Shadow Offramps, The Town of Lacrima

Quite a fun little weekend.  I came home to see my family and pick up a few things.  I spent most of that time quite ill.  There was also an ill-fated episode in which the 'rents tried to give me a haircut but the clippers weren't cooperating.  It all works out.  I had hoped to be back at school by 4 PM at the latest, but I didn't even get on the road before 6.  That was all well and good except that it meant I would still be on the highway after nightfall on the way back to school.  I hate driving at night...

The shadow highways are still there, crossing and looping and whatnot alongside the normal interstate highway, but I don't worry about it much during the day.  I try to stay off of it at night.  Especially after what happened last time.  But alas, as I was getting off at my exit, the lights in the distance went out and the name on the offramp changed to "Lacrima,  Population: Unknown".

Not again.

Like it or not, I had wandered onto the shadow highways.  Or rather, wandered off.  I switched on my high beams and followed the road as it went on for a ways into empty plains (which if you know anything about Arkansas is totally uncharacteristic).  Finally, I came across Lacrima proper.  "Population: Unknown" my foot, the town was completely empty.  What's more the buildings were mostly Hollywood facades.  Sure they were shades of grays and blacks and the door frames looked like the maw of some horrific beast (which in spite of my flippant tone is sure to give me nightmares for a while), but their not-really-a-building-ness just seemed to rob them of the scary.  I would have turned around right then, but the road was only wide enough to travel one way.

There was one building that was more substantial, however.  A large manor house which might have served as a town welcome center or something similar where I come from.  A bit creepy, but not the least bit scary, I got out of my car and walked up to the door.  It too was sculpted to look like a hungry nightmare.  Being an actual building, the manor was gaining fear-reaction points by the moment.  I knocked.  Nothing.  I waited for a moment, suppressing rising discomfort.  I knocked again.  Still nothing.

I turned to go back to my car.  There was a swish behind me.  I turned around.  A letter had been pushed under the door.  There was no light inside and the door was windowless.  I picked it up.  The letter had my name on the outside.  I opened it.

It read;
"I dreamed a dream of a land not far away,
Where no birds sang,
No steeples rang,
And teardrops fell like rain."

I was suddenly acutely aware that there was no sound in Lacrima.  Unsettlingly so.  And then I could feel something like bending, creaking, cracking wood where the door was behind me, but I couldn't hear it.  Panic rose. I ran back to my car without looking back.  As soon as the engine was started, I found in the rear view mirror that the road was suddenly two-laned.  I didn't need a second hint.  I was out of there and headed back toward the highway.  As soon as I entered the onramp, I was suddenly back on the offramp  to my little college town.  It's probably better for my sanity that I never saw what it was that came from the door.

A few things once I got back to my dorm.  First, I did a search on the lines from the letter (which seems to have disappeared when I left Lacrima).  It's from a choral piece called "The Awakening".  No idea what that was about.  The other thing was that the hitchhiker type was still outside my dorm.  He hadn't moved at all from last week.  That probably isn't good.  Anywhat...

No more interstate night driving.  Never again.

Things Happen in Threes

Some time ago, I mentioned a bracelet I had made which carried a curse or somesuch.  Blah blah blah it concentrates negativity in people blah blah blah.  I have now come to find myself in possession of two other objects which are likewise bedeviled.

The first, or rather second of the three, is my high school class ring.  It seems to be given to roam.  Two years ago, at the end of my freshman year of college, I put it in my jewelry box with my scouting medals and hadn't seen it since.  Until two weeks ago.  I bought my new (relatively speaking) backpack shortly before I returned to school last year.  Two weeks ago, I found my class ring in one of its pockets.  A bag which I had only had for one year and which had never been anywhere near my jewelry box (rather it was always at school or in my car's trunk for the Summer) suddenly contained a ring I hadn't seen much less touched in a little over two years.

Then it gets weirder.

I put it in my dorm room with the other unusual trinkets on my bookshelf.  But then four days ago, it was there in the same pocket.  Back to the bookshelf.  Today, after my swimming class, the lifeguard approached me and asked if a certain class ring they had found the previous day by the pool was mine.  And bloody hell if it wasn't.  I wouldn't call it a true curse per se, but my class ring seems to have a very "One Ring" personality about it.

And then there's my "Brittney Glasses".  They're a pair of rose-tinted frameless sunglasses which started at camp as a sort of in-joke (which I might share if I get around to it) with other staffers.  I still wear them at school if I need a distinctive look or to get my creative juices flowing with an unusual view of the world.  Today they started showing me things.  In mirrored surfaces, I would get a reflection of creatures which were not there.  Tonight, I've seen silhouettes of small animals move across campus only to take off my glasses and see nothing.  I have excellent night vision and should have seen whatever they were without trouble with the glasses off.  Just before I returned to my room, I saw a strange gentleman who reminded me of the Hitchiker I saw back in the early Spring standing outside my dorm.  But only with the Brittney Glasses on.  And THAT can't be a good omen.  The problem is, I don't know if my glasses are showing me things that are there or are cursed to show things that aren't.  I've had "the eyes to see" for a while and I don't really get why I wouldn't notice these things before, but there you have it.

Good Strange things happen in threes.

I'm Back and Something's Broken

Good morning, boys and girls and culturally-specific third genders.  It's been a while indeed, but I'm back.  There's a lot to tell, but that, as Scheherezade would have said, is another story.  I have been to four states, worked two jobs (one of which was almost literally the job from Hell), and seen things even I once though were impossible.  I've taught turtles to fly, walked on water, and witnessed forgotten Native American battles.  And I will tell those stories.  Tonight, however, I have something different to say.

Of late, I feel like the world is changing around me.  And not in that cosmic sense that the elderly and increasingly the middle-aged are portrayed to feel in movies and TV shows.  More of a literal "something happened which did not actually happen at the moment it should have happened" thing.

It started small.  People saying they had said things to me which I had not witnessed only moments before.  It's easy enough to dismiss something like that.  Maybe I wasn't paying attention.  Maybe they thought they had said it.  Maybe a third thing which fits in this line of reasoning.

Then bigger things started changing.  The colors of friends' cars.  Which key opened what door.  And then tonight.

Tonight I was playing in a poker tournament my RA organized.  It was a whole lot of fun and I was winning until the cards changed.  I had a nine and a seven in my hand, on suit.  The flop was laid out as such that there were two nines and a seven.  I went all in.  A full house; there was no way I could lose!  But then the cards went fuzzy.  I blinked a few times.  Then we showed our hands.  I should have had a full house, but where the nines once stood, there lay a king and a jack!  (off suit)  I lost the hand and the game.  It was just a dorm activity so nothing was lost, but still.  The scale and frequency of these reality changes are increasing.  And I'm sort of worried.

Either that or I'm going crazy.