Is This Real?

Being pushed through the endless sea of people.  Words both familiar and unfamiliar fill my ears.  The strange aroma of metal and condensation are all that fill my nostrils other than the horrible smell of someones body odor or awful after shave/perfume.  I close my eyes to try to regain my sense of where I am.  I fell like a young bear cub separated from its mother.  When I open my eyes I find I am alone, except for a group of  people.  They are looking at me, as if smelling my fear of being there alone.  Their eyes bore into me like a pack of starving wolves, circling a helpless baby elk that is bleating for its parents.  I jump at the sound of one of them talking to me.  I blink several times to get the image out of my mind.  I am shaking slightly from either the fear or the feeling of dread creeping into my bones, I couldn't tell.  As I look back at the group it seemed that they had gotten closer and resembled the wolves from my dream. I could feel my knees trembling and it felt like they were going to give way.  As they seemed to get closer the walls round me were also closing in.  There seemed to be no one around to hear me scream.  If there was anyone they paid no mind to the girl being surrounded by the gang, screaming for help.  I closed my eyes and covered my ears and head protectively as the group surrounded me.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a small, all white room with no one around.  I look at my shaking hands.  Why am I here? I think to myself.  While looking at the little white, constricting coat I am wearing, I ask the empty space around me. "Where am I?  Why am I in this small room?"  I put my hand to my throbbing head as I faintly remember being picked up by an unknown face.  As I sit in solitary, it all starts to come back to me. I am in a mental institute.  Was all that had happened to me just a dream or did it really happen and this is the dream?  All these questions ran through my foggy mind.  It seemed the questions were people running a marathon through a thick fog not sure of where they should be going or what they were even doing running in the race.  What seemed to be forever was only a matter of seconds as the realization of the questions come into focus as I stared at the little barred window in the door of this room.  My mind starts to drift to another day dream as I sit there with no one to talk to or even look at anything but the single window or the bright light making the room even brighter.




Suddenly the nurse walked in. He was rather tall from my position on the clean floor. I didn't realize I had been sitting and looked around me trying to sort out the jumbled mess of thoughts in my head.  The face of the nurse looks like the ravenous wolf from my nightmare.  As I back away hurriedly from him, he grabs my arm with an iron grip.  A shriek of a scream passed my already chapped lips as I fought to get out of his hands.  I don't even remember why I was fighting but the feeling of ecstasy that came with his touch brought a devilish smile to my lips. Is this what dying feels like? I think as he slowly lowers me to the small bed I hadn't noticed.  As he laid me on the bed, I could feel the rough contours of the woolen blanket beneath me.  Had he given me some sort of drug? All I could think of was the happiness I felt from being in his arms or was that what the medication was supposed to do to a person.

The last thing I remember clearly was the nurse's eyes.  His eyes seemed apologetic yet there was something else in them.  I can never figure out what that other feeling is but, he is always visiting me with that sweet medication that made me feel like I was flying like a small bird.  My eyelids started to drop and I fought against the sleep that was starting to darken the black around my eyes.  The weight of my eyelids finally overpower my will to keep looking in the nurse's kind eyes, to even stay awake long enough to ask him my name or why I am even in this place.  Is this a dream? Was this all just a dream?  I really hope this was a dream and I will wake up in my bed back home.  Where I will be able to look out a window and see my animals and family again.  As I dreamed I left the small neat, overly clean, room and my body.  There was a simply house fly in my room and I hitched a ride on its small wings as it flew out after the nurse.  I felt free, freer than I had in a long time.  Come to think of it, freer since the day I walked into this awful, no-mans-land, probably not even legal mental hospital.  Which is in the middle of some country I haven't even heard of. I hope one day I will be free again. As free as the little fly I am now riding.

Ode to a Wonderful Drink.

All night driving,

with nothing to keep me awake till morning.

A truck stop is in sight.

What I have been craving for all night.

That sweet addiction of caffeine,

a wonderful drink called coffee.

Keeps eyes open wide,

for the long, sometimes lonely, ride.

Coffee, a drink you couldn't beat

with anything that isn't sweet.

Black or with sugar and cream

gives enough energy to see the light beam.

Coffee, oh what a sweet, sweet dream.

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