Beetle

Chapter 5 Slides, Brains, Syrup and Blood

I feel as though I'm falling, probably because I am. Falling. I'm falling fast. I close my eyes waiting for the impact but it never comes.

Just when I think it's going to go on forever, the falling, I'm dropped-, no placed like one of grandma's china figurines- on a slide?

I start to move, the twists and turns making it impossible to focus on anything other than what's happening to my body. My brain is disconnected. Like literally? I pull it from my body and for some reason I'm not grossed out by it.

I feel nothing.
I stare at my brain and eventually come to the conclusion that I should place it back into my head. The problem is, it's gone. Like it just vanished out of my hands.

The bright colours everywhere invade my senses. They melt into each other and start to fall down the slide like running water.

Music starts to play. Can I even call it that? It's not real music like a catchy pop song or a classic rock song from a band that everyone knows. It's carnival music. Or maybe something similar?

The further I slide, the music grows.
I'm in a funhouse with a clown that pops out from my left.

The slide picks up speed. I try and stop. Faster and faster! Why isn't it slowing down?! Why is it so fucking fast??! Just when I think I'm going to die from the intensity of the speed I'm thrown from the slide. Like I've been ejected from a car seat.

I fly. Not many people can say that. I fly high and everything slows. The colours blur into paler pastels, than into one another once again.
The music softens and slows until it just stops altogether. The speed is most noticeable because I was going so fast and now I'm not. I'm able to enjoy it for only a second until I stop.

I don't fall. I'm just in the air like a bird who has no place to go. I'm standing, completely vertical with nothing under my feet.
I'm weightless like a feather or in a way no one else has ever been before.

Everything comes back at once.
The colours are brighter than they've ever been. The music is louder than I ever thought possible and the speed of what's happening around me picks back up.

I go up like a roller coaster, except I'm not on a roller coaster. I'm on a slide, a very, very fast slide. Up and up and up I go. All the way up to the top. The top of what? I couldn't tell you.

There's no pause. No stop. Just go! I slide down and close my eyes knowing that this is my literal downfall.

I drive through liquid. I reach out trying to grasp at water? I open my mouth because I need to breathe. I expect the water to invade my lungs, I expect to drown. What I don't expect is the feeling of water, large amounts of water going down my throat and into my lungs without any repercussions. Oxygen. So pointless. Why would anyone breathe air when they could breathe in water?

The water thickens. It thickens a lot. The water takes on a sweet taste and a sticky texture. Before my very eyes, the water turns to syrup.

It burns- wait no! It freezes? It hardens and everything inside me starts to mend together.
An icy chill burns me from within.

Until it just stops.
But it can't hold on. The sticky syrup that was once water needs to come out somehow. I don't have time to wonder how? Before the syrup pours from my eyes.

Except it's not syrup anymore.
It's blood. My blood.

There's so much, too much that I immediately start to choke on it.
It fills my lungs.
I can't breathe.
It builds and builds until I feel a pop.