen! I gasped as air hit my face, pulled up higher, the rest of my body emerging from the water until solid ground was once again beneath my feet. I came back to where I stood on the roof with Ash. I was so startled, panting, fear seeking into my apparently dry clothes. My eyes found his intense and heavy stare. Ice within his eyes. 

Somehow, that gaze seemed to send a wave against me, sending me stumbling back, tripping over the roof panels. 

I was stumbling back… I couldn’t gain balance… back… catching my foot on the gutter, off the roof and down I went. I screamed, my heart rising into my throat, my stomach dropping into my butt. Falling and falling, hair whipping, air whistling, but I didn’t hit the hard surface that awaited me at the bottom. Whoosh. 

Instead, I was shoved into the right hip to enter a different scene. I slid into a red booth at a café and the scream disappeared on my tongue. 

“Omph!” I grunted at the impact, settling into the cushioned seat. 

“Would you like some tea?” A red-haired waitress smiled too widely to my right, a white and red apron outfit shaping her round figure. Ash was opposite me just staring, the dim lighting in the café casting shadows across his face. Blue eyes so intense. I smelt the warm drink in front of me, placed on the round wooden table. He grinned and nodded encouragingly at the tea and myself. 

“Drink up, my dear.” His voice unusually deep echoed through the booth and into my mind. 

My heart pounded but my hands moved without orders. I gripped the hot cup and lifted it. 

No! My head screamed, heart racing. No! Don’t drink it. Stop it.  

I couldn’t stop. 

The cup grew larger, into a bowl of liquid. Was it really tea? Someone put their hand to the back of my skull from behind me, or at least that’s what it felt like, as I couldn’t stop my head as it bowed forward into the bowl. I didn’t feel hot tea or liquid splash my face. 

I just felt air. I was being sucked into the bowl, shoved down deeper like a vacuum. But it was futile to resist and my face washed through the bowl. Transported into a different world, I stood at the edge of a pool.  

Looking around blinking, I took in the vast grassland swaying in the breeze, the grey storm clouding overhead and the willow tree behind me, bark rough, leaves soft, dancing in the wind. My hair whipped at the air and I glanced down at the small body of water. It could have been a pond or a lake perhaps but it was almost just a large puddle, a pool of water at my feet. Its depth was unknown as it was the darkest of blues, almost black and inky. Without a conscious thought, my body was kneeling at its edge and peering into my own reflection. My eyes seemed vacant and unseeing as they rippled in the water’s surface. My hands went to wade my body into the water on all fours but blinking, my reflection in the water was replaced by a set of different eyes. They were wholly white on a face that was not covered in skin but rather, fins on its cheeks. A scream rose within me but as I opened my mouth, no sound came out. In fact, as I stumbled back, scraping and shuffled on my butt away from the water in fear... I couldn’t even hear the wind. The place was utterly silent, as if I had gone deaf. 

A finned hand snatched out of the water, liquid splashing soundlessly, and yanked on my ankle, gripping tight. I screamed silently once more and I twisted onto my stomach and knees, scraping and clawing away, toward the tree. My heart raced, it couldn’t end like this... with nobody knowing where I was, who I was… nobody caring... 

Its wet claws digging into my flesh, I kicked at its webbed slimy hand until it loosened its grip, finally allowing me to pull away. I scrambled to the tree’s roots, clawing through the grass and dirt. Finally at the tree, I twisted and watched as its green slimy hand with webbed fingers and sharp nails slithered back into the water.  

The water’s surface went flat and my breathing began to calm, my heart quietening in my ears as I stared wide eyed at what shouldn’t be real. I tried to listen, tried to hear anything but a new panic set in as I realised, I couldn’t smell either. If I stayed here, would I go blind? Mute? 

I pressed against the tree and closed my eyes, focusing on breathing. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t real, it couldn’t be— 

A hand, warm and soft snapped over my mouth and pushed until I was leaning back, sinking into the tree. My eyes snapped open wide. The world shrank away and the tree enveloped me. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t kick or fight or do anything. My body wouldn’t submit to any of these demands as my eyes widened and mind began racing. Darkness encased me, as the tree opened and slotted me inside.  

Black nothing, no matter which way I looked, no matter the fact the hand had disappeared, its touch lingering on my lips. I may as well have been blind for this darkness was a blanke covering my sight. 

There: lines of light leaking in... I was in a box. A very small one as I sat, crossed legged in the darkness of this box. I had never known my fear of small spaces until now. With no escape, it felt like the walls were pressing in. I began beating on the sides, fingering and feeling for any crack or nail to open or undo. Some way out, surely... my heart pounded through my head, an unsteady drumbeat as it punched against my ribcage, even my vital organ wanting an escape, a way out. My legs began shaking and my nails dug into my palms as I desperately began punching and beating against the box’s hard walls. 

“Let me out, somebody help!” I screamed but somehow knowing nobody was out there. Nobody was there to hear me. That’s when its walls did begin to close in, slowly but surely coming closer and closer. I shuffled my knees to my chest and my feet tucked in closer. 

Wild panic overtook me, the lump in my throat causing tears of fear and dread to leak down my cheeks. No, no, no, no... 

My body was trembling, fingers shaking uncontrollably. 

Please, no, no, no... “No, no, no, no... please, let me out.” I muttered over and over. The tears blurred my vision and I curled my hand into a fist to press against the wall in front of me, trying to make it stop. 

One final desperate knock on the wall that was a few centimetres away from my face and suddenly it turned to paper light cardboard and the wall slowly fell to the floor without a sound, as if in slow motion.  

The window opening to the world beyond, I didn’t wait for the rest of the cardboard box to fall down. Crawling out hastily, I blinked, vision clearing as the tears disappeared, and light slithered into my view. I sniffed, blinking more. 

There was a kitten sitting on a crumpled blanket in a gloomy wet alley. Water dripped from a leaking pipe and it smelt of garbage. The cobblestone bricks threatened to take me under with the wrong step of a slipper shoe and I noted the blanket of grey across the sky. But as I knelt before this kitten, its little whiskers moved as it meowed at me with its wide eyes and grey fur. I smiled down at it and reached for it. Finally, a less-fearful reality. 

So I thought. 

But as my arms outstretched, I was reaching for a dog, with teeth as sharp as knives and claws curling into the moist cobblestone. 

I yanked my arms back in shock and straightened, stepping back slightly. But I slipped and where I should’ve fallen onto hard cobblestone... I bounced on a soft mattress. But it was so bouncy that I was thrown upward, into the sky, flailing my limbs about frantically. 

Oxygen seemed to rip and tear in and out of my lungs as I adjusted to each new world. The sky was a bit brighter here, I thought, as I began falling slowly and softly to the ground again. A blur of green and brown and blue whooshed past me, hair swishing in the breeze. 

My heart quickened as my last desperate hope for some solid ground beneath my feet was granted. I stood on a rock, feet thudding, knees bending slightly for the landing that felt as if I’d simply jumped on the rock... not fallen down from the sky. Glancing around, I was surrounded by light green water, fish seeming through the clear liquid in the shallows with golden sand visible at the bottom. If I were to try to swim, the highest the water would go would be just below my waist. Trees surrounded the water curling down from its full height as if bowing to me, the rock my throne. Leaves, all shades of greens and mostly round, and vines, thin and sharp, dangled, almost kissing the water’s surface. Moisture hung in the air, heavy and yet light. 

I began crying. What next? 

Without warning, a force began pulling on my arm and shoulder, sucking me sideways, hoping to transport me somewhere else once more. It attempted to pull me down into the water, where the fish no longer swam. 

I tried to pull back, tried to resist the push and pull on my mind, on my body. Get me out, get me out, out, out, out. I bucked and fought, keeping my feet steady on the rock, sweat beginning to bead at my forehead. 

My mind swam back to my body and working together, pulled myself out of the tug’s pull, out of the jungle and back to standing on the roof breathing heavily though I had not gone anywhere physically. 

My chest rapidly rose and fell, my mouth agape, eyes wide. I knelt over my knees and vomited right there on the roof, fear sizzling and burning through my blood and bones. 

Ash stood silent and motionless directly in front of me. Not with an intense gaze like before. He was hunched over, palms over his… ears? Moaning. 

He straightened as I adjusted to the scene. Real, this had to be real. 

“What was that?” I immediately demanded, straightening and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Where did I go?” I marched forward, knowing that was what he must’ve meant as Deception. “What did you do to me?!” I grabbed a fist full of his shirt and he huffed and puffed like he’d run a marathon.  

He hadn’t just fallen off a roof! And survived! 

But it wasn’t real. Only to us. 

“I…” He began barely, blinking as if seeing spots. 

“Messed with my head!” I finished. “That’s what you did. is that what you do to people?” 

“Shhh, please… it’s what I do. It was a Deception Trance.” He explained quietly taking in slow breaths. I was panting too, but out of anger and fear. My nostrils flared and I felt bile rise in my throat again. 

I let go and leant to the side over my knees just in time to hurl my guts up again, feeling dizzy.