Part: One "Waking Up"
Chapter: Two "Boots"
Authored by:
Hannah Nyland (The Irreverent Revenant)
All Rights Reserved.
Chimera: Class of 666
Chimera: Class of 666
By Hannah Nyland and Jerad
Sayler
Part 1: Waking
Up
Chapter 2: Boots
25 December 2013
Beulah, North Dakota
Finals
week was over. I passed.
That
test was more significant than any other moment in my life… and it plunged me
straight into hell. My parents tried to
hang onto the last vestiges of our once-close relationship. They insisted that
getting away and seeing the family would add some comfort and structure to my
life. Class had just given way to the
Christmas season, and they saw the family festivities as a way to re-center my life.
But
they didn’t understand. Couldn’t possibly
understand; and I’m not just saying that in a fit of teenage angst. To them, I
had descended from my long and predictable bouts of unmedicated depression into
full blown schizophrenia. To them, I was hallucinating, my social anxiety
having gotten so severe that even my conceptions of reality were shattered. To
them, I was mad.
I
have Asperger’s, also known as high functioning autism. I was born with it, as all aspies are. It’s not terrible, but it’s always isolated
me from people. It’s amazing how a few simple issues like a lack of eye contact,
an inexpressive face and missed social cues can become seemingly insurmountable
barriers after a short lifetime of trying to deal with them. I’m not bitter; in
fact, when I was diagnosed last year it reaffirmed a lot about my identity,
finally explaining my social awkwardness and aversion to prolonged human
interaction. Unfortunately, being an aspie also makes you predisposed to
depression and anxiety, which gave my parents plenty of reason to be worried about
me even before my strange behavior started.
I
would have said high school was a living hell, but hell didn’t really kick in until
finals week. The whispers have finally
stopped telling me my secrets and faults.
People I know, people I love and care about have ceased the barrage of
horrible confessions, telling me everything they hated about me, everything I had
done wrong, every time I have hurt them with my stupidity and inability to
understand them.
Instead,
I got a whole host of new issues. These
were a little easier to handle, but they didn’t do a whole lot to level me out. Hell I thought
I was hallucinating half the time, so how could I blame anyone else for
thinking so? But if my mind was just
making shit up, why did I know so
much about the world around me? And the worst part was, deep down I knew that
it wasn’t a hallucination, but something very real. All of it.
I
saw things I shouldn’t be able to see; the invisible threads that tied people
together, binding them by the strength of their connections. And not just the
bonds of people but of objects too, silvery webs strands forming a mesh of closeness
and association. I could see the echoes of people’s thoughts, taste their
emotions with perfect accuracy as the faint halo of auras around them shifted
to match.
My
body sang with energy, my mind raced with spontaneous data and unrivaled
insight into everything around me. It
was powerful, perfect, divine – and was far, far too much. It would’ve been
enough to seriously disconcert any normal person, but for an autistic prone by
nature to sensory overstimulation? Not fun. The visions didn’t happen all the
time, but when I wanted to know something badly and focused hard, there they
were. An invisible eye opened and the universe poured in. In those moments it
was hard to move, hard to think beyond the information I was getting or
concentrate on anything else. After about a week of on and off catatonia, I was
certain that a trip to the North Dakota State Hospital was in my future.
But
Christmas came first. My family usually spends major holidays in Beulah, North
Dakota, a small town of only thirty five hundred people. It’s a place built
first on the railroad and agricultural co-ops, then coal mining and power
plants, many of which dot the horizon around those parts. It’s kind of a boring place, but my mom’s
parents lived there and it seems to be the epicenter for all my relatives on
that side.
I
could tell you more about my family, but it’s a private part of my life. They’re something I cherish and protect. Don’t expect me to go in-depth until it
becomes relevant, okay?
Late
afternoon on Christmas Day I was at my Uncle Terry and Aunt Bab’s. Large groups of people, even family do not
re-center me. Over the years, my parents quietly consented
when I snuck off to an empty bedroom or quiet corner to read a book and
de-stress. Due to the large portion of my life spent without a diagnosis for my Aspersers and depression, I had always felt a little more apart and alone at
social functions, outside of all the movement and talk even when among family.
This
time was different, but no better. I felt it before we even pulled into the
driveway; dazzling bursts of information buzzing like a swarm of bees over
every inch of my skin. People, lots of people nearby, and the hundreds of
silver threads connecting them to the world.
We
went inside and were engulfed by hugs as soon as we came in the entryway and shrugged
off our winter coats. I pulled off my massive
buckled black leather boots and was surprised to notice a nearly identical pair
amount the rows of footwear belonging to the other visiting family members. I really like my boots, and finding another
pair with that much heel and black leather caught me off guard. Whose were they? I didn’t remember seeing
them before.
The
evening went on as a distracted, half-remembered blur. Honestly, I probably would’ve preferred to
just retreat to the corner and curl up in a ball, but everyone wanted to ask me
about my plans for college next year. I
tried to make amiable conversation, but kept finding myself distracted by the
silver threads connecting damn well everything. Somehow they made more sense to
me than the people. After dinner, there was a photo shoot that lasted a solid
twenty minutes. You know the kind. When you have a family as large as mine and
everyone visits from all over the country, you end up doing a lot of iterations
of smiling with different combinations of people. When everyone became engaged
in their own conversations, I took the chance to sit down on the floor and bury
my face in my book, a position that had become familiar enough over the years.
I
was exhausted; I’d had been having a really bad time in general since my world
cracked open and unbridled pandemonium poured in. No guidance, no answers, and the growing
doubt that I was truly sane. And yet, I was.
Despite everything I found myself smiling a
glass smile. Fragile. Transparent. Maybe
the Devil was real. Maybe when I wrote
my name on that tower, I really was signing a contract for my soul without
realizing it. As much as I didn’t really
believe in a literal Devil anymore, it was hard to refute how true it felt when I had been there. That
place, those dreams . . . they made their own reality. But how could the rush of perfect clarity,
the surge of unlimited power and cosmic self-assurance have been evil?
That is where and how I am when the hairs on
my neck stand straight up, and I catch one of my older cousins, staring at me
across the room. Jack King is short for a man in his late twenties. Dark haired
and dark eyed. He’s got a tapered military cut, delicate features but a rounded
jaw line and a nearly perpetual smirk – you can see it even in his eyes when he
isn’t smiling at the hints of crowfeet in the corner of his eyes. Usually, he’s
laid back and friendly at these family events, possessing an easy confidence
from his years as a Captain in the Air Force. Jack is the type to immediately corner
you and get down to business if he has something to say, and usually with a
grin and snarky remark at that. Right now, his eyes are boring holes through
me. He’s not smiling. He’s not smirking.
This isn’t isolation anymore. We sit, eyes
locked, silent, staring at each other across the room filled with thirty odd
chattering relatives. After a few seconds the eye contact hurts, and my gaze flits down to the carpet. That was . . .
intense, and I immediately feel exposed. It’s stupid, but the first thing I
think is: he knows. Then hit hits me,
the information pouring off him was…off somehow.
The only saving grace is that no one else
seems to notice. He’s somehow managing to carry on full conversations and still keep most of that uncomfortable
focus on me. I’m not looking, but I feel it. And when I gather the courage to
glance up again, he still has that look; intense concentration, furrowed brows,
deeply un-pleased. It’s like he’s trying to silently communicate with me and the
message was harsh. His wife was looking
too, just not being so obvious about it.
Zoe King was not exfoliating me with heat vision like her husband.
You could slide a knife under my skin and I
would be less uncomfortable. Goose flesh stampedes up my arms and I try, not for
the first time in my life, to shut it all out. Locked into a world bleeding
noise and sensation, I try to escape to my head before it gets worse. I just
try.
But my head isn’t a nice place these days
either. And how do you escape from people when you can feel the traces of them
everywhere you go, the stray emotions and fragmented pieces of thought? Everything
was connected to everyone. No luck. More
stares. The crowd moves around us but his piercing gaze remains implacable. I
feel it, the moment I cross some sort of threshold. I need to leave. I need to
get away. Now.
My mom is sitting at the kitchen table,
chatting and looking for the life of her like she’s having a great time. I
skulk over to her and mutter that I’m going to take a quick walk. There’s an
oddity in the way we interact now, a distance. I can feel it in my mind, the
slight edge of distrust and worry. Faint, but cutting. It stings, even now. The
urge to get away is stronger than ever.
It’s
Christmas day; with any luck at all I’ll have the streets to myself. At the
front entry way of the house, I pull on my coat and those big buckled boots, making
a quick sweep of the room before heading out the door. It seems I haven’t
attracted much notice, but my eyes consciously skip over Jack as I look.
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