Searching With My Good Eye Closed

Was that the faint opening strains of Soundgarden's "Searching With My Good Eye Closed?" Then the best part at the 1:25 mark when the rhythm and the drums come crashing in. Things wobbled. Things waved. My head rolled right long with the things. And with the music. I drifted. The little hospital room ceased to be and instead became the bathroom where my waking self lay curled in the fetal position in front of the toilet. The lights above the mirror casting a yellowish glow about my pale and sickly form. Then I saw myself wake enough to lurch up to the toilet and vomit. There appeared to be a little blood in it, too. Lovely.

Now the bathroom was replaced by the bedroom. I seemed to be hovering where the window should have been, but that would have meant I was either inside the wall or could see through it. Yet there was myself again, lying in bed beside Lilly. I no longer seemed sick. But whatever this was that I was seeing felt like something different. Maybe symbolic or otherwise having nothing to do with my present condition in the waking world. I found myself swimming in the thoughts and feelings of my relationship with Lilly. She was turned away from me and I lay facing her back, a gap of pillows and blankets between us. My little Inconsistent Love. Things had been a little strained in recent months, but better than in the fall. And nothing abnormal for any relationship.

The song ended. A moment later I felt a mental jolt, like the safety bars on a roller coaster locking into place. The figure of myself in the bed beside Lilly had disappeared. The room had grown dim and felt wider, emptier. Then I could hear more music, drifting, searching. I knew the song, but my mind suddenly felt like it no longer had control of the wheel. My head turned by itself and there was a man standing in the bedroom doorway. In a flash he transformed from a black faceless man-shape, to McCready, then into a strangely familiar man a little older than myself, then back to the black shadow, then a flurry of other jumbled images, then myself - looking shaken and out of reality, and then finally it settled into the form of Tommy Jack.

"got some kicks, wanna take a ride, I said 'yeah!'"

"Leave her, Gabriel. You must come with me." he said, beckoning towards the light now spilling from behind him in the hallway. I took a look back at Lilly, she seemed somehow unknown to me. A bit like a stranger. I moved around to her side of the bed and as I normally did when leaving while she was asleep, I gently placed a kiss atop her forehead. And then I followed Jack out of the room and into the light.