I remember nothing from the night before I awoke in the hospital. Not a single event. They told me I received an extreme concussion; one that I was lucky to have survived. I could tell that something was different the moment that my eyes reopened, though. I wasn’t the same as I was just the day before.
My mind was not okay; it started with auditory hallucinations. The only comparison that I can make is to the sound of white noise. An out-of-focus radio playing in the background, or an air conditioner cooling a home on a hot day. Sometimes it sounded like voices, while other times it was more like rain pittering on a window. It wasn’t a completely new sensation— as child it happened a few times— but it was much more mild in the few previous times that it had occurred, never lasting more than a few hours at most. Since my accident, though, it has never stopped. A constant muttering behind the rattling of the stretchers, the thumping of the numerous footsteps in the halls, and the whirs and beeps of the medical apparatuses. Nothing I can do quells it. It varies in intensity, but at its worst, it makes it almost impossible to converse with anyone or even focus on anything. It overtakes the things that my ears are actually hearing, and replaces them with the sounds of a flowing stream, or storming winds. The medical staff ensured me that my physical condition was well, and that they had seen nothing that could indicate a source of the ailment. No test or scan that they have performed has had any sort of result, and none of their medicine has calmed it.
#
My room was fairly cramped and always scarcely illuminated. There was only one lamp with a dying bulb, and the only window was facing the wall of some other massive building. Since I was considered a fairly stable patient, in a hospital full of significantly less stable ones, I was only checked upon a few times per day. A doctor or nurse would come in, ask me about my condition, take whatever action was necessary based on my response, and then usually leave. Other than the people who brought me my meals, that was all the interaction they would allow me throughout my day. Just a few brief moments.
Today is the 33rd day of my stay. Yesterday, the 32nd day, was when I became convinced that either I was going insane, or that the severity of my physical symptoms was still going unnoticed by the doctors despite their repeated investigations. The morning began not dissimilar to any previous one. Same with the rest of the day, up until dinner. My food was delivered, I ate it, and I flipped open a book that I was keeping at my side— that was when the change occurred.
I was reading for twenty minutes before I noticed something on the outside edge of my vision— on the ceiling, it seemed. It was some kind of mass of color or light, and I could see it distinctly as I read or looked at the pages. The second I pointed my eyes at it directly however, there would be nothing there. Just plain tile panels. I didn’t really know what to make of it and kept trying to focus on my reading. The noise in my head was flaring up at the same time though, and I eventually gave up.
Twenty minutes later, the entirety of my peripheral vision was bursting in color— bordering and fading into my view like a heterochromatic vignette. Soupy and extravagant; I could watch it spread more and more, encompassing an ever-increasing percentage of my eyesight even by the second. Like a nebula in some undiscovered portion of space, it ebbed and cycled its brightness and hue. Slowly it corrupted my eyes, replacing the drab grays of the dim room with an explosion of phosphorescent, kaleidoscopic madness. The noise in my head was a triumphant chorus, humming inside my skull— I was trembling under the vibrations. Pounding, pounding, pounding inside, along with the whirling of the colored typhoon. I decided they were the same around that moment, as their relationship was far too complimentary for coincidence.
I thought I was going to die right then and there, and panic set in like an avalanche, all at once. My efforts to restrain myself failed as both the sounds and the sights grew in tempo and enthusiasm. I pressed the ‘call’ button that laid on the nightstand next to the bed over and over again, but nobody came. The hallucination grew still. I stood abruptly, stumbled as the blood rushed to my head, and hobbled my way to the door, keeping myself held up against the wall. Sticking my head out into the hall, I yelled for a nurse; screaming out for help. The hallucination reached a crescendo, and I collapsed.
#
During and after the nurses brought me back to my cot, I frantically rambled about the colors invading my mind, but even in that delirium, I was lucid enough to know that they would not understand. I also knew that nothing that they could do could stop it, and I found some calm. The noise slowed a bit, and the colors receded some. I slowly drifted into a dream-filled sleep, within which I discovered the source of my hallucinations.
I was floating aimlessly, drifting through a void. Around me was the pandemonium of extra-universal life. I could see the strings and the things that worked them. The weavers and the cutters, the singers and the effacers. Laminated vibrance, tendrils of colors universes-wide connected forever to infinity, and kept going even beyond that. The epic forms of the non-beings would have been incomprehensible to my human eyes; only my dream-state allowed me to grasp some semblance of an idea of what I was beholding. Great pink, purple, and rouge bars of pure energy that sat atop pillars which could hardly be discriminated from themselves. Floating in the viscous field of atemporal wires that tether me, the world, and everything else. I knew without knowing that every fiber of every strand of every string contained quintillions of lives, only still living because of the maintenance performed by these things. Galaxies so numerous that they seemed inexhaustible, strung out like leather hides in the sun. How many there could have been in the vast plane was something that I don’t even think the non-beings knew; they were just everywhere. On the strings themselves walked non-beings of sizes magnitudes below that of the godlike figures that towered around them. They walked up and down the strings while the weavers and cutters weaved and cut, and the singers and effacers sang and effaced. All the while, a being greater than all of them could be felt above those of the godlike non-beings and made them seem as simple toilers. He was invisible to me. Something to the scale of his brilliance could not and can not be observed or considered by a mortal mind. The ruler of such a place, and of such creatures, could only be God himself— at least that’s what I told myself to keep from imagining other possibilities.
That was a few hours ago. I told the nurses of the strings, the weavers, the cutters, the singers, the effacers, and the emperor of the non-beings even though I knew that this would be the response given to me. I’m going to be sent to an asylum within the coming days; I suppose that they think that I’m beyond medical help at this point. Maybe they’re right, and I am just insane— would I know if I was though? I don’t think it’s possible to objectively look at something like your own sanity. It very well could have been simply a psychosis-induced delusion, and I would never be able to tell the difference. Whether it was real or not, nobody will ever believe me— but I will think of those sights until I lose lucidity permanently, or otherwise die.