Halfway: A Short Story

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I could feel my heart rate increasing slowly and at my attention it began to beat more fiercely. I could feel it pulsing through my body as though someone was sending thick beads of mercury through my veins. I was sent back to the moment of birth and was once again trying to learn how to breathe. Something was eating me from the inside out and when I could finally put my finger on it, I realized it was fear. The kind of fear that followed you up the stairs as a kid, or maybe still now, convinced that something of the imagination was lurking only a few steps behind you. Or when you're laying in bed, and every creak of the house or crackle of branches in the wind, becomes a stranger invading your home. These are all fears created in
Colors around me looked as though they had been turned up. Shapes and patterns appeared in the leaves of the trees and in the details of everything around me. I looked back at my friend and she smiled at me knowing I could see what she saw. Our worlds were the same. I was hovering inches above my normal body. Everything, yet nothing was possible. Life was so clear, yet I was more confused than I’d ever been. I was in the state of waking up where you have to remind yourself that it had only been a dream, except I was still uncertain about that. After a while, or maybe it was only a few minutes - time was irrelevant - we somehow made the decision to continue walking to the river.I couldn’t imagine trying to walk in the state I was in, but once I had started, I was Casper floating to my destination. There was no such thing as the ground. We were astronauts in a simulation pretending to walk on Earth; the ground could have been the ceiling, it didn’t
She seemed to agree and became more confused than she already was. I saw panic in her eyes and changed my tone of amusement to concern. An idea that we weren’t okay began to grow in her mind. Her heart was pounding, she couldn’t remember how to breath, and she described to me that her thoughts were slowing. She admitted that she thought she was dying. I hit a wall and began to feel my own heart rate increase through my body. She tried to understand what was happening to her and thought that maybe she had taken too much of the drug and was overdosing. She was confused and scared. I trusted her experiences so I too began to panic. Some poor women on her morning walk was about to cross our path. I thought, her morning was about to get weird. I could see what we looked like with my friend on the ground crying out for her to help us and I realized that we might be approaching insanity. We were in a world that made sense only to us.
Luckily the lady had headphones in, and when she took them out confused at the scene, I told her to have a good morning and to ignore the girl asking for help, she was