Variance

            Her head hurt.  It hurt bad.  The sun hurt her eyes.  Now that she thought about it, everything kind of hurt.  She saw herself just standing there though.  Just… standing there.  She knew she was on someone’s lawn and the house looked so pretty, but really very far away.  She knew how impolite it must be to stand on someone’s lawn like this, but she couldn’t help herself.  She just couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes off of this wonderful, little palace with the puzzle pieced red brick.

            Such a nice home, she thought.  The pain, not quite dulling, just slowly seemed to become less important.  Whoever lives here must really care about it.  Everything is so nice.  I think I’d like to live in a home like this.

            She could feel every unspoken word come to her like sap finding its way down a tree.  It would come, but it was slow and thick.  The ideas came from the right place, but it was as though they weren’t quite sure they were on the right path.  That was okay though, everything was just fine.  How could it be anything but when surrounded by all this lovely green grass with the brown piddle stain from that cute little goof of a dog.  Yeah, that silly little dog. 

            I’d like a doggie like that, she could see the dog in her mind and that made her smile.  It was nice to smile amidst all the pain.  There was no dog though, not anywhere she could see.  Well, I’m sure the family here would have that dog.  How could they not?  I… I wouldn’t see the sense in not.

            There was a distant understanding that she had yet to move, but just like the house, it felt so very far away.  She could feel her up curved lips holding the shape of a smile and she felt the urge to hold it in place as long as she could.  It was hard.  She felt the muscles in her cheeks begin to tremble.  It was just like that time someone convinced her to go to yoga.  Gosh, that was awful.  Who was that again?  But as she contemplated chewing out that person with the name that was just out of reach, she knew the smile was fading and that made her eyes hurt more.  The more she felt the pain in her eyes, the more she felt her head.  Then came her neck.  Then her back.  Then her stomach.  And for the first time since she couldn’t say when, she became acutely aware of how many little muscles she had in her body, because they all hurt.  What didn’t hurt, carried a dull ache.

             Suddenly, like a collapsing star, every single thing that felt so far off blasted towards her, suffocating her, crushing every fiber of her being.  She was still standing in the same spot, but now she was somewhere else entirely and she had never wanted anything more than to get away.  She tried to scream.  She tried so hard, but couldn’t.  Her mouth opened so wide that her jaw hurt.  Her lungs squeezed out air so hard that her ribs felt like they’d break.  She could feel her throat tearing from the pressure.  She wanted to scream so loud, but there was no sound.  There was no sound anywhere, from anything.  She wanted to shut her eyes, but that might mean that the pretty little house might go away forever. 

            Finally, after what felt like eternity, her lungs gave out and her stomach burned from all the otherworldly power that had been summoned.  She fell to her hands and knees, never once taking her eyes off the majesty of the puzzle pieced red bricks.  Gasping for air, tears spilling out of her strained eyes, she tried to make sense of all the new information flooding her brain like a broken dam.  For some brief, blissful-by-comparison moment, her mind had built a wall around itself, shielding her from everything just outside her line of sight.  Where the dam had broken, there were violent streaks of blurred colors and grating, gnashing screeches and painful sensations never experienced and barking.

            That was all she needed, the barking.  She heard it echo in her head and the sound seemed to lead her through all the chaos storming through her mind like hurricane.  The world morphed around her and she was back in her car, driving home through her suburb.  The neighbors down the block had planted a bed of roses that made her cozy neighborhood seem so alive.  There was so little traffic around there, especially that time of day.  Admiring the roses, she recalled zoning out, not minding the empty streets.  There was her goofy little dog posted on her lawn, just barking away.  She remembered the smirk she had as she thought he must have seen a squirrel.  Scanning her neighbors’ lawns, eyeing the roses, listening to the barking, her mind just wasn’t ready to catch the sound of another roaring engine.

            Then, on her hands and knees, her burning eyes slammed shut.  It was happening all over again and she couldn’t stop it.  The speeding blue mass from the corner of her eye, the wrathful sound of a blaring horn, the clawing, screeching of brakes being pushed to their limit.  Then her whole body wrenching to the left as her instincts told her to run while her mind tried cutting the wheel.  More barking.  Then yelping. 

            Squeezing her eyes shut as hard as she could, she tried to make sense of what her memory showed next.  She just couldn’t though.  It was too much.  Up was down, sounds attacked her from every direction, and everything in her car was suddenly weightless, taking flight.  Then nothing. 

            Cringing on her hands and knees, her mind’s eye showed a woman crawling out of a car’s sunroof onto the pavement.  A sense of unease crept up through all of the other emotions as she told herself that the top of a car couldn’t possibly lead to the ground.  Snapshots in her head showed this bizarre woman crawling from her car, then to the sidewalk, then to the green grass, and finally a scene of a woman with wild blonde hair, horribly crumpled clothes, and no shoes standing on a field of green with a giant red castle.  Poor woman.  Thank god that could never happen to me.  Someone should help her.  This time though, she couldn’t escape reality.  The veil her mind had made to protect her had failed.  She remembered every horrible second and she felt her body tremble.

            The yelping of that goofy little dog ricocheted in her skull like a bullet, becoming more violent as it bled into the sound of her car flipping.  She begged for the sounds to go away again.  The weight of it all was crushing.  Then silence enveloped the world again and tears found their way through her sealed shut eyes.

            Moments ticked away like years as she processed what had happened.  Soon she could feel her heart cease its attempt at jailbreaking and breathing felt less like whiplashes.  She could let the sound of that silly little dog’s terrified yelping return to echo inside of her again, despite the feeling of despair it brought her.  It was different this time though.  She wasn’t fighting through the sounds of her own body lashing out against her any longer.  The yelping wasn’t coming from inside her head now.  No, and it wasn’t yelping either, she thought.  It was a whimpering sound, the same begging whimpering she heard over and over when she couldn’t leave the house after the divorce.  The same begging whimpering that urged her onward after every tragedy. 

            Finally, after a very long while, she found the strength to open her eyes, having them unexpectedly meet, a concerned pair looking back at her, sharing all of her pain.  She told herself everything was just fine and this time, she didn’t need her imagination to convince her.