Out-of-Body Experience

Out-of-Body Experience

The silent darkness of sleep was suddenly interrupted.
Oh and how good it was!
If this slumber session could be compared to something, let's use the idea of glass to portray it. It was smooth, uniform, and apparently delicate and fragile like a pane of the stuff. Because the organized noise blaring from the alarm clock speakers broke the repose being enjoyed as if it were a stone crashing through a window.
Shattering and splintering the peace that Morpheus does bring.
Spider-cracked glass . . . that is exactly what the blood vessels in his eyes were resembling. Like as if they were the tentacles from a deep-sea nightmare trying to snare and entangle the hapless pupil, and drag it down to the depths from where it came from.
It's a high probability that had rest been fully achieved and allowed to rise naturally and comfortably . . . well rested eyes wouldn't look like these peepers here.
The owner of these definitely would not mind making the culprit of this heinous Nct of high treason go to sleep themselves.
But this was an alarm that was set. There was a purpose, a reason, to wake up at this time. Right? So get up. Why else would it be set? Get up. It is a struggle for sure to achieve this monumental task placed before us. It would probably be easier for the dead to arise.
Even though our subject has no recollection of setting it. Nevertheless . . . we still have to get up. If not for anything then to turn off the screaming, wailing siren of an alarm. Although it is a welcome symphony to wake up to . . . our subject must get up.
To our surprise . . . his body was still asleep.
Odd . . . he was über lucid by this time, yet his limbs were completely unresponsive. He had that tingling sensation you get when your foot drops asleep, but it was an all encompassing situation now taking him over.
Granted that our subject here is not a modern day Samson, but he is very far from being soft like a wet paper bag. So it should come as no surprise panic struck him when he could not budge a millimeter. Horror flashed across his mind and permeated every single fiber of his sentience as that panic set in, when he realized his voice failed him as well.
Alright now. This was, and to quote a blue "magical" helper that needed to be released to grant your request, starting to get weird . . .
His whole entire body was starting to convulse with the shaking and quivering of his straining body. He was now digging deep within himself, rallying strength from places previously unrecognized by him.
He was having a wrestling match with an unseen aggressor. And it seems our protagonist was on the losing end of things here.
Feeling was utterly gone from the realm of reality that we thought was our plane of consciousness. Fair enough, not long ago being conscious was a luxury we were fine doing without.
Now . . . horror mixed in with panic gets you desperation. In this realm of existence, this is the headline where we fall under. One last oorah (for now but most definitely not the last one for this chap) and wouldn't you know it ladies and gentlemen, but we have movement. Scenes of old black and white films would aptly fit the "It's alive !" moniker we are witnessing now.
I am not a learned man and never have I been as presumptuous enough to consider myself smarter than the average bear. A squirrel perhaps . . . But our champion here, who not but a mere few seconds ago was unable to budge or gain any momentum of any sort whatsoever, was now on some superhuman act type stuff. He catapulted himself from the bed. As if Chuck "The Beard" Norris were in the proverbial hyperboled (so to speak) flesh doing push-ups on the moon.
We were moving, whether the body wanted to or not.
It must have been all the previously aforementioned strenuous exertion our friend here was trying to generate that just built up to this specific point were the pent-up force just accumulated and gathered to now . . . the moment that it could no longer be suppressed . . .
That's the best explanation I can think of.
I believe that whatever is in charge of the subconscious must have arrived at the same conclusion as myself, because this little, yet slightly alarming, development went unnoticed. Therefore not a second was invested into asking why, let alone how, such a feat was achieved.
Enough of that.
We find our subject on his feet now. More awake than before but still some good distance away from being fully woken. Two sure footed steps on a pair of somewhat rubbery legs brings us before the object of our present bane. The source from which we derive the association of this noise as our foe. The literal reason for getting out of bed today.
He hefted his now miraculously weightless arm into the air and allowed it to travel its natural descending arc down onto the alarm clock. There was almost a gracefulness that could be attributed to the motion. Having been done over and over so many times before, it was robot like and second nature so that the mechanics were performed without the slightest thought to anything.
Hence the reason another key detail went unobserved.
The alarm is still going.
The movement is repeated once again and once more the same outcome is the result. Nothing. Now merits a glance with an interested attentiveness from a still focusing eye.
This time around, with exaggerated deliberation, our hero extends his middle and forefinger combination in conjunction with the added bonus of an extended thumb for better leverage, letting it drop on the snooze button (of course).
Now the following ten seconds have been the longest, funniest, scariest breaths that our star has had to endure . . . ever.
He found he was now thrusting down on the button to the point were the top of his fingernails were almost against the finger themselves. Funny how he came from feeling horrified, panicked, and desperate to where he couldn't even feel the button he was almost surely breaking his fingers on.
He could feel inwards but couldn't feel outward?
Okay.
To hell with that.
What comes after?
Hysteria?
Yes . . . it was beginning to creep up.
If he were breathing, now is when he'd lose his breath.
He spun his head around to take in his surroundings. He knew he was in his room yet he expected to actually find himself somewhere else. Like some Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury, Friday the 13th The Series type of stuff. But no . . . there he was in his room . . . still sound asleep on the bed . . . face down and seemingly oblivious to the developing circumstances. And apparently deaf too.
This is where our subject and his peculiar sense of humor comes into play. I guess commendations are in order to be dispensed here because instead of sloshing about in the uneasiness of the hysterical state that was beginning to take him over due to the present unraveling events and falling to it as a helpless victim . . . an actual smile cracked across his lips so big that a sound resembling a laugh managed to escape his dry, constricting throat.
Barely though. It was more like the wheezing of a last breath as it leaks out the gash of a slit throat.
That's right. Rather than flip out any more and be driven directly over the edge by what was just witnessed at this precise moment, our champ found it hysterical. I reckon, now, that THAT was probably a reasonable response from the hysteria that was starting to rear its distorted face on the state of things and taking over like a coup.
He stood there, motionless, for what seemed to be a few minutes . . . just taking it all in. Even if he had wanted to move, I highly doubt that any progress could have been achieved in such an endeavor of the sort.
He saw how his eyes were twitching from REM sleep. He saw how the daylight was starting to creep in to his room as it peaked through the window behind the blinds. He saw his body heaving from the deep, slow, rhythmic breaths he took as he slept. While he slept! He saw all this! That's what he found so amusing! He slept while he was wide and utterly, rudely awake!
As I mentioned before, our subject stood there frozen in place like a deeply rooted tree for what seemed to him (in retrospect as he would later retell his experience the time frame would fluctuate like the telling of a fisherman's tale recalling his catch) for what seemed to be fully ticked out minutes. In truth, it was more like a mere few seconds.
But there he was . . . looking down on himself jamming out to Soungarden's Black Hole Sun.
With absolutely no clue as to what to do. Even on the matter of how to feel, he would certainly draw a blank. Good thing this isn't an exam.
Oh well . . . here goes nothing. We have to find out whether this is real or a dreamscape scenario.
He started moving his hand, barely able to contain the giddiness that was beginning to replace the hysteria that so submerged him a little while ago. (He truly found this amusing!) If the time he spent standing before himself seemed to pass slowly, the time it took him to finally reach his shoulder was unmistakably an eon of an epoch. Talk about slow motion. Which contrasted greatly to what followed next.
As soon as his fingertips "touched" (and I DO use this verb very loosely) his shoulder . . . I'll attempt to describe it.
In a split second his entire body was going at a freefall at terminal velocity. His landing was abruptly violent yet at the same time it felt as if he was being gently laid down. Like a sleeping newborn. It was a weird sensation . . . to feel his toes first touching down followed by the rest of his body as if the letter U started from one end and then just rocked from one tip to the other then going limp into a straight line.
Once his face "landed," in a flash his perception changed as his eyes physically opened and allowed sight. His lungs were desperate for oxygen and they made a sudden gasp for a bit of the stuff. The song playing from the alarm clock speakers didn't skip a beat.
Now he laughed out loud for real, albeit just a slight smidget nervously . . . today was his day off.
Black hole sun, won't you come . . . indeed.