Her Name is Aice
I had decided by this point that I could not possibly, actually, be falling. If my physical body was truly falling then by now I had fallen so far down into the earth that I was going to land in a lava bed. Plus, the walls rushing past on either side were covered in bones, and while it made sense for bones to be buried in the earth, this was an unreasonable amount of bones and some of them appeared to be floating. No, logically I could not be falling. THUMP!
*sometime later*
That landing sure felt like I had been falling. However, It did not feel like I had landed in a lava bed. On the contrary, it felt like I had landed on… snow? Slowly I tried opening my eyes, which immediately unleashed a bolt of hot lightning between my ears. Obviously, I had struck my head upon landing. Trying to push down the urge to vomit from the pain, I slowly tried to open my eyes again. Where am I? How is this snow not freezing?
It took a few moments for my shaken brain to process what my eyes were seeing around me. Suddenly I couldn’t keep the bile down any longer, vomiting violently I desperately squeezed my eyes shut, willing the scene around me to disappear when I opened them again. Steeling myself to check my surroundings again I wiped my mouth on the back of my torn sleeve and looked around, slowly crawling to my feet. All I could see for miles and miles in any direction were bones. Bones and ash.
*earlier that day… maybe?*
“Aice, we can’t keep doing this,” the headmistress sighs across her desk, “these outbursts are just not acceptable.”
I just stared at my hands in my lap. My nails are chewed to the quick on both hands, splotches of various colors dotted each jagged nub. Leftover remnants of mismatched layers of nail polish I had never removed between new coats. I knew that lashing out at my teacher was not the right thing to do after the fact, but at that moment it was like something possessed me and that THING is what threw my textbook across the room and stormed out, slamming the door behind me. My outbursts have plagued me for as long as I can remember. Sometimes multiple times a week, other times months would go by between instances but they always came back. Therapists, medications, new schools, homeschooling, special schools, the outbursts always came back. I had lashed out at everyone from strangers to friends, even my parents had suffered. I knew they had suffered the most, losing their lives because of my outbursts…
“Aice, are you listening to me? What do you expect me to do about this behavior,” prods the frustrated headmistress, Ms. Bailey, “Your grades are spotless, but your lack of involvement in school activities combined with these tantrums are making it hard for me to continue to advocate for your continued enrollment here. I don't want to see you expelled so close to graduation.”
I sighed, biting my cheek to avoid the tears struggling to leak out. I was a lot of things, but weak was not one of them, I refused to cry. Not here. The truth was, I had even less of an idea of what to do about my violent tendencies than anyone else did. Everyone else had plenty of ideas about yoga and meditation, counting backward, counting forwards, and naming things around me out loud to calm down. None of it had ever worked. For those things to work I had to have control of my brain in those moments when I became so overwhelmed that THING took over my body and used it to wreak havoc on those around me. I was certain that if I was truly in control of my brain and body in those moments then I would never choose to harm those around me, especially those that I love.
“You are free to go Aice,” I had no idea what else Ms. Bailey was saying as I jerked to my feet and bolted out the door. I pushed my way out of the administration building of the Academy. The Finix Academy for Gifted Children was a reclaimed, and handsomely updated, monastery set at the base of the Rocky Mountains somewhere in the middle of nowhere Colorado, USA. Only one of the original stone buildings remained, once a dormitory for the monks the administration building was a work of art. Modern doorways set in the original, peaked archways dotted the halls. Original wood accented with a simple cream and tan paint scheme created a warm welcome to new and current students alike. Sometimes I like to draw the building and imagine the monks in their robes treading the halls in a long-ago time, but today I didn't give a second glance to the ornately engraved beams along the walls as I stormed out, determined to get as far away from these walls that were rapidly threatening to suffocate me if I remained in them for a moment longer.
Surrounded on three sides by the beautiful, never-ending Rocky Mountains, and on the other a silent, vast forest that hid the main gates accessible only by a single driveway in and out of the front courtyard. The Academy really was the most beautiful boarding school I had attended over the last 5 years. Today it felt like how cardboard tasted: bland and choking. I slipped around the back of the administration building, opposite the front gates, and continued towards the mountain range. A few dozen yards out was the privacy fence marking the school boundaries, students were not allowed past the fence unescorted, but I knew a spot where several slats had broken off behind a tree line leaving me just enough room to squeeze through them. Sometimes when I felt one of my outbursts building I could make it out of the fence in time and let the THING have it out beyond the school boundaries, away from anyone I could possibly hurt.
Once outside the fence, I kept walking at a pace quick enough that I might have used less energy if I just broke into a run. I stomped past the tree with the low branches I normally crawled up and nestled into to read a book on days when the weather was nice and the lights at school were just too loud. I passed the small creek with the perfect swimming pool on one bank that was great for cooling off on those rare hot summer days. I continued to walk past all of my usual safe spaces and still kept walking.
Fueled by anger at myself, frustration, and ultimately by exhaustion. The exhaustion that comes from living in a body where my skin felt too heavy to wear somedays, and despite wanting nothing more than to sink into my bed and never open my eyes, I still had to carry on about my day like I wasn't wearing skin two sizes too big, with a brain being powered by a battery three sizes too small. The kind of exhaustion that comes with being an orphan on my thirteenth birthday because the world was too big for me that day. I did not have the words to explain earlier in the day that no I did not want to go to dinner in public because the noise and the people and the lights crawl into my body and awaken that THING inside of me that hurts other people with my body. The same body that wears skin two sizes too big. So no, I did not want to go out for dinner for my 13th birthday, but at thirteen I didn’t know the words to save my parents' lives. I pushed the intruding thoughts away the way I would shove my dirty laundry under my bed before room checks, hoping that none of it would spill out at the wrong moment.
I was finally calming down, feeling my blood settle in my veins, no longer hearing the rushing in my ears. I had just turned my head to start looking around, hoping to determine where I had ended up, when my next step found there was nothing beneath my foot but air, and I realized I was falling.
