Who Knows When We Shall Meet Again
“Goodbye my love, the tide waits for me.”
-Alan Parsons Project
Laying in bed, focusing on some long journey that had no characters or plot. Anything to stay away from a thought expressing true consciousness. If she could keep this up, she would be able to return to her natural state, Jean’s Sleep. Insomnia, or her cellphone, had got the best of Jean this particular night and she was face down in her pillows, resorting to tricking herself into being asleep with vivid fantasies and daydreams she had no control over. If she had tried to take control of the fantasy, had Jean started thinking, she would find herself awake and unable to slip away again. Her last attempt at a quick sleep-math-problem gave her a disappointing answer: were she to fall asleep right at that exact moment, she would get 4 hours and 27 minutes of sleep before she would need to wake up and get ready for class. Jean’s fingers twitched and subconsciously reached towards her charging phone which, with its lights, would further decrease the time she would be allowed to rest tonight. Luckily, in her mind’s eye, Jean could see a color-changing ball roll past a window she had never seen before. Although everything was cloudy and new, she had no chance to question where she was or what she was seeing. Jean was asleep. Finally.
The dream continued on without memory.
Jean’s alarm went off, “Time keeps flowing like a river -”, she slammed the stop button on the cellphone next to her hip without even having to look at the screen. “Whatever.” Jean dragged her comforter off herself and slipped her foot onto the cold wooden flooring next to her bed. “Fuck.” Although it took all of her efforts, she was ableto stand up, hunchbacked, and wipe her eyes into being fully awake. One hot shower and scalding black tea later, she was sitting on her couch hating herself. “Unbelievable. I need to get sleeping pills or something.” There would be no real breakfast today, she had purposely set her alarm too late in the morning for the time to do something like that. She stopped thinking, just as she had done this last night in bed, and closed her eyes. A second of rest later, 15 minutes had passed. Jean had missed her bus. She used a driving service app to secure a ride directly to Summer Hall, the location of her 8 am physics class. She put her earbuds in and played Talking out of Turn loud enough that her driver would know right away she was not willing to speak this early in the day.
The front door for Summer Hall was decades old and made out of dense, thick metal. With more physical effort than she would rather apply, Jean opened up the door and found a line of people at the door for her class. No one had unlocked the room yet it seems. “Whatever.” She took this extra time to go to a campus vending machine and use some extra quarters to get a cookie. Nothing could make this 8 am good, but a cookie would make it better. When she returned to the room, the line was gone. “Guess Dr. Allen got here late. Probably fell asleep on her couch too.” No one had bothered to put a stopper in the door, so Jean had to pull this one open too. Although this one was just made out of wood, it was somehow even heavier and harder to get open. “AHHHHH.” Nothing was going tobe easy today.
Jean walked herself, her body on a leash to her brain, over to her usual spot in the lecture hall. She sat down on the old gray plastic chair she always did. It was comfortable enough to sit there for an hour and a half, but not so comfortable that you could get through the class without shifting your weight around a couple of times. Maybe it wasn’t the chair’s fault, “my stupid bony ass.” Dr. Allen was at the front of the lecture hall, standing in front of a podium that was connected to a ceiling projector via the computer resting inside a small cabinet. Jean thought her professor might start to speak soon so she pulled out her earbuds and rolled them up carelessly, shoving them into the pockets of her backpack after.
Dr. Allen finally did begin to speak. “Start - circuit - capacitor - RC circuit - test - performance - next - coming up - next week - small break - last month’s topic - guest - sound - harmony - travel - speaker - renown - work - MIT - today - abroad - frequencies - enjoy - sit back and get a bit comfortable - questions - homework - postponed report - audiologist - cosmologist - Finch - not Darwin - without further ado - guest.” Jean was nearly asleep again. Her time perception was not perfect right now but she imagined that she had zoned out for maybe 5 minutes of time during her professor’s introduction of a guest speaker. Dr. Finch was here to talk about - something. “I’ll figure it out I guess.”
Dr. Finch began to speak very quietly. The whole class motioned to people around them to be quiet and everyone shifted to their momentary position in theirown gray chairs. The consensus was to be as quiet as possible to hear this man say - something. Jean focused as her sleepy mind would let her and, in combination with a class of silent people and some lip-reading - she was able to get an idea of what Dr. Finch was saying.
“Here, in my hand, is something quite extraordinary-” a brown suitcase, “-although you may not be able to understand why at first. For decades I have been one of a small team of scientists from around the globe researching how sound perception can affect our own perception of all of reality. Some physicists believe we live in a universe made up of 12 dimensions, something Dr. Allen told me you all spoke about a while back. Well, it is impossible for us to see these other dimensions - our eyes just don’t have the ability to do it. Furthermore, even if our eyes could see these dimensions, our brains are programmed to understand a three-dimensional world. We would have no clue what we were seeing. But, after some data that came about after a hydrogen bomb testing, we started wondering if we could interact with these other dimensions from other means. When the bomb was dropped on an old steel mill, primarily to test its destructive capabilities, there were some bits of metal and shrapnel that interacted with each other in a way we never really took the time to think about before. Somewhere within about a one-mile radius where the bomb was dropped, something happened that changed the way we think about sound.” Jean was incredibly bored. Somehow this guy was able to make his speech so far last what felt like an hour. He hadn’t even got to anything important yet, he was still inhis preamble phase. “What a waste of time.”
Dr. Finch continued, “The metal that scraped together created a very very specific sound. When one of the researchers, assigned to analyze the sound of the bomb, listened to a tape of the explosion, they claimed to momentarily hallucinate and imagine an entirely different reality around themselves. About 8 years went by before I, when performing a meta-analysis of different research on very loud sounds, found this researcher and talked with them about their experience. I had recently attended a conference where I listened to several physicists speak upon the nature of reality and the potential to travel between dimensions and some of what this researcher was saying seemed to match up with what they had guessed a human would experience if they were to travel inter-dimensionally. I contacted these physicists I heard speak and the sound researcher, those scientists, and I, all started putting together quite a theory. Twenty years later, we finally know what happened.”
Jean looked over at Dr. Allen. She had a very confused look on her face and seemed to dislike what Dr. Finch was talking about. Jean’s guess: Dr. Finch did not tell Dr.Allen what he was here to speak about today, not honestly at least. Rather than stopping or questioning Dr. Finch, Dr. Allen simply pulled out her phone and left the room. Dr. Finch, who had never stopped talking, then said, “Everything else I have left to explain, will sound like unbelievable nonsense to all of you. I could write every equation, explain each part with intricate detail, and most of you would either not care or simply not believe enough to remember. So, instead, I am going to show you what I mean.”
The lights in the room seemed to dim quickly and heavily. Jean lookedat the ceiling and then at her classmates, but none of them even seemed to notice. The room was suddenly dressed in black. Jean blinked her eyes and tried to get some kind of night vision so she could tell what was happening. Her heart started racing, beating so hard in her chest she started to double-over in pain. Her palms became drenched in sweat and she could feel her legs heating up as her thigh muscles clenched together. Heavy breathing was followed by the inability to move any part of her body. She geared up her back and chest to scream but the room was bright once again. Her classmates stared at the front of the class as if nothing happened. Jean looked back to the podium and could not find Dr. Finch. She glanced all around the room briefly, with no success. “Behind you miss.”
Jean was completely paralyzed in fear. She had never felt so terrified in her whole life. She had not had an easy life and had been through more than most people her age, but this felt different. She could not explain what was so awful about hearing Dr. Finch’s voice directly behind her. All she knew was that her body was screaming at her to stand up and run out of the classroom. Despite this, she most definitely could not move. She heard two clicks directly behind her head and the sound of something very heavy falling straight to the ground. “That was the suitcase.” Without a way to explain how Jean could picture what was happening behind her in perfect detail. Dr. Finch had hastily opened the suitcase and pulled out some kind of tool, letting the suitcase fall to the ground afterward without care.
Though she could not see what he was holdingin his large, rough hands, she could picture it very clearly in her mind. Finch was holding a large thin cylinder of rusted metal. It was very screw-like with a corkscrew pattern from top to bottom. On the piece of metal, there were four nuts that seemed to be made of polished gold. Jean felt the air behind her quickly change. Finch pulled out another piece of metal, nearly identical to the first cylinder, and pressed it hard to the bottom of the metal he was holding already. “Watch this!” Finch had gotten much louder and was, in fact, yelling when he said this. Finch scraped the two pieces of metal together with great speed and force, clearly hitting all of the golden nuts that were screwed onto the first piece. The sound that was made cannot be described, only heard. What can be described, however, is Jean’s reaction. She felt her spine twist and sting with sharp pain - her head fell hard upon the table in front of her. Hard enough to chip a tooth or break a nose, although she did neither.
A period of time passed that felt simultaneously like half a second and an hour to Jean. She felt like she had been squeezed through a tube too tiny for her body and rolled out a mile long. Although the pain was immense and the experience was horrifying, as soon as it was over Jean started to forget what had happened, adding to her poor idea of how much time had passed. Everything was dark and she was standing on some material that she could feel herself slowly slipping deeper into. She was definitely no longer in the lecture hall. Jean rubbed her eyes with heavy hands, trying to get them to adjust to wherever shewas now. “Did that guy drug and kidnap me?”After a small amount of time, she began to see again. Wherever she had been taken was not pitch black and was, in fact, not black at all.
Reaching from the ground high into the sky (or maybe towards some kind of ceiling) there were gigantic light grey structures. They appeared to be entirely out of the smoke, or some other material that was slightly see-through. These structures resembled large buildings and seemed to shift back and forth like a holographic sticker. Jean looked down at her feet and saw grey mush below her. In her mind, it was some kind of clay or very fine, dark sand. As she looked towards a distant area where there was no giant structure in the way, she began to panic. She blinked and rubbed her eyes but what she had seen had not been a part of her imagination. Far in the distance, there was an incredibly grey sky void of any clouds or light. Moving on the ground in that distant area was a great white mass, seemingly made out of tentacles that writhed in and out of its own body. Whatever was over there was certainly not any kind of animal she had ever seen or heard about before. “It's all so clear. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been drugged.” That’s when she heard the bell.
All the air was instantly filled with an immense harmonious ringing. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and was getting louder and louder. Before long, the sound was louder than any concert Jean could imagine and she was forced to cover her ears in order to stop their painful ringing. The bell was clearly struck over and over with great force, each hit pushing the bell furtherpast its limit. It seemed to have no rhythm to it, no melody either, almost as if someone had taken a great bell and dropped it down the side of a very rocky mountain. Maybe that's what was really happening. As the sound picked up, the grey building seemed to vibrate and sway, losing almost all of its shape but still reaching to the sky.
Jean fell to her knees and stuck her fingers in her ears. At the same time, she released a scream and cried. The air in her chest reverberated and shouted out past her shaking tongue, between her wide-open jaws. She had begun to hope that if she screamed loud enough whoever was striking the bell would stop and make sure she was okay. It had never occurred to her, in her child-like plan, that whoever was working the bell might not care about her pain and may not have even been human. The pitch of the sound doubled and Jean went higher. Much louder too. Her throat felt as if it was being ripped apart by the force of the howl, nearly at its breaking point. Her lungs deflated, letting her know there was no air left to scream with. Now, just as suddenly as the bell sound had begun, it stopped once again.
All of the great grey structures stopped their movement and seemed to lock into place. The ground underneath Jean’s feet solidified as well and she no longer was sinking into the clay. She sucked in air as hard as possible and tried to regain some sense. Exhausted, she fell onto her side and rolled over to her back. Her hands left her ears and clung to her chest like a vampire sleeping in a coffin. After a couple of blinks and attempts toget back to reality, Jean looked around and saw that nothing had changed. She stared out to the distance again and that same white monster was still out there, squeezing its body and stabbing itself with its tentacles over and over. “Fuck. Please stay there.” Sadly, she found out her issues were a lot closer than that.
The grey structures that now stood still began to move side to side, as if something was trying to push itself out from inside each of them. Within a quarter-mile of where she was laying, there were probably about 20 of these giant smoky buildings. Once again, all of them stopped their movement. This time, the standstill was followed by a great black line forming in the center of each building. The line started at the ground and shot up to the sky like a bullet. After a few seconds, the darkness began to widen and stretch towards the edges of each structure as if it was permanently ‘deleting’ the grey. At this point, for some reason, Jean pissed herself. She closed her eyes and cried as the hot liquid spread over her lap and partially up her shirt as well. She tried to imagine anything else but kept coming back to the white monster in the distance. The thought of it made her nauseous and dizzy. If she kept using her imagination, she would end up puking on herself as well. Her eyes opened and she found an army of humanoid white figures walking out of each building.
They appeared to walk upright and many of them were carrying familiar items. Among the white patterns, Jean discerned suitcases, umbrellas, and humanoids speaking into their hand as if they were holding a cellphone. “Maybe the bell rang because it was time for them to getoff work. Is it five?”. She stood up one leg at a time and tried to get a better view of the crowd. She felt her urine slide from her lap down her legs in large, dense streams. “Fuck.” She ignored the feeling and stared out towards the moving white light people. She started to walk up to a group of them that had stopped and started staring at each other outside one of the buildings. It looked as if they were speaking, but Jean couldn’t hear anything. She tried to speak and nothing came out. She tried again and although she could feel the air vibrating in her throat, no sound would come out. “Am I deaf now?”. She got closer and closer to them but they still wouldn’t notice her. “Are they blind?”. She pushed forwards towards the group and finally got close enough to touch one.
Jean leaned in to touch one of their shoulders. For some reason, her hand seemed to slide right off and down to their side. The humanoid she had tried to touch was holding what appeared to be a large suitcase. In desperation she kicked at the case; her foot slipped right through and she lost balance, falling to the ground. She shifted her weight to both of her knees and looked down at the ground defeated. At that same moment, the light figure next to the business one walked up to her and then directly through her. It seemed as if they were all ghosts that couldn’t see or hear her and could simply walk straight through her, avoiding her presence entirely. “No, that doesn’t make sense. They are all talking to each other and doing their own business.” She saw two of the humanoids walking away from her, holding their whitehands together. “They can touch each other but not me. No one can see, hear, or touch me. I’m the ghost.” Jean began to cry again for the fourth time today.
Jean spent the better part of the next hour going back and forth between crying and walking around pointlessly. No matter how far she walked, NEVER in the direction of the white tentacle monster, everything seemed to stay the same. Although she imagined she had gone at least a few miles away from where she originally found herself, she could only find more giant grey structures and white figures that couldn’t notice she was there. She wanted so badly to cry out for help, but she knew that there was no one who could listen. Now, after she had been in this place for well over an hour, she started to think back to what Dr. Finch had said. Maybe, just maybe, all that talk about traveling to other dimensions was real. Maybe, whatever sound he had made with those metal rods had actually sent her somewhere else or gave her the ability to see the world in a different way. “No, no. I am definitely somewhere else. There are no tentacle monsters in the real world.” But maybe this was a real-world too. Just a different one than hers. “Fuck.” If Dr. Finch had sent her here on purpose, maybe he would take her out too. She started to smile at the thought that he might stop her horror soon and that she would be back in the lecture hall with the shitty plastic chairs. Then she had another thought. Maybe he hadn’t done this on purpose and maybe she was going to be here forever.
Everything Jean had owned that she had not been holding or wearing had notcome to this place with her. Her phone had been on the desk so it was still in the lecture hall. Her backpack was hanging off the back of the chair. In her pockets, all she had was a mechanical pencil she had shoved in before leaving home. “What can I even do with a mechanical pencil?” The reason she had started taking stock of what was with her now was that she had suddenly given up hope of surviving. She knew that she could walk into one of the grey buildings or walk towards that white monster and she would probably die. But, if she was going to stop living she didn’t want to go in some horrible, painful way. She scratched her finger with the pencil hard trying to get her hand to bleed. It hurt, but she didn’t have the willpower to push hard enough to break the skin. She looked all around her. Grey buildings, grey ground, grey skies, white humanoids, and a white monster. Jean got back down on her knees and gripped the pencil hard. She closed her eyes and pressed the pencil into her thigh as hard as she could. Her hand lifted high above her head and held its place. She screamed as loud as she could and brought the pencil down with all the force she could muster. The graphite tip pierced through her skin and deep into her muscle. Blood swelled up after the impact and began to soak her pants. “Those literally just dried too.” She gripped the body of the pencil and pulled it out of her leg. Although she expected some kind of release when she unplugged the wound, it instantly seared with pain and blood flowed out in all directions. “FUCK.”
For a few minutes, Jean wasin awe of herself for what she had just done. She kept staring at the hole in her pants leg and her own bloody right hand. To pull herself away, she closed her eyes once again. The pain was real. The ground was real. Her wound was real. No matter how badly she wanted to wake up from a dream, everything would be the same when she opened her eyes. Tears welled up but she shook her head and pushed them back. Her lips quivered in the shape of a great frown, making her look like a sad clown. Her left hand pushed in between her two legs and fell hard onto the ground below her. It was still solid. She rubbed her right hand on her shirt, removing the blood so she could get a better grip on the pencil again. Her eyes peered down at her left hand. First, she stared at the fingertips. They were covered with abrasions from some other point in her short journey here, maybe from scratching into the ground as she heard the bell ringing. She shuddered at the memory of it. Her gaze shifted past her open palm and down to her wrists.
When Jean was 7 years old, she had spent a month with her aunt after her mother had a very intense breakdown. Her aunt was very complementary and was always sure to say something nice when she first saw Jean. “Your hair is so long Jeanie! With some braids and some flowers you could look like a princess”. Jean’s size was something of an issue her whole childhood, she was always too thin or not thin enough for her mother. Because of different diets and exercise spaced out between periods of weight gain, she fluctuated very frequently and never feltat home in her own body. Being with her aunt was a period of release for her and whenever she thought about it, a smile would grow on her face. Her mind took her to a night where her aunt and she binged through a season of an old murder-mystery-comedy tv show. They were eating popcorn and fresh brownies together, sipping on “champagne”, which was really just sparkling grape juice. They stayed up late laughing with each other and pretending to be detectives working a case. When they finished their season, it was well past Jean’s usual bedtime and she had grown incredibly tired. Her aunt held her hand and walked her to the room she was staying in. Jean climbed into her bed and was tucked in with care and compassion. Her aunt leaned down and kissed her hand, saying goodnight. Before she turned to walk away and turn off the lights, she looked down at Jean’s little hand, covered in nail polish from when they gave themselves ‘manicures’. “Jeanie, you have the daintiest little wrists. They’re so cute. They make your whole hand look even prettier.” It wasn’t a particularly great compliment, but Jean was not used to this sort of treatment and her eyes filled with tears of happiness. “Thank you”.
Jean looked down at her dainty wrist and prepared to shove the mechanical pencil through its veins. If she came down at the right angle and with enough force, maybe she would be able to slice them open and she could bleed out. If she was going to die, she was going to be in charge of it.
Jean locked her elbow and stiffened her arm. She gripped the pencil tight and lined it up with the edge of her wrist. She turned her wrist slightly to makeit so that the point would glide through the length of her target. After lined up properly, her hand lifted head-high and she began to flex the muscles in her arm. She sat there for a moment, questioning her current manic plan of action. Would she really be stuck here forever? Was any of this even real? Her brain whispered a strong ‘yes duh’ to her and she brushed off any more second thoughts. Secretly, she had wanted to do this for years anyway. Her fantasies usually took place in her tub or in her bed, but this ghostly hell seemed like a more reasonable location to die in the end. Why had she been so unhappy before? Had she only known that being here was an option, maybe she would have appreciated the rest of her life a bit more. “It could’ve been a lot worse I guess.” Without allowing for any more thinking, Jean slammed her ‘blade’ down towards her lifeline and started to close her eyes. Just as her pencil approached the veins, a figure showed itself very close to her in her peripherals. In a state of surprise, she lost her aim and the pencil found a place deep in her palm, poking through the other side of her hand. “Darn.”
Jean looked down at her failure and felt immense pain for a brief moment. She felt incredibly lightheaded and her head began to fall forward slightly. Her neck caught her and she turned her head back to the approaching figure. In a second, she was able to recognize who had walked up to her. A greyish-white silhouette of Dr. Finch was now about 3 feet from her face and seemed to be talking. Jean was unable to hear him, but his moving head and arm movementseemed to convey some sort of pretentiousness as if he were telling her that this whole thing was her fault for being a bad student. As he continued to speak down to her, he seemed to grow larger and larger. “Wait. No. Wait, you are.” Dr. Finch was growing quickly. Suddenly he appeared to be 10 feet tall. His long arms started stretching towards her. Jean flung her whole body in the opposite direction and fell very painfully onto her back. He could definitely see her. She wanted to ask him to help her, to take her out of this place, but she found herself almost paralyzed in fear of him. She was deep in an awful nightmare and Dr. Finch was the source of all the terror and pain. He leaned back and seemed to grow even larger.
His figure reached up to the sky and the silhouette kept increasing until she felt like an ant next to him. Jean could now clearly see each divet and lace of his boots, the size of a car, right in front of her. Her heart began to race in her chest and vomit pushed its way up to her mouth. She ignored her nausea and swallowed hard, keeping it down. She felt like prey for a wolf, completely helpless and unable to run away at this late stage. She looked up and saw his hand coming down fast towards her. Before she was able to shut her eyes and pretend, his fingers wrapped around her body, lifting her like a doll. Jean fell limp and tears ran down her cheeks. He squeezed tighter on her body and his fingertips pushed hard against her skin. The pressure got stronger and stronger on her bone and muscle until they reached their breaking point. Severaldigits ripped into her body. Jean was impaled hard several times and she found herself unable to breathe. “My lungs.” Her brain shifted into overdrive, anticipating death. Bright lights full of color exploded before her eyes and she began to feel immense joy. A second hand approached her and seemed to wipe all that away before she could actually enjoy it. Both of the hands cupped around her and she was lifted towards the sky with enough speed to break the sound barrier. Her skin seemed to pull and rip with the wind pressure coming between the palms. In a second, her body seemed to be flowing with electricity and everything felt like static to her. She slipped quietly away into nothingness, devoid of all feelings or thoughts.
Suddenly, Jean regained consciousness and felt her neck outstretched with her chin on her chest. She sprang her head up and looked around, finding herself back in the physics classroom. “I was pulled out.” Her eyes darted around the room. She saw the rest of her classmates shifting and waking up in their seats, as if they had just gone through the same thing. She looked down to her leg and hand; there appeared to be no wounds. Based on the feeling of her pants, she had not bled or peed at all either. Dr. Finch was standing silently at the front of the class, looking very proud of himself.
Jean waited no time, she grabbed her bag and jumped out of her seat. She started to jog towards the door when a girl’s hand caught her wrist. “Are you okay?” The girl who was speaking had been in a couple of Jean’s classes and had been a lab partner enough times that they were pretty friendly. “Did the same thing that happened tome happen to you?” The girl looked stunned to hear that question. “I hope… I hope whatever happened to you wasn’t what I just did.” That seemed like a yes. “I have to go, I’m sorry.” Jean turned away and sped out of the classroom. That same door that had seemed heavy before flew open with the force of Jean’s current adrenaline rush. She sprinted out of the building and jogged over to a campus parking lot to catch her breath and make some sense of what just happened. She looked down at her hands and watched them shake. She wanted to get her phone and call her aunt. Or maybe just get an uber home. But, that would require enough focus to put her passcode in, something she knew she wouldn’t be able to do right now. In the corner of her eye, she could see a white silhouette. “Dr. Finch.” She instinctively jumped out of her state of shock and ran in the direct opposite direction. Out of the corner of her other eye, the silhouette was there again. She turned back a bit and found him standing still in where she thought she saw him before. She shut her eyes and ran in a new direction, away from both of him. She ran fast and hard, but when she opened her eyes - he was there. She started to spin around aimlessly, unable to get him out of her field of vision.
Jean ran back to Summer Hall and ran inside. “He’s here too.” She turned into a hallway and saw him standing at the end of it. On her left, was a door to a class. She ripped it open and shut it tight behind her as soon as she was inside. She looked over the classroomand found Dr. Finch sitting in the back, staring intensely at her. He seemed to look like the figures she had seen there, white and almost see-through. She did not take the time to consider if any of this was possible and left the classroom in an instant. Despite the fact that she could not get him out of her peripheral vision, Jean continued to run through the building making one sporadic turn after another.
Eventually, she found herself at another door leading outside. She took her chances and sprinted straight out of it. Behind a tree at the corner of the walkway out, someone jumped out. It was the girl from class. “Hey, Jean. Stop. Stop, I have something to tell you.” Jean breathed heavily and stared deep into her eyes. “What?” The girl looked down at the ground and back at her. “So, after you left class. Dr. Finch started talking again. I couldn’t really understand everything that he was saying, but he seemed so angry. Angry that you left early. He said something about going to get you. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what that means, but I mean… it's him. I think we’re all scared of Dr. Finch now. I don’t know what to do Jean. I want to go home. I want to die, I don't know. Fuck Jean. Did you see all that shit too?” Jean definitely had. She ignored what this girl said and started running again, taking no more time. For the time being, she couldn’t see him. She needed to go.
Jean ran over to the closest train stop she could find. She shuffled through her bag violently, pulling her wallet out. She used her school pass and pushed past the metal gates. She walked upstairs to the platform, nervously looking forhim the whole time. He still wasn’t there. A minute later a train approached. Not one that could take her home, but a train going anywhere else worked for her. She got on and looked around the train car. She was alone. The doors shut and the train moved down the track. “Fuck me.” She sat down and put her head in her hands. What had just happened to her? What was happening now? A hand fell on her shoulder. She already knew. She cocked her head and looked up at Dr. Finch’s blank white face. His lips puckered up and he spoke. “It’s time to get up now.”
Jean rolled over onto her back, she had been asleep on her stomach. Her blankets were wrapped tightly around her and her pillow had shifted down her side, away from her head. She looked all around at her dark bedroom and screamed. Her thoughts cleared and she became nervous that her roommates had heard her. “A nightmare. Thank god.” A white towel hanging on a hook on her door caused a moment of brief panic, but she recognized it as a towel and calmed down. She walked to her light switch and flipped it up. She wasn’t going to be in darkness anymore tonight. She opened her closet and checked inside, hoping she didn’t find a white tentacle monster. Everything appeared to be fine now. She walked back to her bed and sat down. Jean took a couple of deep breaths and massaged the stress out of her hands. She pulled her phone off the charger to check the time and see if she would still have time to get some sleep. The first thing she saw was a text notification from the girl in her class. “Hey. Are you okay?” Notwhat Jean wanted to see right now. “Fuck.”
“Goodbye my love, the tide waits for me.”
-Alan Parsons Project
Laying in bed, focusing on some long journey that had no characters or plot. Anything to stay away from a thought expressing true consciousness. If she could keep this up, she would be able to return to her natural state, Jean’s Sleep. Insomnia, or her cellphone, had got the best of Jean this particular night and she was face down in her pillows, resorting to tricking herself into being asleep with vivid fantasies and daydreams she had no control over. If she had tried to take control of the fantasy, had Jean started thinking, she would find herself awake and unable to slip away again. Her last attempt at a quick sleep-math-problem gave her a disappointing answer: were she to fall asleep right at that exact moment, she would get 4 hours and 27 minutes of sleep before she would need to wake up and get ready for class. Jean’s fingers twitched and subconsciously reached towards her charging phone which, with its lights, would further decrease the time she would be allowed to rest tonight. Luckily, in her mind’s eye, Jean could see a color-changing ball roll past a window she had never seen before. Although everything was cloudy and new, she had no chance to question where she was or what she was seeing. Jean was asleep. Finally.
The dream continued on without memory.
Jean’s alarm went off, “Time keeps flowing like a river -”, she slammed the stop button on the cellphone next to her hip without even having to look at the screen. “Whatever.” Jean dragged her comforter off herself and slipped her foot onto the cold wooden flooring next to her bed. “Fuck.” Although it took all of her efforts, she was ableto stand up, hunchbacked, and wipe her eyes into being fully awake. One hot shower and scalding black tea later, she was sitting on her couch hating herself. “Unbelievable. I need to get sleeping pills or something.” There would be no real breakfast today, she had purposely set her alarm too late in the morning for the time to do something like that. She stopped thinking, just as she had done this last night in bed, and closed her eyes. A second of rest later, 15 minutes had passed. Jean had missed her bus. She used a driving service app to secure a ride directly to Summer Hall, the location of her 8 am physics class. She put her earbuds in and played Talking out of Turn loud enough that her driver would know right away she was not willing to speak this early in the day.
The front door for Summer Hall was decades old and made out of dense, thick metal. With more physical effort than she would rather apply, Jean opened up the door and found a line of people at the door for her class. No one had unlocked the room yet it seems. “Whatever.” She took this extra time to go to a campus vending machine and use some extra quarters to get a cookie. Nothing could make this 8 am good, but a cookie would make it better. When she returned to the room, the line was gone. “Guess Dr. Allen got here late. Probably fell asleep on her couch too.” No one had bothered to put a stopper in the door, so Jean had to pull this one open too. Although this one was just made out of wood, it was somehow even heavier and harder to get open. “AHHHHH.” Nothing was going tobe easy today.
Jean walked herself, her body on a leash to her brain, over to her usual spot in the lecture hall. She sat down on the old gray plastic chair she always did. It was comfortable enough to sit there for an hour and a half, but not so comfortable that you could get through the class without shifting your weight around a couple of times. Maybe it wasn’t the chair’s fault, “my stupid bony ass.” Dr. Allen was at the front of the lecture hall, standing in front of a podium that was connected to a ceiling projector via the computer resting inside a small cabinet. Jean thought her professor might start to speak soon so she pulled out her earbuds and rolled them up carelessly, shoving them into the pockets of her backpack after.
Dr. Allen finally did begin to speak. “Start - circuit - capacitor - RC circuit - test - performance - next - coming up - next week - small break - last month’s topic - guest - sound - harmony - travel - speaker - renown - work - MIT - today - abroad - frequencies - enjoy - sit back and get a bit comfortable - questions - homework - postponed report - audiologist - cosmologist - Finch - not Darwin - without further ado - guest.” Jean was nearly asleep again. Her time perception was not perfect right now but she imagined that she had zoned out for maybe 5 minutes of time during her professor’s introduction of a guest speaker. Dr. Finch was here to talk about - something. “I’ll figure it out I guess.”
Dr. Finch began to speak very quietly. The whole class motioned to people around them to be quiet and everyone shifted to their momentary position in theirown gray chairs. The consensus was to be as quiet as possible to hear this man say - something. Jean focused as her sleepy mind would let her and, in combination with a class of silent people and some lip-reading - she was able to get an idea of what Dr. Finch was saying.
“Here, in my hand, is something quite extraordinary-” a brown suitcase, “-although you may not be able to understand why at first. For decades I have been one of a small team of scientists from around the globe researching how sound perception can affect our own perception of all of reality. Some physicists believe we live in a universe made up of 12 dimensions, something Dr. Allen told me you all spoke about a while back. Well, it is impossible for us to see these other dimensions - our eyes just don’t have the ability to do it. Furthermore, even if our eyes could see these dimensions, our brains are programmed to understand a three-dimensional world. We would have no clue what we were seeing. But, after some data that came about after a hydrogen bomb testing, we started wondering if we could interact with these other dimensions from other means. When the bomb was dropped on an old steel mill, primarily to test its destructive capabilities, there were some bits of metal and shrapnel that interacted with each other in a way we never really took the time to think about before. Somewhere within about a one-mile radius where the bomb was dropped, something happened that changed the way we think about sound.” Jean was incredibly bored. Somehow this guy was able to make his speech so far last what felt like an hour. He hadn’t even got to anything important yet, he was still inhis preamble phase. “What a waste of time.”
Dr. Finch continued, “The metal that scraped together created a very very specific sound. When one of the researchers, assigned to analyze the sound of the bomb, listened to a tape of the explosion, they claimed to momentarily hallucinate and imagine an entirely different reality around themselves. About 8 years went by before I, when performing a meta-analysis of different research on very loud sounds, found this researcher and talked with them about their experience. I had recently attended a conference where I listened to several physicists speak upon the nature of reality and the potential to travel between dimensions and some of what this researcher was saying seemed to match up with what they had guessed a human would experience if they were to travel inter-dimensionally. I contacted these physicists I heard speak and the sound researcher, those scientists, and I, all started putting together quite a theory. Twenty years later, we finally know what happened.”
Jean looked over at Dr. Allen. She had a very confused look on her face and seemed to dislike what Dr. Finch was talking about. Jean’s guess: Dr. Finch did not tell Dr.Allen what he was here to speak about today, not honestly at least. Rather than stopping or questioning Dr. Finch, Dr. Allen simply pulled out her phone and left the room. Dr. Finch, who had never stopped talking, then said, “Everything else I have left to explain, will sound like unbelievable nonsense to all of you. I could write every equation, explain each part with intricate detail, and most of you would either not care or simply not believe enough to remember. So, instead, I am going to show you what I mean.”
The lights in the room seemed to dim quickly and heavily. Jean lookedat the ceiling and then at her classmates, but none of them even seemed to notice. The room was suddenly dressed in black. Jean blinked her eyes and tried to get some kind of night vision so she could tell what was happening. Her heart started racing, beating so hard in her chest she started to double-over in pain. Her palms became drenched in sweat and she could feel her legs heating up as her thigh muscles clenched together. Heavy breathing was followed by the inability to move any part of her body. She geared up her back and chest to scream but the room was bright once again. Her classmates stared at the front of the class as if nothing happened. Jean looked back to the podium and could not find Dr. Finch. She glanced all around the room briefly, with no success. “Behind you miss.”
Jean was completely paralyzed in fear. She had never felt so terrified in her whole life. She had not had an easy life and had been through more than most people her age, but this felt different. She could not explain what was so awful about hearing Dr. Finch’s voice directly behind her. All she knew was that her body was screaming at her to stand up and run out of the classroom. Despite this, she most definitely could not move. She heard two clicks directly behind her head and the sound of something very heavy falling straight to the ground. “That was the suitcase.” Without a way to explain how Jean could picture what was happening behind her in perfect detail. Dr. Finch had hastily opened the suitcase and pulled out some kind of tool, letting the suitcase fall to the ground afterward without care.
Though she could not see what he was holdingin his large, rough hands, she could picture it very clearly in her mind. Finch was holding a large thin cylinder of rusted metal. It was very screw-like with a corkscrew pattern from top to bottom. On the piece of metal, there were four nuts that seemed to be made of polished gold. Jean felt the air behind her quickly change. Finch pulled out another piece of metal, nearly identical to the first cylinder, and pressed it hard to the bottom of the metal he was holding already. “Watch this!” Finch had gotten much louder and was, in fact, yelling when he said this. Finch scraped the two pieces of metal together with great speed and force, clearly hitting all of the golden nuts that were screwed onto the first piece. The sound that was made cannot be described, only heard. What can be described, however, is Jean’s reaction. She felt her spine twist and sting with sharp pain - her head fell hard upon the table in front of her. Hard enough to chip a tooth or break a nose, although she did neither.
A period of time passed that felt simultaneously like half a second and an hour to Jean. She felt like she had been squeezed through a tube too tiny for her body and rolled out a mile long. Although the pain was immense and the experience was horrifying, as soon as it was over Jean started to forget what had happened, adding to her poor idea of how much time had passed. Everything was dark and she was standing on some material that she could feel herself slowly slipping deeper into. She was definitely no longer in the lecture hall. Jean rubbed her eyes with heavy hands, trying to get them to adjust to wherever shewas now. “Did that guy drug and kidnap me?”After a small amount of time, she began to see again. Wherever she had been taken was not pitch black and was, in fact, not black at all.
Reaching from the ground high into the sky (or maybe towards some kind of ceiling) there were gigantic light grey structures. They appeared to be entirely out of the smoke, or some other material that was slightly see-through. These structures resembled large buildings and seemed to shift back and forth like a holographic sticker. Jean looked down at her feet and saw grey mush below her. In her mind, it was some kind of clay or very fine, dark sand. As she looked towards a distant area where there was no giant structure in the way, she began to panic. She blinked and rubbed her eyes but what she had seen had not been a part of her imagination. Far in the distance, there was an incredibly grey sky void of any clouds or light. Moving on the ground in that distant area was a great white mass, seemingly made out of tentacles that writhed in and out of its own body. Whatever was over there was certainly not any kind of animal she had ever seen or heard about before. “It's all so clear. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been drugged.” That’s when she heard the bell.
All the air was instantly filled with an immense harmonious ringing. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and was getting louder and louder. Before long, the sound was louder than any concert Jean could imagine and she was forced to cover her ears in order to stop their painful ringing. The bell was clearly struck over and over with great force, each hit pushing the bell furtherpast its limit. It seemed to have no rhythm to it, no melody either, almost as if someone had taken a great bell and dropped it down the side of a very rocky mountain. Maybe that's what was really happening. As the sound picked up, the grey building seemed to vibrate and sway, losing almost all of its shape but still reaching to the sky.
Jean fell to her knees and stuck her fingers in her ears. At the same time, she released a scream and cried. The air in her chest reverberated and shouted out past her shaking tongue, between her wide-open jaws. She had begun to hope that if she screamed loud enough whoever was striking the bell would stop and make sure she was okay. It had never occurred to her, in her child-like plan, that whoever was working the bell might not care about her pain and may not have even been human. The pitch of the sound doubled and Jean went higher. Much louder too. Her throat felt as if it was being ripped apart by the force of the howl, nearly at its breaking point. Her lungs deflated, letting her know there was no air left to scream with. Now, just as suddenly as the bell sound had begun, it stopped once again.
All of the great grey structures stopped their movement and seemed to lock into place. The ground underneath Jean’s feet solidified as well and she no longer was sinking into the clay. She sucked in air as hard as possible and tried to regain some sense. Exhausted, she fell onto her side and rolled over to her back. Her hands left her ears and clung to her chest like a vampire sleeping in a coffin. After a couple of blinks and attempts toget back to reality, Jean looked around and saw that nothing had changed. She stared out to the distance again and that same white monster was still out there, squeezing its body and stabbing itself with its tentacles over and over. “Fuck. Please stay there.” Sadly, she found out her issues were a lot closer than that.
The grey structures that now stood still began to move side to side, as if something was trying to push itself out from inside each of them. Within a quarter-mile of where she was laying, there were probably about 20 of these giant smoky buildings. Once again, all of them stopped their movement. This time, the standstill was followed by a great black line forming in the center of each building. The line started at the ground and shot up to the sky like a bullet. After a few seconds, the darkness began to widen and stretch towards the edges of each structure as if it was permanently ‘deleting’ the grey. At this point, for some reason, Jean pissed herself. She closed her eyes and cried as the hot liquid spread over her lap and partially up her shirt as well. She tried to imagine anything else but kept coming back to the white monster in the distance. The thought of it made her nauseous and dizzy. If she kept using her imagination, she would end up puking on herself as well. Her eyes opened and she found an army of humanoid white figures walking out of each building.
They appeared to walk upright and many of them were carrying familiar items. Among the white patterns, Jean discerned suitcases, umbrellas, and humanoids speaking into their hand as if they were holding a cellphone. “Maybe the bell rang because it was time for them to getoff work. Is it five?”. She stood up one leg at a time and tried to get a better view of the crowd. She felt her urine slide from her lap down her legs in large, dense streams. “Fuck.” She ignored the feeling and stared out towards the moving white light people. She started to walk up to a group of them that had stopped and started staring at each other outside one of the buildings. It looked as if they were speaking, but Jean couldn’t hear anything. She tried to speak and nothing came out. She tried again and although she could feel the air vibrating in her throat, no sound would come out. “Am I deaf now?”. She got closer and closer to them but they still wouldn’t notice her. “Are they blind?”. She pushed forwards towards the group and finally got close enough to touch one.
Jean leaned in to touch one of their shoulders. For some reason, her hand seemed to slide right off and down to their side. The humanoid she had tried to touch was holding what appeared to be a large suitcase. In desperation she kicked at the case; her foot slipped right through and she lost balance, falling to the ground. She shifted her weight to both of her knees and looked down at the ground defeated. At that same moment, the light figure next to the business one walked up to her and then directly through her. It seemed as if they were all ghosts that couldn’t see or hear her and could simply walk straight through her, avoiding her presence entirely. “No, that doesn’t make sense. They are all talking to each other and doing their own business.” She saw two of the humanoids walking away from her, holding their whitehands together. “They can touch each other but not me. No one can see, hear, or touch me. I’m the ghost.” Jean began to cry again for the fourth time today.
Jean spent the better part of the next hour going back and forth between crying and walking around pointlessly. No matter how far she walked, NEVER in the direction of the white tentacle monster, everything seemed to stay the same. Although she imagined she had gone at least a few miles away from where she originally found herself, she could only find more giant grey structures and white figures that couldn’t notice she was there. She wanted so badly to cry out for help, but she knew that there was no one who could listen. Now, after she had been in this place for well over an hour, she started to think back to what Dr. Finch had said. Maybe, just maybe, all that talk about traveling to other dimensions was real. Maybe, whatever sound he had made with those metal rods had actually sent her somewhere else or gave her the ability to see the world in a different way. “No, no. I am definitely somewhere else. There are no tentacle monsters in the real world.” But maybe this was a real-world too. Just a different one than hers. “Fuck.” If Dr. Finch had sent her here on purpose, maybe he would take her out too. She started to smile at the thought that he might stop her horror soon and that she would be back in the lecture hall with the shitty plastic chairs. Then she had another thought. Maybe he hadn’t done this on purpose and maybe she was going to be here forever.
Everything Jean had owned that she had not been holding or wearing had notcome to this place with her. Her phone had been on the desk so it was still in the lecture hall. Her backpack was hanging off the back of the chair. In her pockets, all she had was a mechanical pencil she had shoved in before leaving home. “What can I even do with a mechanical pencil?” The reason she had started taking stock of what was with her now was that she had suddenly given up hope of surviving. She knew that she could walk into one of the grey buildings or walk towards that white monster and she would probably die. But, if she was going to stop living she didn’t want to go in some horrible, painful way. She scratched her finger with the pencil hard trying to get her hand to bleed. It hurt, but she didn’t have the willpower to push hard enough to break the skin. She looked all around her. Grey buildings, grey ground, grey skies, white humanoids, and a white monster. Jean got back down on her knees and gripped the pencil hard. She closed her eyes and pressed the pencil into her thigh as hard as she could. Her hand lifted high above her head and held its place. She screamed as loud as she could and brought the pencil down with all the force she could muster. The graphite tip pierced through her skin and deep into her muscle. Blood swelled up after the impact and began to soak her pants. “Those literally just dried too.” She gripped the body of the pencil and pulled it out of her leg. Although she expected some kind of release when she unplugged the wound, it instantly seared with pain and blood flowed out in all directions. “FUCK.”
For a few minutes, Jean wasin awe of herself for what she had just done. She kept staring at the hole in her pants leg and her own bloody right hand. To pull herself away, she closed her eyes once again. The pain was real. The ground was real. Her wound was real. No matter how badly she wanted to wake up from a dream, everything would be the same when she opened her eyes. Tears welled up but she shook her head and pushed them back. Her lips quivered in the shape of a great frown, making her look like a sad clown. Her left hand pushed in between her two legs and fell hard onto the ground below her. It was still solid. She rubbed her right hand on her shirt, removing the blood so she could get a better grip on the pencil again. Her eyes peered down at her left hand. First, she stared at the fingertips. They were covered with abrasions from some other point in her short journey here, maybe from scratching into the ground as she heard the bell ringing. She shuddered at the memory of it. Her gaze shifted past her open palm and down to her wrists.
When Jean was 7 years old, she had spent a month with her aunt after her mother had a very intense breakdown. Her aunt was very complementary and was always sure to say something nice when she first saw Jean. “Your hair is so long Jeanie! With some braids and some flowers you could look like a princess”. Jean’s size was something of an issue her whole childhood, she was always too thin or not thin enough for her mother. Because of different diets and exercise spaced out between periods of weight gain, she fluctuated very frequently and never feltat home in her own body. Being with her aunt was a period of release for her and whenever she thought about it, a smile would grow on her face. Her mind took her to a night where her aunt and she binged through a season of an old murder-mystery-comedy tv show. They were eating popcorn and fresh brownies together, sipping on “champagne”, which was really just sparkling grape juice. They stayed up late laughing with each other and pretending to be detectives working a case. When they finished their season, it was well past Jean’s usual bedtime and she had grown incredibly tired. Her aunt held her hand and walked her to the room she was staying in. Jean climbed into her bed and was tucked in with care and compassion. Her aunt leaned down and kissed her hand, saying goodnight. Before she turned to walk away and turn off the lights, she looked down at Jean’s little hand, covered in nail polish from when they gave themselves ‘manicures’. “Jeanie, you have the daintiest little wrists. They’re so cute. They make your whole hand look even prettier.” It wasn’t a particularly great compliment, but Jean was not used to this sort of treatment and her eyes filled with tears of happiness. “Thank you”.
Jean looked down at her dainty wrist and prepared to shove the mechanical pencil through its veins. If she came down at the right angle and with enough force, maybe she would be able to slice them open and she could bleed out. If she was going to die, she was going to be in charge of it.
Jean locked her elbow and stiffened her arm. She gripped the pencil tight and lined it up with the edge of her wrist. She turned her wrist slightly to makeit so that the point would glide through the length of her target. After lined up properly, her hand lifted head-high and she began to flex the muscles in her arm. She sat there for a moment, questioning her current manic plan of action. Would she really be stuck here forever? Was any of this even real? Her brain whispered a strong ‘yes duh’ to her and she brushed off any more second thoughts. Secretly, she had wanted to do this for years anyway. Her fantasies usually took place in her tub or in her bed, but this ghostly hell seemed like a more reasonable location to die in the end. Why had she been so unhappy before? Had she only known that being here was an option, maybe she would have appreciated the rest of her life a bit more. “It could’ve been a lot worse I guess.” Without allowing for any more thinking, Jean slammed her ‘blade’ down towards her lifeline and started to close her eyes. Just as her pencil approached the veins, a figure showed itself very close to her in her peripherals. In a state of surprise, she lost her aim and the pencil found a place deep in her palm, poking through the other side of her hand. “Darn.”
Jean looked down at her failure and felt immense pain for a brief moment. She felt incredibly lightheaded and her head began to fall forward slightly. Her neck caught her and she turned her head back to the approaching figure. In a second, she was able to recognize who had walked up to her. A greyish-white silhouette of Dr. Finch was now about 3 feet from her face and seemed to be talking. Jean was unable to hear him, but his moving head and arm movementseemed to convey some sort of pretentiousness as if he were telling her that this whole thing was her fault for being a bad student. As he continued to speak down to her, he seemed to grow larger and larger. “Wait. No. Wait, you are.” Dr. Finch was growing quickly. Suddenly he appeared to be 10 feet tall. His long arms started stretching towards her. Jean flung her whole body in the opposite direction and fell very painfully onto her back. He could definitely see her. She wanted to ask him to help her, to take her out of this place, but she found herself almost paralyzed in fear of him. She was deep in an awful nightmare and Dr. Finch was the source of all the terror and pain. He leaned back and seemed to grow even larger.
His figure reached up to the sky and the silhouette kept increasing until she felt like an ant next to him. Jean could now clearly see each divet and lace of his boots, the size of a car, right in front of her. Her heart began to race in her chest and vomit pushed its way up to her mouth. She ignored her nausea and swallowed hard, keeping it down. She felt like prey for a wolf, completely helpless and unable to run away at this late stage. She looked up and saw his hand coming down fast towards her. Before she was able to shut her eyes and pretend, his fingers wrapped around her body, lifting her like a doll. Jean fell limp and tears ran down her cheeks. He squeezed tighter on her body and his fingertips pushed hard against her skin. The pressure got stronger and stronger on her bone and muscle until they reached their breaking point. Severaldigits ripped into her body. Jean was impaled hard several times and she found herself unable to breathe. “My lungs.” Her brain shifted into overdrive, anticipating death. Bright lights full of color exploded before her eyes and she began to feel immense joy. A second hand approached her and seemed to wipe all that away before she could actually enjoy it. Both of the hands cupped around her and she was lifted towards the sky with enough speed to break the sound barrier. Her skin seemed to pull and rip with the wind pressure coming between the palms. In a second, her body seemed to be flowing with electricity and everything felt like static to her. She slipped quietly away into nothingness, devoid of all feelings or thoughts.
Suddenly, Jean regained consciousness and felt her neck outstretched with her chin on her chest. She sprang her head up and looked around, finding herself back in the physics classroom. “I was pulled out.” Her eyes darted around the room. She saw the rest of her classmates shifting and waking up in their seats, as if they had just gone through the same thing. She looked down to her leg and hand; there appeared to be no wounds. Based on the feeling of her pants, she had not bled or peed at all either. Dr. Finch was standing silently at the front of the class, looking very proud of himself.
Jean waited no time, she grabbed her bag and jumped out of her seat. She started to jog towards the door when a girl’s hand caught her wrist. “Are you okay?” The girl who was speaking had been in a couple of Jean’s classes and had been a lab partner enough times that they were pretty friendly. “Did the same thing that happened tome happen to you?” The girl looked stunned to hear that question. “I hope… I hope whatever happened to you wasn’t what I just did.” That seemed like a yes. “I have to go, I’m sorry.” Jean turned away and sped out of the classroom. That same door that had seemed heavy before flew open with the force of Jean’s current adrenaline rush. She sprinted out of the building and jogged over to a campus parking lot to catch her breath and make some sense of what just happened. She looked down at her hands and watched them shake. She wanted to get her phone and call her aunt. Or maybe just get an uber home. But, that would require enough focus to put her passcode in, something she knew she wouldn’t be able to do right now. In the corner of her eye, she could see a white silhouette. “Dr. Finch.” She instinctively jumped out of her state of shock and ran in the direct opposite direction. Out of the corner of her other eye, the silhouette was there again. She turned back a bit and found him standing still in where she thought she saw him before. She shut her eyes and ran in a new direction, away from both of him. She ran fast and hard, but when she opened her eyes - he was there. She started to spin around aimlessly, unable to get him out of her field of vision.
Jean ran back to Summer Hall and ran inside. “He’s here too.” She turned into a hallway and saw him standing at the end of it. On her left, was a door to a class. She ripped it open and shut it tight behind her as soon as she was inside. She looked over the classroomand found Dr. Finch sitting in the back, staring intensely at her. He seemed to look like the figures she had seen there, white and almost see-through. She did not take the time to consider if any of this was possible and left the classroom in an instant. Despite the fact that she could not get him out of her peripheral vision, Jean continued to run through the building making one sporadic turn after another.
Eventually, she found herself at another door leading outside. She took her chances and sprinted straight out of it. Behind a tree at the corner of the walkway out, someone jumped out. It was the girl from class. “Hey, Jean. Stop. Stop, I have something to tell you.” Jean breathed heavily and stared deep into her eyes. “What?” The girl looked down at the ground and back at her. “So, after you left class. Dr. Finch started talking again. I couldn’t really understand everything that he was saying, but he seemed so angry. Angry that you left early. He said something about going to get you. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what that means, but I mean… it's him. I think we’re all scared of Dr. Finch now. I don’t know what to do Jean. I want to go home. I want to die, I don't know. Fuck Jean. Did you see all that shit too?” Jean definitely had. She ignored what this girl said and started running again, taking no more time. For the time being, she couldn’t see him. She needed to go.
Jean ran over to the closest train stop she could find. She shuffled through her bag violently, pulling her wallet out. She used her school pass and pushed past the metal gates. She walked upstairs to the platform, nervously looking forhim the whole time. He still wasn’t there. A minute later a train approached. Not one that could take her home, but a train going anywhere else worked for her. She got on and looked around the train car. She was alone. The doors shut and the train moved down the track. “Fuck me.” She sat down and put her head in her hands. What had just happened to her? What was happening now? A hand fell on her shoulder. She already knew. She cocked her head and looked up at Dr. Finch’s blank white face. His lips puckered up and he spoke. “It’s time to get up now.”
Jean rolled over onto her back, she had been asleep on her stomach. Her blankets were wrapped tightly around her and her pillow had shifted down her side, away from her head. She looked all around at her dark bedroom and screamed. Her thoughts cleared and she became nervous that her roommates had heard her. “A nightmare. Thank god.” A white towel hanging on a hook on her door caused a moment of brief panic, but she recognized it as a towel and calmed down. She walked to her light switch and flipped it up. She wasn’t going to be in darkness anymore tonight. She opened her closet and checked inside, hoping she didn’t find a white tentacle monster. Everything appeared to be fine now. She walked back to her bed and sat down. Jean took a couple of deep breaths and massaged the stress out of her hands. She pulled her phone off the charger to check the time and see if she would still have time to get some sleep. The first thing she saw was a text notification from the girl in her class. “Hey. Are you okay?” Notwhat Jean wanted to see right now. “Fuck.”
Support Jason A Hebblethwaite
