Eloise Zeeman

Today, I was gardening, and spreading organic fertilizer around all my flowering trees. I dug a little trench around one of the plumeria trees, but when my fingers sunk into the dry earth, something buried there bit me, hard. I pulled my fingers out and my index finger was already red and swelling. It was throbbing. I squeezed it, just in case whatever bit me had injected some sort of venom. It was so hot, i think the heat index was 103 degrees, and I was already a bit dizzy from working in the sun. I got a sudden wave of nausea and went inside, falling onto my bed. I felt like I was falling, a tingling feeling that wasn't entirely unpleasant but a little scary, like perhaps I should fight it, like I was losing consciousness. I thought for a moment, maybe I was going to die. I concentrated on the pain in my finger... I tried to squeeze it with my other hand and that made me feel safer, grounded like maybe I had just been overwhelmed with heat stroke. My arm felt rubbery and numb as I lifted my sore finger to my mouth and bit the painful spot. A metallic, sweet taste flooded my mouth and throat, and suddenly it was hard to breath. I felt like all my passages were closing... my nostrils, my throat... even my ears and a fast and constant sound of something like a lot of bells urgently ringing grew louder and louder. I thought my eyes were open but I couldn't see. I tried to blink many times and couldn't tell if I was or not... if my eyes were opened or closed. A bright light like a three dimensional comet came rushing from the dark all around me toward what felt like my face. I don't know what happened next but then my eyes were opening and I could see what looked like a very faint pink cloud. As vision returned, I could see that I was in a strange bed and the pink cloud was just a curtain, like in a hospital, partially surrounding my bed. My head was filled with pain. Another wave of nausea came, and I sat up quickly, vomiting. A sea of something pink and sweet, a strong smell of roses and ozone, came out of me in a series of waves. I tried to cry help, but another wave would come. I found the strength to push my self up to try to stand and find a bathroom. As I got my legs over the side of the bed, thats when I saw ... There was no floor. Beneath me looked like a bowl of blackness with no depth or dimension. But way, way down, in the bottom of the bowl was something that looked like a blue marble, swirled with green. I tried to look harder, to comprehend what I was seeing. Earth.
-Eloise Zeeman