Swiveled Dreams

Chapter 1 - Fading Boomtown

Some days I don't want to wear this old and heavy skin anymore, but I have nothing else to wear and the world frowns on this nudity.
- TMOF-

Sick of it from Skillet was blasting through the  small scratchy speakers of my run down Honda and swirling in my head.  Rushing in and calling to my entire being, attempting to fill the holes  in my soul to compensate for the pain that forever lingered there.

I  turned up the volume as high as it would go on the rectangular cheap  chrome radio sticking halfway out of the dash. Maxing out the old  speakers to bask in the sounds that changed my entire mood with just the  flick of a button.I was being extra careful with the circular dial so  it wouldn't fall off and roll under the seat again. The pounding bass of  my getaway music was all over the place, rattling the windows and  vibrating through the dashboard. It probably sounded like an amateur  base guitarist was dying in here, but I didn't care. This was my  favorite song and as meager as my sound system was, I wasn't going to  let the opportunity of singing along pass me by.

My singing was  downright horrid, but luckily for me there was nobody around for miles  to pay witness to my lack of musical talent. There was no loud traffic  noises for the radio to compete with, but the music kept my mind  occupied so I wouldn't dwell on the creepiness of my surroundings.

The  road was deserted and littered with potholes, stretching eerily ahead  in the faint glare of my single working headlight like a worn tarmac  ribbon. On either side loomed the dark forest. If I turned down the  music I would probably hear the howling of the wind through the tall  dancing trees. I pressed down on the gas a little harder. Just enough  for the blurred scenery to flash by fast enough to obscure anything I  might have otherwise been able to discern. My heart thudded unevenly in  my chest and I kept my eyes glued straight ahead. I wasn't taking my  foot of the gas pedal for anything.

I hated driving at night and  the darkness here was so strange and absolute. The black curtain draped  over the trees and engulfed the woodlands. Twisting and warping into  various shadowy shapes and patterns that corrupted my mind with worry.

I  tried to ignore the nagging feeling of fear nesting in my gut. Distance  was all that really mattered now. Distance from those soul sucking  psychiatric wards and from the people whose only goal in life was to  have me readmitted.

I didn't trust the peace to last.I had to  leave when I did or I might never have gotten the chance again. They  were trying to convince me of something I didn't even have the courage  to face myself. That my insanity dial was turned way up and that I just  didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand and accept, to seek  the help they were convinced I needed. That I was always sinking into  new realities without recognizing their hold on me, letting in all these  dark voices and strange visions.

It had always been that way,  since I was a little girl. They were just easier to shrug off as the  product of a child's overactive imagination, rather than the elevated  delusions of a young woman.Everything just seemed to escalate when  puberty hit. My body's clumsy reach for adolescence was like some kind  of cosmic turning point in my life. My dreams were suddenly riddled with  a harsh reality that no one chose to believe. A reality within a dream  spectrum that I couldn't escape nor avoid.The darkness of my dreams  supplied many beasts and monsters that were becoming all too real to me.  I almost preferred them to those of flesh and blood, the official  judges of my sanity.

All my parents could see was an unstable  teenager who had this ridiculous notion that her dreams were actually  becoming reality. Sure they loved me in their own selfish way, but they  were logical beings and I wasn't something that could be explained away.  So they chose the alternative. They chose to have me locked away in a  place I would be taken care of. Where I would no longer be this  blotch on their reputation.This embarrassment in their social circle  and among their colleagues.