A Knife in My Chest: Best Vacation Ever

I guess I've been gone a long time.  (understatement of the year)  Its not really my fault, I swear.  As Pocketwatch told y'all, I was in a coma with a hole in reality shaped like a knife jammed into my chest.  

Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure how it happened. I ward my room at home, and ever since this business with the Evil started up, my house too. I was pretty secure in my, well, security when I went to bed that night. You see, I was visiting home for the weekend and had intended to return to school the following day.  

But I wouldn't be back for some time.

The next morning, I awoke to myself with blue hair.  I haven't had blue hair in 3 years.  Upon opening my door to greet the day, my dog ran in followed by my Siamese cat, rascal.  Who died in my freshman year.  As accustomed as I am to the unusual, this threw me for a loop. Opening my laptop (which melted down for the last time January of 2010), I saw the date.

December 25, 2007.

Oh. Bloody. Hell.

The spirits had done it all in one night it would appear.  Three and a half years ago, I was plucked from the world as I knew it and landed smack in the middle of another place.  There, music was the basic building block of reality.  I had a grand adventure with some amazing composers.  At the end of it all, they worked with the fae of that world to try to send me home.  Unfortunately, it sent me to this world.

Magic doesn't exist where I'm from.  It's the stuff of tales and legends.  Here, everything is pregnant with the stuff, if people know how to draw it out.  Of course, I do have ideological concerns about using it.  For the past three years, I've been trying to get home.  I've made it to a few other places, each with their own stories, but my own home seems to be blocked off from the rest.  Until now.

Considering the lack of evidence to the otherwise, it was actually pretty easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream.  I actually lived out my next semester at school as a normal 18 year old.  (after a hell of a lot of making sure magic didn't work and I was actually home).  

As wonderful as the magical side of the world can be, it was kind of nice not having to worry about wards or the disturbing array of demons that seems to afflict my life.  I didn't need to worry that I might be breaking some ancient law which binds my kind.  Heck, I didn't even need to worry about the metallic contents of my rings!  It was nice to be "normal" again.  I won't say I didn't miss the dream world alittle bit, but I'll admit I got really caught up in the joys of no cosmic responsibility.

And then Friday the 13th of May happened.

I was lying in bed in my dorm room when I felt a wrenching pain in my chest like someone had stabbed me.  I couldn't breathe.  I couldn't move.  And suddenly I was lying in my bed at home with Pocketwatch and my parents standing over me.  A fourth creature, a delicate looking female faerie in iridescent surgical scrubs, held a black knife in forceps behind them.

Oddly enough, there wasn't any wound on me.  No pain.  I even felt like I had just gotten a good night's sleep!  The sun was just going down outside.  My parents and Pocketwatch spent into the wee hours of morning explaining what all I missed in my absence and listening to my tale of my return home.

The next day, they drove me back to my university to attend my graduation.  The Faceless Lady also had some things to tell me.  I'll get to that soon.

It's good to be back.

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.

It's Been a While. And It Will Be Yet.

Things have been pretty quiet in my little college town for the past little while.  The Seelie Court took over in full at Beltaine (about May 1).  They don't like to deal with outsiders as much as the Unseelie so I imagine it will be a while yet before I get invited to meet with them. (And the next transitional period doesn't start until Lughnasadh (sometime thereabout August 1)).  A pity, really.  I had been hoping to get to know them more than my one weeklong dancing spree.


The end of the school year sort of snuck up on me.  Thankfully, nothing decided to rear its ugly head in that time.  Still, I had four monologues to learn, countless sculptures to make, and three legitimate written finals to study for.  It wasn't difficult, but things were complicated somewhat when I got sick and missed one, the merciful rescheduling of which extended my tests another day and a half.  And in this time, I got subpoena'd to testify against my old kiddie-perving demon roommate.  No sooner did I get served, than the prosecutor's office called to tell me it's been rescheduled to July.  So at least that didn't mess with my tests, like it originally would have (take place on the last day of them).  On the bright side, I got 5 A's and 1 B.  My cumulative GPA is now exceptionally high (over 3.7).


Moving out wasn't too easy.  I got everything out all right, but my RA took forever to check me out and he always found more dirt where there wasn't any (which he attested to himself) before.  I'm not gonna call that supernatural, but it was certainly annoying.  Then I had to wait almost an hour outside the building where the Theatrical Art classroom is located to collect my supplies.  It didn't take long to get them, but the waiting and having to inconvenience my professor didn't help my mood.  Plus I had to transport the cursed bracelet which probably didn't help my day.  Incidentally, I found a way to uncurse it and will do so by running it under moving springwater this summer, but I'll get to that in a minute.  Then I had to go and sell my books back.  For wholesale.  But seeing how they're the only game in town, I was railroaded.  I went back to my car to get a form to turn into the registrar and a seat full of stuff fell out.  A lot of things broke and/or spilled.  By this point, I was very, very annoyed and started throwing things in.  Then something awesome happened.  Objects started flinging themselves back into the car!  Apparently I have telekinetic tendencies (but I haven't tried again since I calmed down, so maybe it's an emotional thing).  It didn't improve my mood then (especially with all the other bad things that crossed my path shortly after), but it was pretty darn cool.  


On a completely unrelated note to anything, one of my bestest friends in the Universe saw the first Faceless Lady.  She was walking away from my friend and she heard glossolalic whispers coming from behind her.  So now others have seen her and maybe we can get to know more about her.


I'm home now and like I said before, I'm not too involved in local fortean happenings.  So things have been pretty quiet thus far.  Next week on Friday, I'm going to BSA National Camping School and then on to work at Camp Orr until July 3.  There's a lot of weird stuff out there and I hope to tell all about it on this blog when I get back.  Until then, I've got a friend who's going to hijack this thing and tell a bit of his own goings on.  You'll love it.  I swear.


See you in July!

You Can Fly, You Can Fly, You Can Fly!

I did it!  I managed to do it again!  Four times, in fact.  I just have to clear my mind and the wings fade into existence.  It's awesome!

But I still don't know what I am.

Eh, it was appropriate.

A Third Faceless Lady and the Secret of Flight

I still have no idea what happened this time.  I was at a friend's apartment just off campus.  It was our annual Valentine's "Make food and watch cult movies" night.  I was walking through the parking lot when I saw her.  She was standing there, wearing a parka and wind pants.  The hood was up so I couldn't see her hair.  And she didn't have a face.

It was another faceless lady, but this one was different from the other two.  For the first time, her attention was focused on me.  I couldn't tell by eye contact or anything like that for obvious reasons, but I could just tell her focus was on me.  It was a little strange, but nothing felt like I was in danger. 

Wrong.

Without warning, she darted behind one of the cars.  I was a bit confused until she leaped out from behind another and straight at me.  Her aura had become visible as a set of glowing purple claws at the end of each gloved finger.  Don't ask me how I managed, but she sailed over my head just as I moved to duck.  She hit the car to my left (and it wasn't pretty).  Suffice it to say that I ran.  I ran at speeds I didn't know were possible to my legs.  I ran around buildings and through parking lots and across streets, the Faceless Lady closely pursuing me every step of the way.  Finally, she had me cornered at a dropoff at the end of a gravel parking lot.  About fifteen feet below was a small creek.  A creek filled with very pointy rocks.  Not pleasant.  Still, the alternative was glowing purple evisceration at the hands of a Faceless Lady.  So I closed my eyes and stepped off the edge...

And I didn't hit the ground.

It took a few seconds before I realized that fact. But I think I noticed when I heard a sigh behind me that Gravity had relinquished its grip.  I looked over my shoulder.  The Faceless Lady was staring(?) at me.  Cue the iconic "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" staredown music.  Then, out of nowhere, she blew away like dust in the wind.  Think "staked Buffy vampire".

So there I was, hanging in midair.  I looked down and caught my reflection in the low creekwater.  Extending from my back was a pair of shining prismatic wings.  They were pretty long and appeared to be made of disconnected tribal tattoo designs.  Really quite breathtaking. 

The point is, though, I was flying!  Really flying!  The feeling was indescribable!  Utter and complete freedom.  I just had to image where I wanted to go and I would fly in that direction.  It was absolutely amazing.  I flew about for the better part of the hour before I remembered I had class the next day.  Quite a Mary Poppins moment: the thought literally dragged me down.  So, I reluctantly flew back toward school and landed a little off campus.  Can't afford to be seen by the normals and all.  I hope I don't see that particular Lady again.

I wonder if I'll be able to fly again.

Highway to Hell

I was driving back to school last night from my hometown.  The doctor's appointment ran long and as I had worried, I wasn't going to get back before dark.  I was sort of worried.  I hadn't ever driven on the interstate at night before and to tell the truth I'm not a very good driver to begin with.  To my surprise, things went surprisingly well.  That is, until the point which I found myself on the Shadow Highway.

I'm not sure when it happened, but suddenly I was acutely aware that I wasn't on any stretch of the Interstate that I recognized.  At first, I passed it off as never having seen it at night before.  An understandable conclusion.  Except then I passed my first exit.  A town called "Cruciatus".  Incidentally, there is no such place in Arkansas.  And then came the deer-things.

They appeared against the myriad trees which edged the road on both this and the normal highway.  Any time of year, it's not unlikely one will see a deer streaking across this particular stretch of highway at nice.  I first noticed their emaciated frames, the ribs that stuck out against patchily-furred skin, their spindly legs which ended in threatening points...  But that wasn't the scariest thing.  No.  It was their heads.  The portion near the neck was deer-like enough.  But the closer you got the the nose, the more they resembled the head of a female dobsonfly.  And I don't want to think of why, but there were blood-colored stains all over the mandibles.  The worst part, though, were the eyes.  They would watch me as I passed, gleaming with strange alien intelligence behind them.

It was all I could do to not pull over and mentally break down.  I kept driving and eventually reached a stretch of highway where the deer stopped appearing.  So did the disturbing signs.  I thought that maybe I had somehow made my way back to the highway I knew and was still completely terrified of for understandable reasons.  No such luck.  I hadn't occurred to me that there weren't any other vehicles on the highway with me.  Ironically, the second I realized it, I was immediately aware of lights of two semis filling both the lanes behind me. They were coming upon me really quickly and when they looked to be overtaking me, probably just to spite me, they burst into flames.  Clearly I've survived or I wouldn't be writing this, but I spent the next two hours pushing 100 MPH passing exit signs, each with a more horrifying name than the last.  Finally, as the needle dipped just below 1/4 tank of gas, a miracle happened.  I saw my exit.  I pulled off with reflexes I hitherto hadn't been aware I had had before then.  The semis barreled past where I had just been and I almost hit someone on the offramp but dammit I was safe.

And THEN I pulled over and psychologically broke down.

Dragons in the Mists and Shadow Highways

It was foggy out this morning.  The entire campus was shrouded in thick fog.  It was kind of nice but I was a bit worried that I would run into a dragon on my way to class. 

Dragons are imaginary.  They weren't always.  The naturally-occurring variation was wiped out in the dark ages by glory-seeking knights.  But they are now (and that's another story, as Scheherazade would say).  Regardless of what the old ones were like, the imaginary sort are generally intelligent but vicious and greedy.  And they live in fog banks.

I dunno why.  I guess it's something about the fog bank's "mysterious aura" and the concept still ingrained into our collective consciousness that "here there be dragons".  They're weird, too.  They seem to take whatever form of the most powerful emotions and thoughts around them.  To that point, I've encountered dragons formed apparently of test anxiety, the color purple (but not the play), and Hello Kitty.  They've all got weaknesses and things they can't do, too.  Most notably, I was able to slay a large sulphur-breathing one on the Arkansas River two years ago by scratching it with a plastic fork (again, Scheherazade's excuse).

Mercifully, I wasn't attacked.  But that leaves me the other thing I intended to bring up in this post.  I sit now at the doctor's office in my home town.  It's a surgery followup, but I'm sure I'm fine.  Anywhat, my home is some 80 miles from my university.  It's a bit of a drive.  And though I've become more comfortable driving on the interstate, I'm still a pretty paranoid driver when I'm on it.  That self-induced heightened awareness paid off today when I noticed something running alongside my own stretch of highway.  It was another set of roads I hadn't ever noticed before.  It wasn't the opposite direction's lanes, because that's always been to my left.  This path was on the right.  Before I knew it, the second highway was running off the ground without any support, sometimes parallel to me, sometimes perpendicular to my own, sometimes running the other way entirely.  Oddly enough, I didn't see any vehicles or on ramps and off ramps.  And LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE, nobody seemed to notice.

This warrants further study.

Glens and Hearths

There are strange places, overlooked by many, that don't seem encumbered by the outside world.  Where the atmosphere can simply be described as "positive" and any internal negativity flows away quickly.  Seemingly mundane locations unencumbered by the sometimes crushing banality of the outside world.  Hot or cold, they're never intolerable.  The light is bright but never glaring.  Or sometimes dim, but not dark.  Some of these places don't actually exist in this world, rather extending into an "Otherworld" or taking space in the conceptual.  Some of these are very real and some especially unexpected.

They used to be called Glens.  They were wild places thought to be the meeting ground of the Fae.  They were right, to a degree.  The imaginary variation (and just because it's imaginary doesn't mean it isn't real, more on that another day) would hold great revels in these places because the disbelief of the outside world was less powerful there.  As time pass and more lands were settled and developed, the Glens were built upon.  Many became Hearths, pubs and restaurants which displayed the same nature.  Inevitably, these places would attract a clientele which simply liked "the vibe".  Imaginary things still enjoyed these places, albeit in a more location appropriate way (often drunken parties).

I've got a Hearth I like to frequent.  It's a Taco Bell.

Auric Phenomena

After auditions for our spring show the night before last, a couple of my friends and I went out for dinner.  We hit a little mexican place a few blocks from campus.  What we ordered or talked about is immaterial (though it was a rather enjoyable evening).  When we walked in, I noticed a couple having a hushed conversation in the corner.  Their eyes were locked and he reached over to take her hand.  I like to think he was talking about their future together or something sweet like that.  Anyway, once they touched their silverware rose a few inches off the table.  Their forks and spoons actually floated upward a bit.  It wasn't particularly noticeable if you aren't normally looking for the unusual, but that's kind of what I do.  As soon as he pulled back so they could get up and pay their bill the silver fell but they just dismissed it as one of them bumping the table while rising.  I love how people do that.

It was an auric reaction.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't buy all the new-agey aura of divine energy crap.  But it's actually reasonably well established that most if not all living creatures have some kind of electromagnetic field or "aura" surrounding them.  Normally they're not visible though their effects can be seen; like the reaction between the lovers' auras in the restaurant.  Most people ignore them.  We can photograph them now, using Kirlian photography.  Under normal circumstances, they're not visible.

Under metanormal circumstances on the other hand, they are.  In particular, when someone us actively using magic their aura becomes a luminescent nimbus around their body.  The color is individual to each person though different people can have different or even same-colored auras.  Auras also include an olfactory component.  This is individual, often requiring a rarified sense of smell to distinguish.  They're even perceptible when the aura isn't visible as the person's "natural scent".  For instance, my aura manifests as a deep forest green accompanied by the scent of woodsmoke.  If one knows how to distinguish however, they'll find it smells like burning cedar.

So y'know that really smelly guy in you pass by every day?  Just be glad he isn't a magic user.