The Fall
I don’t remember the fall.
I remember pressing play, setting the phone by the sink, and stepping inside the shower. The opening beat of Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” filled the bathroom, and I began to dance, humming along in the spray. I remember the way the shower curtain clung to my leg like it had a film of gorilla glue against my thighs. I remember thinking, Girl, you really gotta clean the tub, right before the world flopped sideways.
Then... silence.
Not bathroom silence. Not “the pipes stopped hissing” silence.
This was totally mute. Like somebody pressed a universal pause button, and I was the only one who could tell.
I was standing in my bathroom and also not standing in my bathroom.
Same cracked tile.Same gray Dollar General bath mat.Same steam curling lazy shapes against the mirror.
And my body—my actual, physical, human body—was half in, half out of the tub.
One arm twisted behind my back. One leg was draped over the side. Hair smeared across porcelain like a drowned mermaid who died unimpressively.
I stared for what felt like a full minute. Waiting for panic. For pain. For anything that made sense.
Nothing came.
My body didn’t move as the water continued to spray on it. No twitch. Lifeless.
“Great,” I muttered. “I die in the shower with Dollar General conditioner in my hair. Real classy exit.”
And underneath the sarcasm was something older—some leftover childhood terror that if I ever stepped out of line or out of my body, God would send me straight to the fire.
Sunday school’s depiction of Hell still lived somewhere inside me, curled tight like a fist.
I didn’t feel scared—not in the usual way.I didn’t feel anything in the usual way.
I felt... floaty.
Literally.
When I tried to shift my weight, my feet didn’t move on the tile. I moved. The whole bathroom slid under me like I was drifting on one of those airport walkways.
I glided toward my body. My stomach tightened—even though I didn’t think this version of me had a stomach.
Hey I whimpered, trying to tuck a wet strand of hair behind my ear.
My hand went through my face like fog.
My whole soul jolted.
This wasn’t quirky or dreamy—this was nightmare stuff.
I wanted to scream, to cry, to pass out... except I had no lungs, no tears, no way to fall.
My fear spiked so violently, I swear the whole room shook from it.
I jerked back hard enough that my soul-heart stuttered. What is this? I thought. But I instantly knew. I was outside my body. I had been knocked loose.
My freckles.My lashes.The bump on my nose I’d hated since the eighth grade.
I didn’t look peaceful. I looked dropped -like a toy someone quit playing with.
All of it looked painfully normal, like I was about to snort awake and complain about the water temperature.
Except I didn’t.
Do something, I thought. Wake up.
Nothing.
A slow cold sprouted within me.
There was a thin light cord connected to the body from its forehead to the back of my head.
I drifted backward. Went right through the bathroom door without touching it.
The hallway was darker than normal—wrong dark, the kind that made my childhood fear crawl up my spine. I’d always slept with a lamp on. Always. The shadows tonight felt thicker, like they were watching.
Into my bedroom.Unmade bed. Clean laundry refusing to go where it belonged. My phone flashing a missed text from Kendra.
The whole world looked... filtered through a vintage lens. Softer around the edges. Faded colors, like everything was one step removed from real.
I was haunting my own apartment. Love that for me.
The front door was closed. I slipped through it like steam.
Outside, the afternoon sun painted everything yellow—the cars, the trees, the kid on his scooter who clearly believed he ruled the parking lot. It should’ve felt familiar, but it didn’t. It felt like someone else’s life viewed through a smudged window.
And somewhere deep behind me...a tug.
A pull back toward my body.
Can I go back?
I pictured my shower.
The universe smeared into light—And I was back in my bathroom.
Hovering over myself.
Up close, I could see the faint bruise blooming on my forehead.
“I’m back,” I told the unconscious version of me.
I lined myself up as I’d seen in movies, focused the way you do when you try to remember a dream—
I floated before falling.
Hard.
Sound crashed into me. Pins and needles raced down my arms and legs. My lungs rebooted on a gasp, sending a surge of electric pain through my whole body.
Water still running, now barely lukewarm. Bathroom fan buzzing like it wanted to muffle the sounds of trauma. Cold tile biting into my shoulder. Leaving fragments embedded in my skin as I moved again
And I started crying. This body was unbelievably heavy, and it screamed in alarms of pain and damage.
High, breathless, wrong-laughing. The kind of laughing that’s barely holding panic hostage.
I crawled to the bedroom, dripping everywhere, grabbed my phone, and stared at my reflection.
“The fuck?” I whispered.
The girl on the screen neither confirmed nor denied.
