Float On

Part 1

Shaken from my encounter with the outside world, I slowly back into my apartment and close the door, locking it firmly. It had been 17 days since I had any contact with anyone. The longest I've gone since this all started was 23 days.

I get that I'm a freak and I'm in full acceptance of that fact.

I wish I had a great story to tell about why this is happening. An accident of some sort maybe? Or an encounter with an evil villain? Nope. One day I woke up and was just like this. I remember getting up that day and getting ready as usual, but it became quickly apparent when I went outside that something was very wrong. All around me, people had words and messages floating above their heads in black type. My first thought was that I finally went mad, perhaps something had snapped and I was no longer based in reality. I forgot all about work and wandered around the London streets aimlessly, trying to comprehend what I was seeing around me. Feeling terrified and disoriented, I sat down on a bench in a quiet park away from the crowds. The brisk end of fall breeze cut right through me as it swirled dead leaves around my feet. Despite the wind, there were still people around, trying to get every last bit of outside activity in that they could before winter settled in. Now that I wasn't in the middle of a crush of people, I was finally able to see individual people walking by one at a time which gave me an opportunity to observe both them and the inexplicable floating words.'I resent my husband and kids.'

'I eat cereal for dinner every day.'

'Lies about running 5k's for charity.'

When people are bunched together in a crowd, the words overlap and become impossible to read, but when there are just a few people, I can easily understand them as they float and bob about a foot above their owner's head. I used to try to make sense of the words but as I later learned, it's next to impossible unless I actually know the person. Even after living like this for six months, some of them are still a mystery. As far as I can tell, they don't have anything to do with what the person is currently thinking. With some, it appears that the words are identifying their purpose in life or an event in the future. For example, children often have things such as 'discovers a way to stop hiccups' or even, sadly, 'carrying a gene for bone cancer.' With adults, the messages are often very random. Some, like the delivery driver, display something they are ashamed of or a secret. Others show accomplishments like 'saved a boy from drowning in a pool.' Even more ambiguous and baffling are messages such as 'only eats sandwiches' showing up over a person eating a muffin. The only other pattern I can figure out is that with children, their words change every so often, but as adults, they seem to be permanent. It's almost as if kids can still change their destiny, but adults are resigned to whatever words have attached themselves to them.

Being able to see the messages made me go mad, but trying to interpret them sunk me into a deep, unyielding depression. Because of their unreliability, I had no idea if they were the truth or lies. My brain started trying to classify people into 'bad' or 'good' based on what was floating over their heads. I constantly wrestled with social responsibility. Should I be trying to warn some of these people? One day I was walking to work and passed a man with 'I murdered my neighbor' message floating about his head. Was it true or not? Who was he? I had no way of knowing. That was the day I quit my job.

I thought I might be able to get used to it and just block it all out, but that proved easier said than done. If there are words in front of you, your brain automatically reads them. You can't train yourself to 'un-read, ' and the constant inundation of information was just too much to process. Once it became apparent that this problem wasn't going to right itself anytime soon, I moved and started working from home. I limited my daily outings, but I started having panic attacks every time I knew I was going to have to leave my apartment. Even looking out the windows and seeing people proved to be too much for me at this point. I started having to order groceries and household supplies online and having them delivered, but as today's incident proved, even that wasn't foolproof.