Chapter 2 - The Glitch and The Aftermath

The waiting kept going on and on. During the idle time, she was wondering how she never remembers her previous journeys to other realms ever. No matter how hard she tried, she could never exactly remember any journey back or the climax. It was as if the final uphill moments became a blur and she could not ever remember why did she bother to do all the hardwork to the climax.

The journey to the realm however was the memory cell of this immune system. She prided herself in every successful trip. They were the foundations on which new journeys were created. Some of the fantasies were old enough to be classics. Some themes were. Some locations were. But there were plenty of failures too.

Some of them were simply bad ideas that she never wanted to revisit. Some could be improved. But they were all there in her mind for future references, be it good or bad.

For sometime her the train of her thoughts took her to some of her collections. Some bad but some good. But no matter what it was she didn’t find them appealing at all now. That moment had passed. And such was the power of the post climactic hangover. No reverie seemed appealing enough.

Boy! This was taking long. She refocused herself to present. The reverie should have been destroyed by now.

She should be back. But she wasn’t. She was still trapped in the garden of heaven.

Well not entirely. She was trying to destroy it, so it was somewhat working. A part of it was getting disintegrated but not entirely. This was weird. It was as if she was in two places at the same time.

She was not liking it. She did not enjoy a reverie after the climax (not usually) (least right now). She wanted to be back. She wanted to be whole. In one piece.

She was slowly being aware of the surfaces she was touching. Those weren’t the lush grass of heaven but the satin of her bed. That could be counted as a progress. But her mind was still trapped in heaven. It felt as if her mind was being taken out from her body; which FYI was quite back in the reality by now. You see it’s easier to adapt to changes physically but the mind, it takes longer to adapt to changes that challenge your reality.

Presently, it was refusing to co-operate. She was becoming aware of her extremities. But she remained unaware of her mind. She tried to jerk off her hand and feet. She was trying to shake it off. They obliged. But her mind was totally disobeying. It refused to be back. It was a horrible feeling being trapped in a place like that. Least of all that place being born out of your very own mind. She was growing feelings of disgust for everything including herself. She was disgusted by her mind. She was ashamed of her body. And it’s much easy to hate yourself when you are in the comfort of your room and not some foolish garden. She was finding it had to concentrate being torn in two parts.

She was not sure how to fight it. Or that she’ll be able to come out of it. Presently it seemed like being stuck in a tunnel that had to end. She was still inside the tunnel. Neither propelling forward, nor being sucked back. Was this how the blackness felt like? Had she finally erased the line and passed in the black hole of reverie? The explanation didn’t fit somehow. She was still aware of the fact that this wasn’t her reality. Surely this ability should not exercise in the black hole. By definition it was a place where you should not be able to differentiate between what is real and what is fantasy. But on the other hand, no one had actually lived to tell about their experiences in the blackness. But she was still sane? Was she? She definitely wasn’t sure, but sane; or so she thought.

Was this just a technical glitch? Was she being nothing but paranoid? To be fair she did panic easy.

She didn’t know how long it had been in the tunnel. But it shouldn’t be that long, she thought.

All of a sudden, there was some external stimulus that made her snap out of the dilemma forcefully. It was like being sucked into reality, rather forcefully. Her head hurt. Although, she usually didn’t do well for such interventions in her “game” however, she was thankful for this one. Atleast she was back. Back in the real world. She could still tell the difference, so she hadn’t been to the blackness she thought.

It was the doorbell. Her parents just got back from work. That was odd. She’d gone to the reverie In the afternoon sometime, it was well past seven in the evening now. Had she been there really that long? She didn’t have much time to worry, nor the energy. Her head hurt. She felt like she’d been doing tremendous physical labor for a long time.

Post climactic stress wasn’t supposed to be that physical. But she could not ponder for long. She not only had to sober herself but also get ready. They all had to go out for some dinner. She tried not to think much about that little “incident” before. Although in all fairness, she wasn’t thinking about anything presently.

Her mind still felt somewhat numb and not only from the pain. It was as if she was incapable of feeling anything else. She was just mechanically doing the chores she was supposed to.

The dinner was a nice break. The finely lit halls, the whiff of delicious chicken, the chatter of her folks, made her feel quite better. She was famished. She always was after an intense session, and today’s was nothing if not both intense AND queer. She dug into her chicken barely like a human and did not stop to breathe until she had had two large pieces. Everyone laughed thinking this was just the love for food playing. Later she ordered a large dessert. She was unusually hungry. But seeing all the delicious food, she didn’t think twice about the appetite and continued digging.