datura

The night started as normal. She returned from the club after playing a set and after meeting with a dear friend there, and she chose to sit down and play some video games to unwind. As she usually did, of course.

An hour passed, and suddenly, intense dehydration set in. She frowned. That wasn’t quite right, she had made sure to drink plenty before and after the show. But maybe it hadn’t been enough. She paused the game, stood up, and went to fix herself a glass of water. But one glass wasn’t enough. Two glasses wasn’t enough. Nothing she did was enough to slake the thirst. Somewhere around six glasses, she gave up and turned heel to return to her game.

Then, it hit her like a punch to the gut. The nausea and pain and dizziness. She was going to vomit, and wasn’t sure if she would make it to the bathroom in time. She felt herself lose control of her legs, and struggled to stumble far enough to find a spare kitchen bowl. It felt like she threw up for an hour after that, though it was perhaps maybe ten minutes, with about a minute between.

And after that, it was still.

Everything was normal, all except the undying thirst, and the sudden urge to urinate. She didn’t understand why she had suddenly gotten sick, but she wasn’t going to let it stop her from unwinding. She returned to her couch, and picked up her controller. The figures on the screen shifted and danced and twisted in strange, abnormal, unnatural ways. She accepted it. This was how Mario always looked. Mario always warped and tied himself in knots like snakes. The trails of blood? Always there. Bowser’s blood on the heel of his boots. Perfectly fine.

At some point, maybe hours later, she heard the door open and looked over to see her twin walk in. She greeted her, only to be met with a tirade, laying bare all her insecurities. Her sister never loved her, she merely put up with her. Her marriage was a sham, and her friends laughed behind her back. Her every action had led to her own destruction and she would be left with no worth, no one to love her, no one to even remember her.

She fired back with her own frustrations. In her eyes, the words flowed freely like water. It was, to her, a tirade so vulgar, so terrible that she couldn’t believe she had ever had this in her. Years of pent up fury, all falling away like the bursting of a dam. When it was finished, she looked up to see the pain in her twin’s eyes. The sheer betrayal, in high definition detail, as if it was all she could see.

It felt like something had ripped her heart out. She looked down to see her chest ripped open, her heart on the ground, and the blood streaming from the empty cavity. She stood there for a long while. This was what she deserved. The searing pain, the bloody mess. When she looked again, her twin was gone.

The television had disappeared. Sister must have taken it with her. How dare she steal her property? She needed to go get it back. She followed her out the front door and into the cold autumn streets, trailing blood from the gaping wound. She didn’t notice a difference. Maybe she felt lighter. Maybe she should have been heartless all along. But being heartless couldn’t soothe the emotional wounds still left. She needed to apologize. She needed vengeance.

What she found then was the familiar silhouette being torn to shreds by unknown things in the dark. Strange, eldritch things with too many arms and too many mouths. The road stretched on endlessly before her, and when she got there, there was nothing more than a pile of viscera.

She kneeled down and weeped. The falling tears cracked the pavement, and licks of flame began to rise from the rifts. They spread, rumbling and crackling, until they were vast tears in the earth. The body fell away, and where it fell, countless arms began to rise from the fire. She tried to run. She tried, so, so hard. But her footfalls spread the cracks, and wherever they spread, demonic arms soon reached out to pull her away. It sounded like thunder and hissed like an angry animal.

Now, she couldn’t find her home. She was on an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar city, running from the demonic host rising to take her to her ultimate fate. Blood still dripped from her chest. The blood spread the cracks behind her. A bony hand grabbed her ankle, then another. Then a dozen more. They pulled her down no matter how hard she fought. She punched and kicked and screamed and roared but nothing dissuaded the hundred-handed host.

She was dragged far into the black heat. Bitten by serpents and prodded by all manner of weaponry and violated in new and creative ways. Her existence became a swirling haze of fear and pain unlike anything she had ever seen.

And then, she was in the hospital.

Reality and the dream collided somewhere horrible. She was seeing things, she was sure of it. But she didn’t know what was an illusion and what was tangible. The tubes and wires flickered between horrible worms and medical equipment. The orderlies’ faces rearranged and she didn’t know whether or not it was real.

Slowly, it faded away.

It felt like she had been run over once, and then again. She had a headache. She hurt. She could barely see. But she could think clearly.

What had she been slipped at that show?