An Inverted Coma
Synopsis
Alice opens her eyes and finds herself in a deserted inverted house. As she finds her way through the bizarre upside down world she keeps running into fragments of her past and finds herself following the trail of a strange glimmering light that seems to be leading her onward. What is she being lead to discover? What is this world she has found herself in? How did she get there? As these questions get answered we find ourselves peeling into the lives of a fragmented family trying to make peace with the past.
Story
Alice opened her eyes and found herself in an inverted room.
The light from the CFL on the ceiling-turned-floor was casting strange shadows on the opposite wall as the fan blades noisily crossed its path each time. The place smelt of an old empty house that had been locked away for years.
Alice got to her feet and looked around at her bizarre surroundings. The place was strangely quiet. Almost too quiet.
“Hello?” she called out.
“Is anybody here? “.There was no answer.
“Where am I?” her voice echoed through the room. It didn’t seem like anyone was around. Yet Alice felt something vaguely familiar about the place.
She looked up, and a wave of recognition dawned on her as she saw the objects above her. Above, on what would be the floor of the inverted room, stood her old refrigerator, the dark wooden chairs, the big mahogany table with glasses neatly stacked on it to one side, the pearl white china sink and everything else that had populated the small dining room in her ancestral home where she had spent most of her childhood.
She noticed there was some food left on the plate on the table. As if someone had just got up and left without finishing his meal. She couldn’t quite figure out what the food was though. There was a glass of milk, frozen in mid air that looked like it had been flung across the room.
As creepy as it were, she still tried to reach up toward the table and tried to feel the old mahogany wood once again. It was just out of her reach.
Alice slowly tried to figure out how she could get out of the room. The walls were all inverted so the door ways now had to be literally climbed over in order to pass through. She made her way to what seemed to be the back door of the house. She tugged at the inverted door handle and pulled it open. The door opened with a loud creek. And the room suddenly flooded with sunlight.
The wind gushed inside making her hair fly. She peered outside. Above her head she found the door steps leading into the ground .The earth extended above her like a huge ceiling till as far as she could see like a blown up photograph of a giant empty playground hung upside down. Where she expected to see the threshold and the porch of the house she saw there was nothing. There was nothing but vast emptiness that stretched into the sky below.
The whole world was upside down.
***
A bulky old man of around sixty walked slowly through the well lit corridor of the hospital ward. He had a slight limp on one leg. The walls of the hospital ward were white and sterile and made him feel uneasy. The thick odour of pharmaceutical medicines made him feel even more so. But he tried to stay calm. He had come to meet her. After all those years of distance he was finally going to meet her.
Nothing could have prepared him for this. He wondered if he would have had the courage to do this, had it not been for the doctor’s phone call the night before. The long journey had worn down his resolve, but he still trudged on. He was almost there. As he passed the half open doors of the ward, he tried not to look inside. His eyes only halted occasionally to check the room number.
He was almost there, he told himself.
Would he be able to recognize her?
Would she recognize him?
His chest almost seemed to ache with the weight of these thoughts. A drink or two from his bottle might have helped him deal with things. After all that’s what had given him the strength to make the journey so far at least. But not now, he thought, not in the hospital. No, this last stretch of the journey he had to make it himself. This was his cross to bear. This would be his atonement.
His hands trembled as he finally reached for the doorway of the room.
***
Alice took a couple of minutes to take in the spectacular view of the upside down world. This must be a dream, she thought to herself. Careful not to slip she tried extending her arm and tried to touch the grass that grew on the ground above. It too was just out of reach.
Suddenly a crow flew by from the rooftop beneath her. Startled, she quickly pulled herself back inside and shut the door behind her.
The sudden change back to the dark interior of the house made her squint hard. Everything was a purple haze and she tried to blink things into focus. But instead of dying out the purple haze slowly morphed into purple tapestry on the walls and revealed the interior of a small upside down room. The dark purple walls were all too familiar. This used to be her room.
She looked around. There they were - her study table, her mirrored wooden cupboard and her little swiveling chair, all stood around her upside down and placed firmly on the inverted floor above her. She knew the books on the shelves even without looking at them. There was a photo frame frozen in mid air that had toppled from her table. She tried to reach for the photo frame but it was just out of reach.
She went to the door at the other end of the room. It led out into a stair well where a bizarre number of stairways began ended and intersected. Bewildered Alice peered down the stairwell.
Just then she saw a glimmer of light on the opposite wall. A small sparkling light darted here and there across the wall. It was just like how it looked when sunlight reflected off of someone’s watch or off some piece of shiny metal. And then she heard voices from the floor below.
“There must be people down there!” she thought to herself.
Alice quickly ran down the topsy-turvy staircase. The staircase spiraled down and went through bizarre twists and turns. She could hear voices arguing with each other, but couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. The voices always seemed to be coming from just a flight of steps beneath.
After much winding the stairs finally lead her into yet another long inverted room. Alice stood there for a second. The pale ceiling on which she walked, the dark wooden floor boards above were all clearly etched in her memory. It had been long since she had been to this room, almost fifteen years, yet she recognized. It was the room where her mother’s funeral service had taken place. The last time she ever saw her.
Alice could almost guess what she would see when she looked up. It felt like a dream, a dream with too many details. A dream from which she couldn’t wake up even if she cried. She took a deep breath; this was going to be hard. As she looked up she saw the casket. The oak casket in which they had kept her mother’s body. It was half open, as if waiting for a few more last words of farewell, just like the day of the funeral. Inside she found her mother, her eyes closed peacefully as if she had just gone off to sleep. It was all just the way she remembered seeing it, all those years ago, just that this time she was seeing it all from the ceiling.
Alice reached out with her hand once again. It was no use. Even her mother’s pale lifeless face was just out of reach. Her eyes began to water. Somewhere deep inside her chest she felt a tinge of pain as a long forgotten sorrow found its way back to her and flooded into her heart. It was too much for her to take. Alice ran out of the room. The tears that fell from her eye sparkled in the low candle light as they floated down.
***
The bulky man stood at the door of the hospital room. He stood at the door unsure as to whether he should enter or not.
Inside the room there were a couple of nurses tending to the patient on the bed. The patient was a young woman in her twenties. She seemed to be asleep, but he wasn’t sure. He hesitated to speak lest she should hear him enter.
“Good evening Mr. McMahon.” the doctor addressed the man.
“Please have a seat.”
The man walked in slowly and quietly sat by her bedside. Her face was pale and her eyes were fast shut. Yet her eyelids quivered occasionally and he sensed movement beneath them, as if she were dreaming.
Maybe it was all a dream, he thought to himself.
“She is in a coma.” the doctor informed him.
The old man was not sure what that meant. He looked at all the medical equipment that surrounded her, the wires and tubes that ran through her body connecting her to the machines that were supporting her life. Trembling, he held her hand in his. Hoping somewhere inside that his daughter would wrap her little hand around his ring finger the way she used to when she was a child.
“I shouldn’t have let her go...” a faint sob escaped his lips.
”..I shouldn’t have…”
The big man broke down and began to sob into his daughters’ hand. The tears that streamed down his cheek moistened the dry red stains on the bandage wrapped around Alice’s left wrist.
“I brought this on you...”
***
Alice sat there crying alone in an empty room. She tried to pick up a paint brush that lay on the floor and paint something to just vent the heaviness inside her. But neither the strokes nor the colours could paint her any happiness. She curled up and continued to cry.
Just then her shadow slowly sat up beside her. Tenderly it placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Alice’s tears slowly stopped. She wiped her cheeks and raised her head and looked at the shadow through the curls of hair that had fallen on her face. The shadow had taken the silhouette form of a tall slim man and was now knelt beside her. She felt safe with him. He helped her to her feet. She felt a deep connection with the figure holding her. She leaned over and hugged him. The embrace slowly tightened and he kissed her. Alice suddenly realized that she was helplessly in love with the man. They kissed passionately. All the sorrow inside seemed to melt away with every moment he was with her. It felt as if they would crumble into infinitesimal molecules and fall to the ground and dissolve into each other. Serenaded in the dim moonlight that cascaded in through the inverted window, he made love to her.
When Alice woke up she found herself lying alone on the floor with a sheet wrapped around her naked body. She got up and looked around. Her shadow lover had left. For some reason she knew that he would never come back. Her eyes welled yet again. The gaping emptiness inside her heart seemed to bear down heavily upon her. It ached too much to even cry.
Just then she saw the tiny dancing light on the floor a few feet from her. It was the same light that had lead her down the staircase. It seemed to ebb her on. For some strange reason Alice felt she had to follow it. She followed the light and reached another wooden door.
The door creaked open and Alice entered a Hall of Mirrors. Hundreds of glass mirrors greeted her on all sides. There were mirrors of all sorts and sizes all over the place, some that even distorted her shape in weird ways.
But there was something even more weird about them. None of the reflections had her face. In fact they had no face at all.
Something on the ground touched her feet as she backed away from the mirrors. Looking down she saw many masks lying on the floor. Hesitant yet curious she picked up one and wore it over her face. There was something alluring about them. She looked at her reflection and took a step closer to the mirror. Alice picked another mask and tried it on. Her reflection seemed to be drawing her toward it. She picked a third mask but suddenly to her horror realized that it was a mask of her own face.
The mask latched itself onto her face before she could do anything. Desperately trying to get it off Alice staggered back. Through the mask she saw her reflection in the mirror crack and split .One by one the mirrors began to crack and soon the whole gallery began to collapse. Alice turned around and tried to run but her feet seemed to be sinking into the glass floor. Shards of broken glass were being showered on her, cutting her in many places. The floor started to ripple and turn to water and, as if in a nightmare spiraling out of control, her body plunged into the cold dark water.
***
The cardiogram rang an offbeat.
The old man lifts his head up. He had fallen asleep beside her bed but was almost certain that he felt his daughter’s hand tug him in his sleep. He looked at her.
“Alice!”
Her pupils were moving fast beneath her eyelids and her eyebrows furrowed as if trying to coax themselves into sensation. The cardiogram began to flat line.
“Doctor we are losing her.”
***
Her body bled from where the glass had cut her and the wounds seared with pain as the cold water filled them. Her head was spinning and she was fast losing consciousness. Alice could feel her life slowly ebbing away. The cold heavy chill filled her lungs as the water around her became more and more murky. It was over, she thought. It was only a matter of time.
Just then, when all hope seemed lost, from the corner of her half closed eye she saw the little dancing light above her. A small glint of light just above her, just out of reach .At first she didn’t recognize what it was, but then suddenly in a flash, she knew. She knew what had to be done.
With all the remaining might in her she thrust her legs and paddled against the current. She reached out toward the light and swam. She wanted her life back. This time, she was not going to let it go. The pain in her chest was becoming unbearable but she did not give in to it and kept on paddling. She closed her eyes as she strained hard to keep moving upward. The light above widened and with on final thrust of her leg she flung her hand up toward the light and broke the surface of the water.
There was light everywhere.
Her body went numb just as she felt a familiar hand grab hers.
Alice opened her eyes.
She recognized the bulky old man at her bedside who was peering intently at her. He looked haggard, a shadow of his former self. Her father’s eyes were moist. He was holding her hand tightly to his chest. And as he held it up to his face and kissed it, a tear trickled down the side of his chin. He smiled at her.
“Daddy!” her eyes welled as she smiled at him.
The evening sun shone down through the open hospital window. The light reflected off the old man’s watch and danced in a sparkle on her face.
*****
Synopsis
Alice opens her eyes and finds herself in a deserted inverted house. As she finds her way through the bizarre upside down world she keeps running into fragments of her past and finds herself following the trail of a strange glimmering light that seems to be leading her onward. What is she being lead to discover? What is this world she has found herself in? How did she get there? As these questions get answered we find ourselves peeling into the lives of a fragmented family trying to make peace with the past.
Alice opened her eyes and found herself in an inverted room.
The light from the CFL on the ceiling-turned-floor was casting strange shadows on the opposite wall as the fan blades noisily crossed its path each time. The place smelt of an old empty house that had been locked away for years.
Alice got to her feet and looked around at her bizarre surroundings. The place was strangely quiet. Almost too quiet.
“Hello?” she called out.
“Is anybody here? “.There was no answer.
“Where am I?” her voice echoed through the room. It didn’t seem like anyone was around. Yet Alice felt something vaguely familiar about the place.
She looked up, and a wave of recognition dawned on her as she saw the objects above her. Above, on what would be the floor of the inverted room, stood her old refrigerator, the dark wooden chairs, the big mahogany table with glasses neatly stacked on it to one side, the pearl white china sink and everything else that had populated the small dining room in her ancestral home where she had spent most of her childhood.
She noticed there was some food left on the plate on the table. As if someone had just got up and left without finishing his meal. She couldn’t quite figure out what the food was though. There was a glass of milk, frozen in mid air that looked like it had been flung across the room.
As creepy as it were, she still tried to reach up toward the table and tried to feel the old mahogany wood once again. It was just out of her reach.
Alice slowly tried to figure out how she could get out of the room. The walls were all inverted so the door ways now had to be literally climbed over in order to pass through. She made her way to what seemed to be the back door of the house. She tugged at the inverted door handle and pulled it open. The door opened with a loud creek. And the room suddenly flooded with sunlight.
The wind gushed inside making her hair fly. She peered outside. Above her head she found the door steps leading into the ground .The earth extended above her like a huge ceiling till as far as she could see like a blown up photograph of a giant empty playground hung upside down. Where she expected to see the threshold and the porch of the house she saw there was nothing. There was nothing but vast emptiness that stretched into the sky below.
The whole world was upside down.
***
A bulky old man of around sixty walked slowly through the well lit corridor of the hospital ward. He had a slight limp on one leg. The walls of the hospital ward were white and sterile and made him feel uneasy. The thick odour of pharmaceutical medicines made him feel even more so. But he tried to stay calm. He had come to meet her. After all those years of distance he was finally going to meet her.
Nothing could have prepared him for this. He wondered if he would have had the courage to do this, had it not been for the doctor’s phone call the night before. The long journey had worn down his resolve, but he still trudged on. He was almost there. As he passed the half open doors of the ward, he tried not to look inside. His eyes only halted occasionally to check the room number.
He was almost there, he told himself.
Would he be able to recognize her?
Would she recognize him?
His chest almost seemed to ache with the weight of these thoughts. A drink or two from his bottle might have helped him deal with things. After all that’s what had given him the strength to make the journey so far at least. But not now, he thought, not in the hospital. No, this last stretch of the journey he had to make it himself. This was his cross to bear. This would be his atonement.
His hands trembled as he finally reached for the doorway of the room.
***
Alice took a couple of minutes to take in the spectacular view of the upside down world. This must be a dream, she thought to herself. Careful not to slip she tried extending her arm and tried to touch the grass that grew on the ground above. It too was just out of reach.
Suddenly a crow flew by from the rooftop beneath her. Startled, she quickly pulled herself back inside and shut the door behind her.
The sudden change back to the dark interior of the house made her squint hard. Everything was a purple haze and she tried to blink things into focus. But instead of dying out the purple haze slowly morphed into purple tapestry on the walls and revealed the interior of a small upside down room. The dark purple walls were all too familiar. This used to be her room.
She looked around. There they were - her study table, her mirrored wooden cupboard and her little swiveling chair, all stood around her upside down and placed firmly on the inverted floor above her. She knew the books on the shelves even without looking at them. There was a photo frame frozen in mid air that had toppled from her table. She tried to reach for the photo frame but it was just out of reach.
She went to the door at the other end of the room. It led out into a stair well where a bizarre number of stairways began ended and intersected. Bewildered Alice peered down the stairwell.
Just then she saw a glimmer of light on the opposite wall. A small sparkling light darted here and there across the wall. It was just like how it looked when sunlight reflected off of someone’s watch or off some piece of shiny metal. And then she heard voices from the floor below.
“There must be people down there!” she thought to herself.
Alice quickly ran down the topsy-turvy staircase. The staircase spiraled down and went through bizarre twists and turns. She could hear voices arguing with each other, but couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. The voices always seemed to be coming from just a flight of steps beneath.
After much winding the stairs finally lead her into yet another long inverted room. Alice stood there for a second. The pale ceiling on which she walked, the dark wooden floor boards above were all clearly etched in her memory. It had been long since she had been to this room, almost fifteen years, yet she recognized. It was the room where her mother’s funeral service had taken place. The last time she ever saw her.
Alice could almost guess what she would see when she looked up. It felt like a dream, a dream with too many details. A dream from which she couldn’t wake up even if she cried. She took a deep breath; this was going to be hard. As she looked up she saw the casket. The oak casket in which they had kept her mother’s body. It was half open, as if waiting for a few more last words of farewell, just like the day of the funeral. Inside she found her mother, her eyes closed peacefully as if she had just gone off to sleep. It was all just the way she remembered seeing it, all those years ago, just that this time she was seeing it all from the ceiling.
Alice reached out with her hand once again. It was no use. Even her mother’s pale lifeless face was just out of reach. Her eyes began to water. Somewhere deep inside her chest she felt a tinge of pain as a long forgotten sorrow found its way back to her and flooded into her heart. It was too much for her to take. Alice ran out of the room. The tears that fell from her eye sparkled in the low candle light as they floated down.
***
The bulky man stood at the door of the hospital room. He stood at the door unsure as to whether he should enter or not.
Inside the room there were a couple of nurses tending to the patient on the bed. The patient was a young woman in her twenties. She seemed to be asleep, but he wasn’t sure. He hesitated to speak lest she should hear him enter.
“Good evening Mr. McMahon.” the doctor addressed the man.
“Please have a seat.”
The man walked in slowly and quietly sat by her bedside. Her face was pale and her eyes were fast shut. Yet her eyelids quivered occasionally and he sensed movement beneath them, as if she were dreaming.
Maybe it was all a dream, he thought to himself.
“She is in a coma.” the doctor informed him.
The old man was not sure what that meant. He looked at all the medical equipment that surrounded her, the wires and tubes that ran through her body connecting her to the machines that were supporting her life. Trembling, he held her hand in his. Hoping somewhere inside that his daughter would wrap her little hand around his ring finger the way she used to when she was a child.
“I shouldn’t have let her go...” a faint sob escaped his lips.
”..I shouldn’t have…”
The big man broke down and began to sob into his daughters’ hand. The tears that streamed down his cheek moistened the dry red stains on the bandage wrapped around Alice’s left wrist.
“I brought this on you...”
***
Alice sat there crying alone in an empty room. She tried to pick up a paint brush that lay on the floor and paint something to just vent the heaviness inside her. But neither the strokes nor the colours could paint her any happiness. She curled up and continued to cry.
Just then her shadow slowly sat up beside her. Tenderly it placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Alice’s tears slowly stopped. She wiped her cheeks and raised her head and looked at the shadow through the curls of hair that had fallen on her face. The shadow had taken the silhouette form of a tall slim man and was now knelt beside her. She felt safe with him. He helped her to her feet. She felt a deep connection with the figure holding her. She leaned over and hugged him. The embrace slowly tightened and he kissed her. Alice suddenly realized that she was helplessly in love with the man. They kissed passionately. All the sorrow inside seemed to melt away with every moment he was with her. It felt as if they would crumble into infinitesimal molecules and fall to the ground and dissolve into each other. Serenaded in the dim moonlight that cascaded in through the inverted window, he made love to her.
When Alice woke up she found herself lying alone on the floor with a sheet wrapped around her naked body. She got up and looked around. Her shadow lover had left. For some reason she knew that he would never come back. Her eyes welled yet again. The gaping emptiness inside her heart seemed to bear down heavily upon her. It ached too much to even cry.
Just then she saw the tiny dancing light on the floor a few feet from her. It was the same light that had lead her down the staircase. It seemed to ebb her on. For some strange reason Alice felt she had to follow it. She followed the light and reached another wooden door.
The door creaked open and Alice entered a Hall of Mirrors. Hundreds of glass mirrors greeted her on all sides. There were mirrors of all sorts and sizes all over the place, some that even distorted her shape in weird ways.
But there was something even more weird about them. None of the reflections had her face. In fact they had no face at all.
Something on the ground touched her feet as she backed away from the mirrors. Looking down she saw many masks lying on the floor. Hesitant yet curious she picked up one and wore it over her face. There was something alluring about them. She looked at her reflection and took a step closer to the mirror. Alice picked another mask and tried it on. Her reflection seemed to be drawing her toward it. She picked a third mask but suddenly to her horror realized that it was a mask of her own face.
The mask latched itself onto her face before she could do anything. Desperately trying to get it off Alice staggered back. Through the mask she saw her reflection in the mirror crack and split .One by one the mirrors began to crack and soon the whole gallery began to collapse. Alice turned around and tried to run but her feet seemed to be sinking into the glass floor. Shards of broken glass were being showered on her, cutting her in many places. The floor started to ripple and turn to water and, as if in a nightmare spiraling out of control, her body plunged into the cold dark water.
***
The cardiogram rang an offbeat.
The old man lifts his head up. He had fallen asleep beside her bed but was almost certain that he felt his daughter’s hand tug him in his sleep. He looked at her.
“Alice!”
Her pupils were moving fast beneath her eyelids and her eyebrows furrowed as if trying to coax themselves into sensation. The cardiogram began to flat line.
“Doctor we are losing her.”
***
Her body bled from where the glass had cut her and the wounds seared with pain as the cold water filled them. Her head was spinning and she was fast losing consciousness. Alice could feel her life slowly ebbing away. The cold heavy chill filled her lungs as the water around her became more and more murky. It was over, she thought. It was only a matter of time.
Just then, when all hope seemed lost, from the corner of her half closed eye she saw the little dancing light above her. A small glint of light just above her, just out of reach .At first she didn’t recognize what it was, but then suddenly in a flash, she knew. She knew what had to be done.
With all the remaining might in her she thrust her legs and paddled against the current. She reached out toward the light and swam. She wanted her life back. This time, she was not going to let it go. The pain in her chest was becoming unbearable but she did not give in to it and kept on paddling. She closed her eyes as she strained hard to keep moving upward. The light above widened and with on final thrust of her leg she flung her hand up toward the light and broke the surface of the water.
There was light everywhere.
Her body went numb just as she felt a familiar hand grab hers.
Alice opened her eyes.
She recognized the bulky old man at her bedside who was peering intently at her. He looked haggard, a shadow of his former self. Her father’s eyes were moist. He was holding her hand tightly to his chest. And as he held it up to his face and kissed it, a tear trickled down the side of his chin. He smiled at her.
“Daddy!” her eyes welled as she smiled at him.
The evening sun shone down through the open hospital window. The light reflected off the old man’s watch and danced in a sparkle on her face.
*****
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