my novella, Resurrection Sticks
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September 23rd, 2012 
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Deerly Beloved
Things can change in a nano-second. One minute, you’re moving along in your life, perhaps even having a great day and feeling hopeful, and the next, you are reminded of how precarious life can be. Last night Kelly and I had one of those moments. If anything had been slightly different, it’s possible we would not be alive.
We had spent the entire weekend enjoying various activities and meals and socializing with friends. We were on our way back from a fly-fishing excursion in Deckers, and moving through the pitch blackness of Highway 85, between Sedalia and Highlands Ranch, near the town of Louviers. Kelly had requested my original music on the stereo and “Something in Me” was playing. We were happy and tired from our wonderful weekend.
Then something appeared a few feet in front of her car. A large buck-deer. It was as if it had fallen from the sky directly in front of us. There was no time to react. The only thought i recall is, it’s too close. We’re going to hit it. And then the expletive, FUCK.
Then BAM.
We made impact in the front passenger side where i was, striking the animal in the hindquarters, and it was just gone, as quickly as it had appeared. By this time, she had braked a little, and we were just continuing down the road, slowly, staring ahead, shocked and trying to assimilate what had just happened. I said, “Kelly….pull over. Pull over…” She did and we just sat there for a few minutes, realizing that we had somehow managed to emerge unscathed from a potentially deadly accident.
I think because we hit him while he was running, and impacted his hindquarters, the momentum just spun him toward the ditch. If we had hit him broadside, things could have been so much worse. Since we were in a small car, it would have been easy for him to have flipped right through our windshield.
I recalled all the stories of deer-impacts on roadways. Some of the stories were straight out of a horror movie. The beast is propelled through the front window, severely injuring or even killing the passengers; sometimes the deer would still be alive, and it would be flailing and kicking, and the passengers would be further injured or killed by that. This particular animal was huge. Maybe 8 or 10 point Buck, with a formidable rack of antlers. I imagined us being gored by those as we sat pinned in the vehicle with him thrashing in pain and confusion.
Soon, i was thinking practicalities and mercy. I had to squeeze through the passenger door, as it was jammed a little by the side panel, and I took pictures of the damage, which was, surprisingly, not half as bad as it could have been. Then she called the Sheriff’s department and asked about filing a report for insurance and we also wanted to get someone from game and fish to find the poor animal and either help it or euthanize it. I didn’t think there was any way it was going to survive, though.
I thought about the experience I’d had with a previous girlfriend, where we were on a trip in Colorado, no less, and had experienced the same vision while driving at night–I had been trying to take a nap in the back seat, and Em was driving. In my mind, while dozing, a vivid and violent scene unfolded–quick seconds of tragedy. I had seen us hitting a deer in the road, and it had come through the front window. I sat straight up and in a panic, said “Baby–”
She said, “Did you see that too?”
“I saw a deer and–”
“We hit it and it came through the windshield–”
We both had to stop and get hold of ourselves, wondering at the strangeness of the event. Not wanting to tempt fate, I had suggested that if this was some kind of warning, we needed to change our timeline. So we pulled over and took a break. When we got back on the road, only a few minutes later, we saw a herd of deer crossing the road in front of us, and they were almost out of site onto the other side. We shared a spooky look with each other.
And Kelly and I — yesterday–I took a video only an hour or so earlier, where a deer had been down the slope of the overlook we stopped at. Now, it seemed a portent of things to come…
(This short vid is of us sitting in the car talking only a moment after it happened.)
As we sat there in Kelly’s car, absorbing what had just happened to us, I heard some thrashing sounds, and eventually, we saw it in the hillside brush, stumbling, its back leg obviously broken, and perhaps its back. It was half falling down the incline and trying to walk. We both were overcome with sadness and heartsick to see the suffering of this beautiful beast. Then we lost sight of it, and made some more calls and finally a State Trooper arrived.
He took a report and told us that he would have to go out there with his flashlight and find the deer, and shoot it. It was sickening to think about, because Kelly and I are both HSP’s and thus very sensitive, but we knew it was the merciful thing. This animal would have either starved while suffering or been attacked by other animals-like wolves- and torn to shreds while still alive. A bullet is always a better alternative.
But, amid this tragic event for an innocent animal, we realized that there was much to be thankful for.
We had just had a Near Death Experience. We had beaten the odds.
We felt so lucky. So unbelievably, inexplicably lucky.
Cause for ConCERN?
Have you heard about our potential annihilation?
France is building a “doomsday machine” according to Internet Whistle-blowers. For an overview of these fears, refer to Misunderstood Universe website.
CERN, or European Center for Nuclear Research (which makes no sense, unless the name was Center, European, of Research, Nuclear…but whatever) is the home of the most powerful particle accelerator…with the ability to create (though minuscule) black holes. The fearful public say that a created black hole could gravitate to center of the earth, and swallow us up in a matter of years.
There are always questionable sources for information. Two, perhaps would be Nostradamus and Yahoo Answers.
From answers.yahoo, which I normally find to be a completely useless resource, since anyone can answer whether they are qualified or not, nonetheless, this is an answer and requires some investigation, and some insight from qualified persons:
“Is it safe for CERN to create a black hole on earth? I have heard recent news about CERN creating a black hole on earth to explain how the universe began. As in accordance with what we knmow about black holes does creation of a black hole on earth pose potential threat to mankind?
Best Answer – Chosen by Voters
(I hope these aren’t the same voters who will be going to the poles in November).
No danger at all. Black holes are not dangerous as such, its is massive black holes that could pause a threat, those with a mass that would be at least that of a mountain. Any micro black hole produced experimentally would have a mass comparable to that of an atom, and could not even have enough gravity to move another atom in close proximity. Further, it would be highly unstable and would stop be in a black hole in a period of time that is so short, you can’t measure accurately, billionth of a second. Even if it could attract something — and again it can’t — that something would not have had time to move before the black hole stops being a black hole.”
And as far as Nostradamus is concerned, someone, of course, found a reference to this in one of his quatrains, and notes that as the population of the world reached 6.66 billion, CERN went online, and this event coincides (maybe) with not only the ominous numbner 666, but with a Nostradamus prophesy:
9:44–”All should leave Geneva. Saturn turns from gold to iron. The contrary Positive ray (RAYPOZ) will exterminate everything, there will be signs in the sky before this.”
Which caused rumblings about that Mayan Calender thing, of time as we know it, ending on December 22, 2012.
Posted on Tech Target, is this article:
“Are storage vendors going to help send us down a black hole?
February 6th, 2008 by Beth PariseauIm sure any number of you can come up with witty figurative responses to that, but I actually mean it literally.
Back in August I did a case study on CERN, the worlds largest physics laboratory, in Switzerland, and the petabytes of data storage that are going to support research on its Large Hadron Collider (LHC). LHC is a 12-story-high, 10-mile-wide underground system of tunnels, magnets and sensors thats designed to do no less than recreate atomic conditions at the creation of the universe and capture particles that until now have been only theoretical.
Having spoken with CERN about their research and the way the whole system is set up, I was surprised when I logged in to my personal email this morning and got a friend request from a profile titled STOP CERN. According to the profile:
This space has been set up to spread awareness of the risks a project due to be launched at CERN next year poses to our planet. For the first time in many decades someone has built a machine that exceeds all our powers of prediction, and although they estimate the possibility of accidentally destroying the planet as extremely low, the LHC propaganda machine that everything is safe is well funded by your tax dollars, paying large salaries to thousands of people who have much to lose financially should the LHC be unable to prove its safety. As most of them perceive the risk to be small, they are willing to take that small risk at our expense. The actual risk cannot presently be calculated, and a Large Hadron Collider [LHC] legal defense fund has even been set up to challenge CERN on the project.
I dont have any kind of physics background, so I dont know if the criticisms are legit, but I was doubly surprised to find that the MySpace profile is only the tip of the iceberg of people questioning CERN. In addition to some other critical websites, an LHC Legal Defense Fund has been started with the goal of legally intervening to stop CERN from turning on LHC this May, creating a black hole within the collider and accidentally destroying the planet.
By the way, isnt that really every geeks dream? To be working on a machine that even theoretically could accidentally destroy the planet?
Anyway, the debate seems to be whether or not something called Hawking evaporation (presumably named after physicist Stephen Hawking) will neutralize the microscopic black holes that could be created by the particle collisions in LHC, or if theyll continue to grow and, well, eat France.
According to another anti-CERN site:
If MBHs [microscopic black holes] are created, there is a likelyhood [sic] that some could fall unimpeded to the centre of the Earth under gravityScientists have estimated that a stable black hole at the center of the earth could consume not only France but the whole planet in the very short time span of between 4 minutes and 30 seconds and 7 minutes.
Im a little more inclined to believe the multiple accredited physics organizations around the world involved in the LHC project know what theyre doing than I am to believe some people Ive never heard of from the Internet, but what do I know? The criticism has at least been strong enough to prompt CERN to post a kind of FAQ page about black holes, strangelets, and all manner of interesting potential doomsday scenarios that have been envisioned for LHC.
Despite the impressive power of the LHC in comparison with other accelerators, the energies produced in its collisions are greatly exceeded by those found in some cosmic rays. Since the much higher-energy collisions provided by Nature for billions of years have not harmed the Earth, there is no reason to think that any phenomenon produced by the LHC will do so.
Wouldnt it just be something, though, if after centuries of war and pollution and all the other things mankind has done to compromise the planet, Armageddon was actually brought about by a bunch of guys in a physics lab?”
But According to MSNBC there is no cause for concern.
Good news! Black hole won’t destroy Earth
Fears raised collider would create black holes that could swallow planet
By Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
updated 12:42 p.m. CT, Wed., Sept. 20, 2006Scientists could generate a black hole as often as every second when the world’s most powerful particle accelerator comes online in 2007.
This potential “black hole factory” has raised fears that a stray black hole could devour our planet whole. The Lifeboat Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence, has stated that artificial black holes could “threaten all life on Earth” and so it proposes to set up “self-sustaining colonies elsewhere.”
But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means “is totally miniscule,” experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.
The accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is under construction in an underground circular tunnel nearly 17 miles long at the world’s largest physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva.
At its maximum, each particle beam the collider fires will pack as much energy as a 400-ton train traveling at 120 mph. By smashing particles together and investigating the debris, scientists hope to help solve mysteries such as the origin of mass and why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
If theories about the universe containing extra dimensions other than those of space and time are correct, the accelerator might also generate black holes, Landsberg and his colleague Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University in California calculated in 2001. Physicists Steve Giddings at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Scott Thomas at Stanford University in California reached similar conclusions.
Black holes possess gravitational fields so strong that nothing can escape them, not even light. They normally form when the remains of a dead star collapse under their own gravity, squeezing their mass together. Although black holes can’t be seen, astronomers infer their existence by the gravitational effects they have on gas and stars around them.
Making black holes
A number of models of the universe suggest extra dimensions of reality exist that are each folded up into sizes ranging from as tiny as a proton, or roughly a millionth of a billionth of a meter, to as big as a fraction of a millimeter. At distances comparable to the size of these extra dimensions, gravity becomes far stronger, these models suggest. If this is true, the collider will cram enough energy together to initiate gravitational collapses that produce black holes.If any of the models are right, the accelerator should create a black hole anywhere from every second to every day, each roughly possessing 5,000 times the mass of a proton and each a thousandth of a proton in size or smaller, Landsberg said.
Still, any fears that such black holes will consume the Earth are groundless, Landsberg said.
For one thing, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking calculated all black holes should emit radiation, and that tiny black holes should lose more mass than they absorb, evaporating within a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, “before they could gobble up any significant amount of matter,” Landsberg said.
Not destroyed yet
CERN spokesman and former research physicist James Gillies also pointed out that Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn’t been destroyed yet.“Still, let’s assume that even if Hawking is a genius, he’s wrong, and that such black holes are more stable,” Landsberg said. Nearly all of the black holes will be traveling fast enough from the accelerator to escape Earth’s gravity. “Even if you produced 10 million black holes a year, only 10 would basically get trapped, orbiting around its center,” Landsberg said.
However, such trapped black holes are so tiny, they could pass through a block of iron the distance from the Earth to the Moon and not hit anything. They would each take about 100 hours to gobble up one proton.
At that rate, even if one did not take into account the fact that each black hole would slow down every time it gobbled up a proton, and thus suck down matter at an even slower rate, “about 100 protons would be destroyed every year by such a black hole, so it would take much more than the age of universe to destroy even one milligram of Earth material,” Landsberg concluded. “It’s quite hard to destroy the Earth.”
If the Large Hadron Collider does create black holes, not only will it prove that extra dimensions of the universe exist, but the radiation that decaying black holes emit could yield clues that help finally unite all the current ideas about the forces of nature under a “theory of everything.” 2008 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved. Legal
2008 MSNBC.com
And in an article on NPR’s website, this excerpt:
A few non-scientists have been worried that physicists are getting a little too close to god for comfort. They’re worried that this experiment could destroy the Earth, because one possibility is that the machine will make miniature black holes. De Rujula describes miniature black holes as particles of extraordinary density compared to usual objects.
He says black holes would certainly be interesting, because they would be evidence for extra tiny dimensions of space-time. But he doesn’t think they are likely to appear. And if they do, they’ll be harmless.
“Those black holes will not be dangerous ones of science fiction that eat up everything,” De Rujula promises. “Being so small they sort of break into pieces.”
More discussion on this can be found on Future Pundit. Fascinating, terrifying, slightly encouraging, confusing, highly technical, highly stupid and partially ambiguous.
A poster named Andrew said,
“Having read these pages, I contacted Professor George Ellis – one of the most eminent physicists who worked on Black Holes theory with Stephen Hawking, as well as a highly reputable philosopher of science and receiver of the Temperton Prize. In his reply, Professor Ellis wrote (E-mail of 22-9-06): “I don’t think there is any risk. The theories quoted are highly speculative and have no experimental basis. And higher energy particles already exist in the universe – they are in cosmic rays. I don’t think it is anything to get worried about.”
I can’t help but notice that the qualified response to this includes the phrase “I don’t think it is anything to get worried about.” You DON’T THINK? Meaning, you’re not sure? Meaning, there is still some risk we don’t know about, or we do know about, but are willing to chance?
It almost seems that we must have some official investigation or interview with some trusted authority who has no conflict of interest in telling us all the truth. I think that ultimately, ANY danger is too much danger in this case. The only situation I can see wherein this would not be true, is if we were insured certain global destruction if we DIDN’T do this. Calculated risk is a sensible method of discerning decisions, but we must always consider worst-case-scenarios. If the worst case scenario is the ultimate annihilation of everything on the planet, then the small risk becomes a moot consideration, and the activities of CERN or any other scientific entity must be prohibited.
I will continue to search for cogent answers to this gargantuan issue. And I welcome anyone who can provide reputable input on it, or direct me toward that in some way.
————————————–
CERN’s homepage
Here is a link to a pdf document offered by CERN on this topic. I do not, however, trust the word of those who are being accused of doing something dangerous. An obvious conflict of interest.
Also, here’s a list of particle accelerator labs around the world.
Drive-By Writing
If you’re a writer, you are probably familiar with the tendency to try to write ideas down while driving. I seem to get my best ideas when I’m driving, and it’s the most inopportune moment to do it. Surprisingly, I don’t always have a pen handy. That’s why I bought one of those key chain attachable sharpie markers…
But then there’s not always paper. I know this sounds crazy for a voluminous writer like myself not to have paper and pen….there were times when an idea was so good, I considered to pricking my finger and writing it in blood. That would be a blood-blog.
Today, for example, I was writing not only on envelope, but on the back of the cardboard box the envelopes came in. And periodically honking the horn, because I was using my steering wheel as a desk.
It got so that every time I thought of something, I felt it might be prudent to just pull over. But with all the ideas I had today, I would have never reached my destination….which, paradoxically, was the office supply store to buy pens and paper.
Then, when I got home, I was burdened with the challenge of deciphering what looks like hieroglyphs on the cardboard.
Years ago, when I did quite a bit more driving than I do now, I used to use a tape recorder. I suppose I’ll have to go back to that. Writing things down is just too frustrating, and things I intend to save may be lost because I can’t read it. Never mind the lives I might endanger.
I can see the headlines now:
Local Author Burns a Swath Through the Median while Honoring Her Muse.
———————————
For more of those ideas I had while driving, see Remote Control Yourself and Texting, Texting, One Two, 9…Oops.
House of Escher
(from Brainmatter: Essays, Narrative & Short Fiction by Kelli Jae Baeli)
She made a derisive sound.
“Oh, you don’t want to take the stairs.”
I woke in a strange bed, in a strange room, the previous night of drinking leaving me with a tongue that felt swollen, and an overwhelming need for a drink of water.
My friends had 
obviously carried me from the car to this bed sometime in the night. I sat up, my head swimming. Where am I? The last thing I remembered was sitting in the back seat of Casey’s old Bonneville, with my head in Mindy’s lap. Franklin was in the passenger seat. He was the newest member of the circle of friends – an unassuming boy-next-door type. He said he wasn’t gay, but it was hard to tell. It was odd that he’d hang out with a bunch of lesbians. General consensus was that he was in the closet. He did seem a little overly sensitive. At any rate, he had impeccable manners and seemed totally comfortable around us. So we included him in our little road trips. Like a mascot.
I had had a hard day at school, cramming for finals, and indulged a bit too much in the Schnapps, finally passing out in Mindy’s lap.
So now, here I was in this room with a small bunk and cinder block walls, and not much of anything else. I had to find a bathroom first, and then I had to find my friends. I stood up and that’s when I became aware that I was wearing a set of green scrubs, I must have gotten sick on my other clothes. So they had also changed my clothes at some point too. Great. I really like the idea of that. I haven’t shaved my legs in over a week.
I found Franklin coming out of the bathroom down the hall. “Hey, Franklin, where is everyone?”
“They had to go to a lecture.”
“A lecture?”
He swept a hand around. “You’re in the dorm.?”
“Oh. Wow. I should stay away from liquor.”
“There’s coffee in here, in the break room. Want some?”
“Sure.” I followed him into the kitchenette and lounging area, taking the Styrofoam cup he offered, and drinking with zeal, burning my tongue.
He plopped on the sofa across the room and I followed, seating myself next to him. He watched me thumb through a Psychology Today magazine, and eventually, his attention was unnerving. “Why are you staring at me, Franklin?”
He released an obviously pent-up breath. “I was just thinking about how I’d like to do things to you.”
Confused by his uncharacteristic boldness, and his apparent voyage from gayness to straightness, I frowned at him. “What? Are you trying to be funny?”
“No I’m not. Lean back here and be quiet.”
I started to protest, considered even smacking him in the mouth, but then I saw the ice pick he held in his hand. “Are you out of your mind?”
“No. You are. Now lean back like I told you.”
I obeyed, telling myself it was merely a stall until I could figure out how to handle this.
He pressed into me, his breath tickling my face, and touched my ear with the ice pick. “You know, 
if I jabbed this ice pick into your ear, you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself screaming.”
Okay. Not funny. Scary, now. He was a psycho. It was clear to me that the unassuming, slightly effeminate Franklin I knew last night had become a very dangerous and twisted individual of the serial killer variety. As he held the ice pick under my chin, its point almost piercing me, he ran a hand up my thigh and began to massage my crotch. His intentions were probably rape, torture and murder, in no particular order.
At first, of course, I was terrified. About then, I realized the only way out was to outsmart him. So I said, “Okay, I have a confession. . .you don’t have to force yourself on me, because I’ve had a crush on you since the first day we met. I’ve always wanted you, I just never thought you’d want me. I couldn’t tell my friends because we’re all gay and of course, they wouldn’t understand . . . sometimes things go beyond gender Franklin, and we have a special connection.”
He was taken aback, and stricken a bit speechless. Then he warmed to the idea and reached for me. I said, “Wait. . .I want this to be special. And I also want them all to know. I don’t want to hide. We’ve got to tell them, and then you and I have to go away some-where alone so we can be together properly. . .” I leaned up and kissed his cheek and touched his hair. “It’s too special to do it here, like this.” I took him by the hand and led him out of that remote room and down the hallway, telling him we had to find our friends and get this over with.
Finally, I found them. They were in this classroom, in the middle of a lecture, just as he had said. I stood at the door with him, still holding his hand, and got their attention. They saw how odd it was that we were holding hands and standing so intimately close. I tried to catch several of them in the eyes and make urgent faces, to let them know something was amiss, but they didn’t seem to notice, and he watched me too much. Through sign language, they indicated that they could not get out of the lecture just yet. It began to sink in, then, that they would never believe what I was eventually going to tell them. . .that he was not who they thought he was, that he was very very sick, and very very dangerous. They all loved him. And then the jig would be up and he would know I knew, and he would play it off and act innocent, and then it would only be a matter of time before he hunted me down.
No, I couldn’t tell them. I had to find a way to show them.
My thoughts were interrupted by his anxious whisper. “Let’s tell them later, and just go.”
I hesitated, but then said, “Okay. . .I guess that’s okay. . .we’ll tell them when we get back. I know of a great cabin we can go to in the mountains – why don’t you go get your car and pull around front, and I’m going to visit the ladies room right quick. I don’t want to have to worry with that later, you know. . .” I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively.
He nodded his understanding and I swear, almost blushed. “I’ll meet you out front.” I leaned up and kissed him again, for effect, on the lips this time. He seemed a bit confused, but then smiled and seemed happy. He headed for the door, already digging in his pocket for his car keys. I knew he would look back at me, so I made a production of looking at the wall marquee directory for the location of the restroom. When I heard the door open and close, I turned and saw he was gone.
Breaking into a sprint, I headed for the elevators. My attention at the directory marquee had been about finding the location of the elevators, not the restroom.
The elevator had small silver doors, like the kind in old buildings and colleges. I saw it at the end of the corridor. A bunch of people were in there, and the doors were slowly closing, and I was running down the hall, trying to get there, and watching them all ignore me. . . they wouldn’t hold the door. A rotund black woman standing with them, elbowed them aside and hit the door open button and got out, grumbling, “I hate that shit. People are so rude.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But now, you’ve lost your ride.”
She shrugged. “Why would I want to ride up in an elevator with people like that?”
We exchanged a meaningful glance, and I slipped back into my anxiety, wondering if Franklin was at his car yet, if he was waiting in the front, wondering where I was. I punched the button again and we both looked up at the lighted numbers. It was on the fourth floor and holding.
“Sometimes it takes a while,” she muttered.
I looked at the stagnant number four as she offered, “It looks like that damn thing is stuck again. And the other one broke down this morning. . .”
“Where are the stairs?”
She made a derisive sound. “Oh, you don’t want to take the stairs.”
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But you don’t want to take the stairs.”
Still, there was this ticking clock in my brain and I caught myself watching the exit door for Sweet Mr. Serial Killer. “I’ll take my chances, where are they?”
She shrugged her resignation. “Okay. Down there, turn left, turn right, and then left again. Look for the green door. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
I ran. Images of Franklin appeared in front of me, behind me, a twisted, betrayed expression on his features, his hands itching to close around my neck for playing his emotions, his ice pick plunging into my ear as he laughed. Unable to hear myself scream.
I turned left. Right. Left again.
The green door.
I grabbed the knob and pulled it hard, and took a step inside, almost losing my balance. I had to grab the door jamb to keep from falling. There was no first step. The steps began a few feet down, and there was a gaping hole in between. A hole that seemed to lead down into an abyss of darkness. “Holy shit!” I jumped, and as my feet landed on the top step, I heard the echo of the elevator woman’s voice “I told you!”
I turned to look back up at the door, half expecting to see her standing there. No time to consider the oddity, I had to get out of there, find help. Lose the psycho mascot.
I turned back and took one step down, but halted when I realized that the single stairway had somehow multiplied; now, there was a collection of morphed stairways, some moving in a sideways pattern and disappearing into the walls, some tiny and leading steeply upward into the ceiling, some leading down and then back up again, and all the steps were now brightly colored in differing pastel shades. I closed my eyes, swallowing, and then looked again. They were still there. I was standing in the middle of a Dali painting, an Escher drawing, a room for traveling clowns with no destination. Is this what the elevator girl meant? Was this some sort of optical illusion perpetrated by bored geniuses at the college?
Shaking off the anxiety now simmering in my gut, I searched for an outlet; some stairway that led to a door. I followed the path of a spiral staircase that rose up over my head and around a corner. That must be it. I hopped over to that bottom step and ascended quickly, turning the corner and smacking into a wall that stood just out of sight. Touching the bruise on my cheek, I shook my head clear and turned around, and -
All the stairs were gone. I was on a step, hanging over the black hole again. I took some deep breaths and tried to calm myself. This prank was not engendering humor in me. I felt I was about to snap, fling myself into the void. But no, I was a survivor and I would find a way out of this circus.
I rubbed my eyes and took another cleansing breath. Lifting my eyelids again, I saw the pole. Like the kind in fire stations. It was only a few feet out. Swallowing any preemptive thoughts, I lunged for it, wrapped myself around it and slid down into the darkness.
My feet met floor only one story down. This had to be the second floor. That meant I might have to maneuver my way through another stairwell with God knew what sort of multi-leveled gaming. I expected a Pacman to come floating through the air: wokka wokka wokka. . .but there was a door on the other side of the room.
Carefully ensuring the floor was still there, I traversed the distance to the door, this time painted bright blue, and pulled it open, stepping out onto the landing. It was the back entrance. I now remember it was the same one I had used when I had entered the building with my friends. But that had been on the ground level, and I knew I had only slid one story. In front of me, and spanning around the building, was the same chain link fence, the same chain link gate, through which we had accessed this back door.
Beyond the chain link, I could see the tiny hardware store we had passed coming in. I remembered 
it because it looked like something out of the past. It was the kind of hardware store found in remote Southern areas; the kind that carried chicken wire and saddles and hunting rifles, and run by a guy wearing overalls. I tried to recall where I was, and how I could get out of here, out of this city and back to the place I called home, a small but cozy apartment in a quaint tourist village a few counties away.
I checked the perimeter for Sweet Mr. Serial Killer, and hurried to the chain link gate, lifting the metal latch and slipping through. Up the concrete steps into the hardware store, I approached the counter, dodging a wooden barrel of leaf rakes that tried to snag my hair. “Excuse me?”
The man in overalls turned from his stocking, a box of .38 shells in his hand. “Oh, I didn’t hear you come in. The clapper on that door bell is broken. How can I help you?”
“Um. . .” I gathered my thoughts. “I’m. . .lost. Can you tell me where I am?”
“You’re at the corner of 7th and main.”
“No I mean. . .where. . .what city is this?”
“You don’t know what city you’re in?”
“Well, I rode here in a friend’s car and fell asleep, and they. . .took off and left me, and now I’m not sure where I am.”
He nodded, a nostalgic smile creasing his wrinkled face, obviously satisfied by my explanation. “Well now, young lady, you’re in the fine city of Whitehall.”
That didn’t help me much because I didn’t recognize the name.
“Where are these friends of yours?”
“Oh they’re taking classes over here at the college.”
“What college?”
I pointed behind me toward the old building, “Back here. I’m not sure of the name of it?”
He shifted his weight onto another foot. “Are you talking about that gray building behind the chain link?”
I nodded.
“Young lady. . .that’s not a college.”
“What? Of course it is, I have friends who are over there right now, attending a lecture. . .I was just there. . .I’m. . .okay, I’m really trying to get away from this really creepy guy who’s chasing me, and-” I could see I was only making it worse. “Okay, if it’s not a college, what is it?”
He hesitated, squinting at me. “It’s. . .a hospital. An asylum.”
Then I was profoundly confused. He was eying my scrubs. And also ever so slightly moving toward the phone on the counter. “Let me call some help for you, young lady,” he said carefully. His hand was on the receiver.
“Don’t do that,” I told him. It came out sounding like a warning, I really just meant that I knew what he was thinking and it was not accurate. But how would I convince him now? I didn’t know where I was, I was dressed in scrubs, disoriented, and calling a mental hospital a college. I’d have the same thoughts he was having. . .
He picked up the phone and started dialing, his other hand slipping under the counter. I remembered the box he had been holding and I knew what else he was holding now.
I just turned and ran out.
Taking the gravel alleyway that ran behind the hardware store, I just kept running with no idea where I was going. I thought of the college. The surrealist stairs. My friends. Franklin. Had I wound up with a bunch of crazies during my night on the town? No, I knew my friends. But Franklin was new.
A buzzing began in my head. I started to cry. The tears leaped from eyes into the wind like miniature paratroopers.
Something moved at the end of the alley. A figure. It was him. I spun and dashed in the other direction, getting a painful slap in the face from a tree limb, which caused me to stumble. That’s all he needed. He was there, his arms around me like a wrestler, and I anticipated being body-slammed and whacked with a metal chair.
I swiped my heel at the back of his knee, so that his leg folded; he lost balance, and we fell to the 
ground, where I wriggled free, but then there were two more hands. Four hands? He had help with him. The man in overalls from the hardware store. Some sort of weird conspiracy? Did he hire a lookout for these forays into kidnapping and violation?
A sharp prick in my neck soon ebbed into grogginess and I knew I was losing consciousness.
As a howling October wind created Halloween ambiance outside, Franklin finished securing the 
straps around her while the other man looked around the room, studying the bizarre artwork on the walls.
“You look really stupid in those overalls,” Franklin cracked.
He turned. “The wife insisted we go as The Farmer and the Farmer’s Daughter. She never misses a chance to remind me how much younger she is than me.”
Franklin chuckled, his attention back on the girl in the bed. “This was a bad one. They ought to change her meds.” He caught the other orderly staring at a picture. “Why do you keep looking at that?”
“I don’t know. I’m drawn to it. But it creeps me out.”
Franklin studied the painting, MC Escher’s House of Stairs.
