Mixed Up: A Short Story Anthology

Gesundheit! (Wattpad Paranormal Contest)

(A dad sneeze gone horribly wrong)

I feel the sneeze coming. It's a big one, a real firecracker about to go off in a spray of spit and snot and germs. I glance around, hoping the people around me are prepared for what I know is about to happen. The bank teller in front of me is scared. She watches with apprehension as my eyes start to narrow and my mouth opens. I raise my arm, ready. And then:

AAAAAAACHOOOOOOOOOOO!

I double over, sending my face crashing into the crook of my elbow, as if that would do anything to muffle the deafening scream that comes out of my mouth. I think the windows shake. It's a good, old-fashioned dad sneeze, loud and true. So strong is the sneeze, in fact, that it propels me out of my body. My soul leaves me through my nose, mingling with that spray of spit, snot, and germs.

In this new, free, soul state, I watch my body collapse face-first on the ground. The bank teller looks over the counter at me, her eyebrows raised so high they almost blend into her hairline. The man who was behind me shakes my unconscious form, at which point I expect to be jolted right back into myself, ready to share with the world my out-of-body experience.

But that doesn't happen. In fact, as the man flips me over and I see my own open, glossy eyes, I realize I'm drifting further away from my body. Before I know it, I've risen through the ceiling, and the bank is just a roof covered in bird poop, slowly falling away from me.

I flap my transparent arms, trying to swim through the air and reach myself. No luck. The ground is getting further and further away, and the people on the street have become indistinguishable from one another. The bank gets lost among all the other brown-shingled roofs in the city, and in that moment I start to panic. My velocity is only increasing, propelling me away from my poor, soulless body. What if I never get back to it? Will I be a vegetable, a medical enigma whose unprompted cessation of all bodily functions baffles every expert from Seattle to Shanghai? Or will I just be dead, stuffed into a freezer in the morgue? Could that sneeze have killed me?

I take a moment to wonder where I'm going. I'm obviously not in control of myself. Am I caught in a tractor beam? Am I being pulled up to Heaven? When I turn around, all I see is the darkening sky; no giant hook or pulley system.

Below me, the whole city is sprawled out, blurred ever-so-slightly by an omnipresent layer of smog. I can see the little cluster of skyscrapers downtown, ugly grey eyesores that prevent our town from just being a town. I see the suburbs, but I can't tell which house in which gated community is mine. The roads are all just little paths covered with ants.

The faster and farther I go, the more awe I feel. I can see the whole state now, and then the shape of the coastline, and then the other side of the country. It's huge. I feel like a lizard discovering there's been a house outside his terrarium all along. North America is suddenly below me in its entirety, but I keep going.

When I can see the whole Earth, I seem to pause. It's mostly blue. Blue and green and cloudy white. I can see the deserts and the forests and the even the lights of the cities. North and south have no meaning here, and for the first time, my weightlessness feels appropriate. I see no people, no borders, no money, no hate, no crime, just a perfectly round little ball painted like the Earth.

I start zooming out again. There's the moon, and Mercury and Venus and the Sun. It doesn't even hurt to look at. I can see little tendrils of flame darting out of the Sun, testing the void and darting back to the safety of Mama Hydrogen.

Mars whips past me, and after a while, so does Jupiter. I'm traveling so fast I don't think light could catch me. Or maybe I'm very slow, and time simply has no meaning to me anymore. That makes me feel sort of superior.

I'm thinking of fifth-grade science class when I reach the end of the solar system. I think I miss Pluto entirely.

I keep going. The solar system shrinks and fades away, and other solar systems come in and out of view until suddenly I'm staring at the Milky Way. Time, speed, and scale lose all meaning. I keep going. Once, I pass a comet, and I know with certainty that it's going to hit the Earth one day. It doesn't bother me at the moment.

Eventually, I find myself staring out at clusters of whole galaxies, each one of them so small that I feel like I'm back on Earth, staring up at tiny little stars in the night sky. It feels like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I half-expect to se a giant baby floating in the sky.

The awe and wonder start to wear off, and I find myself wanting to get back into my body. I feel anxious, wondering how long I've been away. Is my body rotting? How much further can I go?
Then I feel it: another sneeze, about to hit me even harder than before. Its coming fast and hard, and I have to think of something. If this sneeze hits me, I'll never slow down again. I'll keep going forever, expanding with the universe.

I make a snap decision. With some effort, I manage to turn myself around. I let the sneeze come. It's so loud I think it creates a tiny universe, a miniature Big Bang. But it works. I feel my direction change. I start hurtling back the way I came at astonishing speed.

When I hit the Earth, I'm surprised I don't leave a crater. I'm flesh and blood again, much to my delight. But my joy is short-lived. When I look down at my hands, I see bright red nail polish and a wedding ring that is not mine. I must've misjudged when I sneezed, because I'm not in my own body. In fact, I can see my still-unconscious form lying on the ground in front of me.

Well, shit. I'm never getting back into my body now.