bycarlyann

[bycarlyann]

The Horror!

Looking back on it now, I can see no tell-tale sign that would have given a clue as to what was in store. I washed my face like any other evening, brushed my teeth, turned out the lights, and crawled into bed all without even an inkling that something horrible was afoot.

Had there been signs? Of course! It had been brewing in me for months now; bubbling up at times of high stress. That particular day had been filled with misspeaking during meetings and arriving late to phone calls. There had been no free time, and I had only gotten through the morning by sneaking 2 donuts from the break room.

By mid-afternoon, A sharp pain had begun concentrating just above my right eye. After what seemed like hours, I gave up on my various pain killers taking affect, and decided to leave work early.

I closed my eyes to sleep at around 8pm- neglecting to finish the laundry I had previously starting, and cancelling a long standing dinner plan with friends. After going over all of the regrettable conversations that had come to pass during the day, I drifted off with the pain still searing in my skull.

When I opened my eyes, it was the next morning. It only took me a matter of seconds to recognize that the pain in my head was still there. Dreading taking off another day of work, I walked into the bathroom to begin my morning routine; that’s when I saw it.

A small, extra head had exploded itself out of my skull just over my right eye. It was staring me right in the face with palpable disdain.

“What..the fuck...are you looking at” it sneered at me, tiny eyes rolling into the back of its tiny head.

“Who are you?!” I cried in disbelief, feeling around the seams of its neck only to find that she was in fact growing straight out of my own scalp.

“Of course you would ask that” she mumbled under her breath “You honestly don’t know? Are you that much of an idiot?!”

After a few moments of stunned silence, she finally accepted that I had no explanation for what I was seeing. Drawing in an unimpressed breathe, she finally uttered the words that would haunt me for the rest of my life:

“I’m your own self loathing, you piece of shit! You let me grow too big for too long. Did you honestly think I was just going to live my life inside your big, sad head? There was no way I could spend another second in there with all of your pathetic thoughts bothering me constantly! Now I’m out here, where I can finally get a good view of how much of a failure you are.”

My voice was caught in my throat, I had let my own self doubt get so out of control that I was going to have to live with it out there for the world to see for the rest of my life.

Speechless, and feeling a little self conscious, I finished my morning routine. I washed both of our faces and got us both ready for the day. The whole time, my self doubt heckled me about what a mess I was going to be now that I had let her come to fruition.

What was the point in resisting. I looked in the mirror, took a deep breath, and readied myself to live the life I had always felt I deserved.

[bycarlyann]

A Disastrous Evening

There wasn’t much to say for how the evening turned out beyond the word “disaster.” Or at least, that’s the most Queen Fox would say about it.

“The whole evening was a complete and utter disaster!” she would sneer through her clenched snout whenever one of her triage of fancy woodland governesses would ask for details.

The whole forest was buzzing with gossip about the event- none of which was to be believed. From the mole boroughs to the beaver dams to the robin nests, there wasn’t a single creature in the forest who wasn’t spreading one rumor or another.

“I heard the duchess of bear cave knocked over the cake!” whispered the old withered chipmunk from her ornate wheelchair.

“I heard Lord Stag walked in on one of the foxlings with the royal butler!” Baker Warthog piped in, his hands covered in flour.

“I heard Queen Fox herself fell down the grand stairway!” giggled a tiny mouse, no bigger than a walnut.

No matter what the ruckus was, one thing was for certain: Queen Fox could not be bothered to discuss the event! No matter how hard her foxlings would beg, or how much King Fox pressed her, she simply would say nothing more. Only that “it was an utter disaster!”

And so the forest continued its gossip. One story piled on top of another, growing taller and taller and taller with every detail. By the end of the day, the tale was almost ten stories high!

It appeared that the party had begun as normally as any good party should: there was dancing and eating and not a dry goblet in the hall. King Fox was just as excited as anyone to see the royal cooks roll out the royal sundae bar. “Huzzah!” he cried.

Running towards the ornate sweet setup, he tripped on the elaborately long gown of Miss Crane and tumbled to the floor, pulling down the bird with him!

Miss Crane’s neck, falling in the air to keep her balance, wrapped snakelike around the shoulders of the Goat Prince, forcing his lips against her beak.

Mistaking the embrace for a romantic gesture, the Goat Princess wailed out in horror, startling the entire deer orchestra into a stampede!

Wails filled the hall as guests ducked for cover. By the time the stampede had cleared, not a single party goer was left unscathed.

Distraught, disheveled, and without any ice cream, the evening ended embarrassingly early (something that was entirely unheard of for a Queen Fox ball!)

Or at least, that’s what the rumors had said. The story of the evenings disaster made it all the way through the forest and finally, to Queen Fox herself.

She listened, making sure to nod politely as her fancy woodland governesses pleaded with her to verify what they had heard.

“Oh what a terrible story, a disaster indeed!” she said with a secret smile as she exited the room. Any rumor was better than the truth.

[bycarlyann]

Abducted

The car was more silent than she expected. It surprised her that their conversational chemistry wasn’t immediately sparked. Of course, they had had long conversations online for many months now, and she expected that kind of candor to be transferrable to their first in-person meeting.  

“That was a lot easier than I thought it would be” she said, hoping to lighten the heavy mood.

“I told you, security there was inferior. They expect their patients to be dribbling children.” he replied back.

“Right, you did say that. I should have known to trust you.”

The previous 3 months of courtship had felt like a dream to her. She had never imagined he would have picked her out of his many fervent followers to shine his light upon. It had begun with a spirited debate on one of his facebook posts discussing that validity of some claims the Church of Scientology had made on extraterrestrial beings. He, drawing parallels between some of the church's teachings and some of his own works, and she, arguing that the church merely sought to capitalize on the built in network of existing believers.

Debates like these were not uncommon on his facebook page. He had begun posting his views on ETs and encounters a little over a year ago, and had amassed a large network of followers that found his posts to be a safe haven for intellectual debate on the subject.

Even from the institution, he had found time to keep up the page. He had begun to write much more personal posts, often citing literature of past believers being institutionalized systematically. This only grew the page’s popularity among followers, now numbering in the tens of thousands. A single post could have hundreds of comments.

This is why she had felt so blessed to be singled out by him. After their initial debate, he had DMed her to ask her more details about herself. The institution was only a few towns over from where she lived, and they bonded over making fun of the “drones” and “sheep” who inhabited the area. It wasn’t long before she found that his messages were coming every morning, and in fact were the highlight of her days.

Once their relationship had blossomed, it was hard to imagine a world without him, a world in which he sat unfairly institutionalized and she walked the lonely earth without ever getting to be with him properly. She was so relieved that he seemed receptive when she delicately mentioned liberating him from his current confines.

Together, they had hatched a plan to remove him from The Institution during the night. After crossing the state line, they were lay low at a fellow believers house until they felt it was safe.

But now, after the adrenaline of the breakout was winding down, she began to notice his thumb pounding on the car door rhythmically. She looked over at him to see him erratically checking outside the window, gazing manically at the sky as if someone was watching him. Twice, he made he pull the car over and turn off the lights, sitting in silence for long minutes until the unseen threat had passed.

It dawned on her the reality of the situation; she had fallen in love with a man she had never met, a man she had trusted blindly. She waited until he drifted off. Then, driving in a inconspicuous circle,  quietly pulled into the roundabout for The Institution. Without waking him, she got out of the car and locked the doors, motioning for a group of panicked nurses to come outside.

[bycarlyann]

EMU; Emotional Intelligence Unit

We pulled up to the corner, driving slowly as to assess the scene from afar as much as we could. A person stood on the corner, a look of overwhelming confusion on her face, hands held facing up to the sky as if to call 'WHY ME?' I looked at my partner, the time for a thoughtful assessment of the situation had passed, we had to get in there. I put my foot on the gas and skid stopped into a perfect double parked space right in front of here. 'Ma'am, what happened here?' My partner asked, always a straight shooter. The woman looked at us, mouth agape. I knew in my bones at that moment that we had a case on our hands. 'Ma'am, take a deep breathe. Tell us what you're feeling' 'I just...can't believe it! I was looking at my phone and when I looked up I knocked right into him! I guess it was my fault...' That's all we needed to spring into action- no innocent dame was going to blame herself on my watch. 'It sounds like you didn't intend to do anything wrong- try to tell us what happened next' 'Well after I knocked into him, I apologized, but he looked at me and told me to get out of his way! I wish I knew what I did wrong!' Finally a case worth our talents. My partner and I shared a glance- Now that we knew what happened, we just needed our client to point us in the direction of the perp. She was rubbing her left shoulder...'he went this way!' I called out, pulling my partner alongside with me. 'Do you think we can catch him?' 'We can try.' Racing around 75th, we started closing in on a hunched man with his hang shoved in his pockets, barreling his way through the crowd: we got him. 'Sir! Wait right there!' We called after him. He turned to see us and quickened his pace. My partner caught up to him: 'we only need to ask a few questions.' Begrudgingly, the perp followed us to a nearby bench. 'She walked into me, it wasn't my fault!' 'We believe you. No one is blaming your tell us what happened' 'I was walking down the street trying to mind my own business and forget about the awful day I've been having, and this woman runs right into me!' 'Stop right there, enhance.' 'Excuse me?' 'Sorry, tell me more about this awful day' 'At the office today everyone was asking me to do things for them, and no one even checked with me to see if I had time or anything. Everything kept piling up, and now I feel so overwhelmed.' My partner put a hand on his back 'that sounds like you didn't have a lot of time to react to what was happening. Sounds like you were doing your best to stay on top of everything but it got out of your control. And that's when she ran into you...' We saw it dawn on him, he had taken out his feelings on our client. His frustrations of his own day had bubbled to the top, and she was the last straw. 'Wow, I didn't even think about how that would make her feel to yell at her like that...she even apologized, but I wasn't willing to hear it. It my eyes, she was just another person taking advantage of me in my awful day.' We got up and walked back to the corner where she was standing. As they started to talk it out, my partner and I dipped back into the shadows. Ready to drive home after another job well done, we realized our car was towed.

[bycarlyann]

When You Wikipedia ‘Somnolence’

Somnolence (alternatively "sleepiness" or "drowsiness") is a state of strong desire for sleep, or sleeping for unusually long periods. Usually a symptom rather than a disorder, somnolence can be a sign of a varied amount of ailments ranging from the small and typical to the rare and terminal.

One experiencing somnolence may feel a sense of fatigue that accompanies the general malaise of a millennium lifestyle. Typical to the lifestyle of raging towards happiness, one experiencing such sensations may also feel trapped within a dreamworld of their own invention.

This ailment may cause extreme panic in those afflicted. This is often caused by an extreme amount of manic highs caused by a typically robust social life- followed by exaggerated lows of feeling misunderstood among the masses of similar voices. The anxiety of these two emotions would drive any person to madness; a state of mind envied by the artistic masses of creatives that have been created by this movement.

In fact, many suffering from these symptoms would find it incredibly difficult to quiet their mind in any sense. The constant stream of peer updates and comparisons is often cause for much strife amongst this group. Yet, somehow, they also have a propensity to show an interest towards the holistic and eastern medicines of but not limited to meditation, crystal work, herbology, yoga, and artistic release.

Other signs of this disorder will include a strong willed ambition. You may find that patients aim for unattainable goals set mainly by comparisons to their peers. This creates pockets of similar minded individuals amongst the wide spread groups. The aforementioned ambition is difficult to track, as it is often only spoken and not tangibly worked towards. Tell tale signs of ambition can be found in such places as journals, visions boards, digital and physical calendars, and post its. If available to the doctors, some may find it helpful to search through individual instagrams for signs of short lived hobbies or resolutions.

Often observers have found that the typical sufferer’s general goal is one of an amorphous idea of “happiness.” The ramblings of those afflicted can be hard to interrupt, but researchers have found general patterns of what has now been scientifically named “Grass is Greener” syndrome. With this behavior, patients find general contentment, only to find that their neighbors well-being is more appealing, at which point they abandoned all of their previous achievements in search of exactly what their neighbor has. Once this has been achieved, the cycle begins again.

As any right-minded person may see, this disorder is exhausting to any of it’s unfortunate victims. If you see any of your loved ones exhibiting somnolence, please have them checked for the above disorder as soon as possible. Caught early enough, patients can live very full lives. Alternatively, if left unattended, this disorder can lead to certain self assured destruction by self obsession.

Other reasons a patient may be showing signs of somnolence may include (but are not limited to) being vewy, vewy sweepy.

[bycarlyann]

The Betrayal

There was so much to be said, and yet the silence filled the entire room. After what seemed like hours to them both, finally he spoke:

“So” said Douglas.

“So” she replied in a steady, deep voice; startling him even further.

Where to go from here? Douglas could not account for the confusion he was feeling. Every next question he could ask flooded his mind until he landed on:

“Where did you find a thrown that small?”

“I don’t know what you mean” she sneered back at him.

Douglas was drowning in his own racing mind. How could this be happening? It seemed only a few hours ago the world was a simple place, abiding by the rules it had always abided by, and being filled with the things it had always been filled with. Now he didn’t know what to expect.

She sat straight up, proud but with an air of discomfort. She was keeping a composure that Douglas could not reconcile given the situation they were in. He had never seen her hold herself with such steady regality.

“It this what you do every day?”

“More or less.”

“Why did you never tell me?”

“You never asked.”

“I didn’t think I had to…”

Douglas let his last sentence drift between the two of them. The feeling of betrayal in his voice becoming a string pulling at both their hearts.

Her bottom lip began to quiver, and in that moment he knew she was the same dog she had always been. His dog. They had gone through so much together. He had gotten her when she was just a puppy! Was walking in on her sitting on a tiny thrown going to change that? Was the fact that she could talk the whole time going to alter the fact that they had been best friends in silence for years?

“Bones”

“Yes, Douglas?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

It was then that Bones finally let her neck relax, the weight of her fury head hanging low with exhaustion. She had been keeping up this charade for years; waiting for Douglas to leave so she could pull out her tiny thrown from behind the ficus. Digging up and re-burying her tiny crown whenever she heard his car enter the driveway. She knew from a young age that he wouldn’t understand, couldn’t understand! And yet, she still played with fire everyday as she watched him leave. Betraying her best friend, over and over again.

“Douglas, I never meant to hurt you. I knew you wouldn’t understand this part of my life”

She felt his gaze upon her and knew their friendship would never be the same. She never should have let him see her on her tiny thrown, she never should have let him know she had a voice with which to answer back all of these years.

She bowed-wow-wowed her head, whispering to him low: “please, say something.”

Douglas’s eyes filled with tears, he looked at his once best friend, now a complete stranger, and said:

“I have to instagram this, you look so CUUTTTEEEEEEEE!”

[bycarlyann]

Daytime Routine

The shades hadn’t been pulled properly, and they left a lightning bolt of white fire across the bedroom wall. She jumped out of bed to secure her room from the reach of its radiating heat.

The day was always the most peaceful time to her. She had a strict routine, and it kept her calm. Any disruption to her schedule made her feel lost at sea, unable to see her purpose through the fog. With that streak of white light clouding her routine, she couldn’t focus on pulling her covers mid way down her bed, and stacking her throw pillows in the corner.

She wasn’t controlling by nature, but this bedtime routine was the only way to train her body and mind to sleep. It had taken her months to overcome the crippling insomnia that can happen when a big change takes place in a person’s life. After trying nearly all of the endless sleep medications that were increasingly populating the lifestyle blogs, she finally spoke to her doctor. Dr. Williams was the one who recommended the sleep routine to her in the first place, and it took many weeks for any progress to be made.

She started by turning on some quiet music, usually something from the popular playlist “Indie for New Sleep.” Then, she locked up the flat, making sure all of the lights were turned off and the specially ordered light blocking shades were pulled closed. She had read about the shades on one of her favorite lifestyle blogs. They were a calming mint, with some delicately drawn florals at the bottom in the style of the blogger herself. Next, she washed her face. She had read that face towels were too harsh for the skin so she always let herself airdry while she brushed her teeth. She then made her way through her cabinet of expensive serums and antioxidant lotions that were good for blocking toxins. She made her way to the bedroom then, changing into her matching pajama set and crawling into an impossibly comfortable memory foam mattress that she had bought in the months when she was struggling with the new sleep cycle.

It sounded small, but this measured playing out of her normal nighttime routine from her past made her feel at ease, and finally her body followed suit. It had taken almost a year, but she felt she was now adjusting quite well.

The only times she felt the anxiety of her insomnia creeping up was when she waited too long to begin her routine, which is what had happened today. When she lost track of time and let the sun begin to rise, she found herself racing for the shades to make sure not a hint of light hit her eyes. This wasn’t because it was dangerous (everyone knew that the sun was safe enough to find yourself in as long as it wasn’t high up in the sky) it was because it reminded her of her previous life. Of sun filled afternoons and beach days.

She sat up in her bed, pulled aside her curtains, and surreptitiously peered into the light of the rising sun. Her eyes burned and her face immediately grew hot. Closing the shades behind her, she let herself drift into a sleep filled with dreams of the morning hikes that will never be again.