Insanity All Around

I was aware of everything that happened in the library if I did not concentrate. It was damn eerie. For most of the day I had followed myself, but as my body went about doing average library chores my mind had wandered.

    I had seen Brenda remember her last time in the woods. Her belief of the dragon inside her. She missed most of all the relationship with her sister. Now that Amy was back in town, closer than ever, that gap between them was wider than before.

    I had seen Kiera manipulating others. Turning down Freddy, dealing pills to the mom in the park. Kiera had designs, but they were not on the surface, not of her thoughts or her actions. I wanted to watch her more, but my mind could not hold on to anything.

    I had seen Freddy talking to the dark haired man in the black suit. I had seen Freddy's tattoo, the snake and the rabbit, same as Chris. I was mystified as Freddy at the words of the man in the suit, confused about the choice. I know about the dragon in Brenda's mind, but no one else but she did.

    When I came back to myself, my spiritual self in one place, I freaked the fuck out.

    To be spread so thin, to see and hear in the thoughts and memories of the staff, all of it was too much. I tried to rage. My phantom limbs, even invisible to myself, passed through books and computers as I roared. The anger felt hollow as well, empty without a voice or body to have the experience. Nothing about me felt real.

    Insanity followed.

    I'm sure of it. If all you are is your thoughts, then they feed back. They can tell too much about yourself. The realization, the hard fact that the world goes on without crashed on me. With a body, with a way to interact with the world, it's a simple idea to grasp. Babies learn non permanence. If something leaves, it still exists. A simple, logical skill humans develop to plan and survive.

    But if you leave, if you cannot be perceived, you doubt your own existence. Without the proper motivators, a proper island to land on, the mind goes mad.

    The more mad I went, the more I felt the loss of myself. Like missing someone, the less I could reach out, the more impact was felt. I was alone, truly alone for the first time ever, surrounded by people who could not or would not see me.

    The crashing reality of my own nonexistence filled me over and over. I lost all round and floated through the library faster and faster. From the front door past Brenda to children's where Kiera lead a story time and back to the stairs and up and Chris helping a man print his resume and to the stacks where Freddy put away book after book and back down to the desk where Brenda said "Come again" not to me and back to my office, the Director's office, where my body sat on the phone with a vendor ordering paper, paper, paper, how could my body do something so normal as order paper when I was lost in the library, lost and alone.

    I went around and around the library. Over and over until I settled myself and felt the whole place again. I waited and begged for sleep, for reprieve. To wake in a dream. To be rid of it all.

    I gave up and found a corner and stood staring at the blackness of the wood floor meeting the molding. The molding met the sheetrock that spread up and up to the ceiling in all directions. I followed all the directions at once, spreading myself again through the library until I was all over the library.

    Then I watched.

To Be Continued…