I know the police are coming, but I can’t move

I’m crouched at the edge of the curb, but it’s a cliff. The sidewalk is very far away, but the ants crawling around a spilled ice-cream cone look gigantic. Something is terribly, terribly wrong, but I can’t remember what. I would run if I could unstick my feet from the pavement. But I can’t. If I move even the slightest, I’ll fall off the curb and plunge to my certain death. People push past me, annoyed at the obstruction, a few cars honk here and there, but I don’t what they’re supposed to be saying. I study the ants for a bit. They march with purpose, gathering bits of the ice-cream cone to take back to wherever. They all seem to be coming from the same place. I wish I could come from the same place.

The sky above me is an electric white, all empty and expanses, no tether to the earth below. I’m too frightened to move even an inch. If I do, everything will fall apart and we will all be killed. Somebody shouts behind me, telling me to move. I’ve been transformed into a horrible vermin, I can’t move my many legs, all thin and folded neatly under me like laundry. When the world was so jumbled up and made no sense, the only thing I could rely on was myself, but that was disintegrating too. My pocket keeps vibrating. I’m not sure what’s in it, but it startles me every time. I’m too scared to put my hand in there, lest something bite it.

The world is full of bright purple spots, that keep creeping into my vision. It’s a nuisance. It makes it hard to see properly. I try to get my facts straight. I’m crouched at the edge of a curb somewhere downtown, how I got here, or where I’m going, I don’t know. I notice the blue nail polish peeling from my fingers. It looks sloppy. I hate looking sloppy. I hold my hands up to my hair to make sure its blue matches my hair’s blue. It doesn’t, which makes me angry. Suddenly the only thing that matters is the ugly, mismatched nail polish on my fingers. I take a moment to scratch and peel of what remains. It’s difficult, and I’m patient and I keep digging and digging, until the nail bed gives way to blood. I peel and pick at the ageless scabs, the pieces of skin flayed out, the melted polish that yanks off a layer of nail as I pull at it. My fingers are bloody and ugly by the time I’m done picking at them.

When I’m satisfied with the stubs of my fingers, I try to look up without falling over. I’m very dizzy and all the sounds sound more like colors, all mangled up in the debris and vacuum of space. Jitters, bugs, no sunlight, but silently speeding cars and the gaze of passersby a second too long, it all filters out, like water pouring through the soft, green leaves of an underground forest. I wish there was more foliage around. I grew up next to a park. All you had to do was lean out the window and gaze down at the splendor of marigold and tulip trees down below, all gathered around the lake like bowing, beautiful figures, heavy with flowers, spilling petals on the sidewalk below.

I sway a little bit, like I’m a very old oak tree and I’m looking at the populace spread below me, living their busy little lives. If I’m rooted to the ground, I can’t fall and die, right?

Oh, but you shall die anyway, someone tells me gravely.