I had an awful time of it this morning. Karen called me over to her computer to show me her latest blog post. As I sat down and started to read, I saw that it was quite long. I was a little occupied at the time, so I asked her if I could have a brief summary, but she was insistent that I read it all, there and then. At this point things went a bit strange.
I was suddenly aware that there were two girls sat next to me, and both of them were Karen. How odd, I thought, must be seeing double, so I moved my head a bit closer to her, and blinked and refocused and generally tried to straighten my eyes out. Both Karens disappeared, and didn’t come back.
At this point I panicked a bit, naturally. I stood up and called her name. I then started running round the house, alternating between calling “Karen!” and “I’m hallucinating!”
I eventually bumped into her coming out of the bathroom. Her face looked strange, kinda like she had a face mask on, but weirder than that. It was as if two separate and distinct faces were resolving themself together – clearly I was still hallucinating.
At the point at which she threw her arms around me, reality regained complete control, and I was sitting bolt upright in bed. Karen was holding me, sobbing uncontrollably. I looked around the bedroom, and established that everything looked right. My pulse rate started to return to normal. “It’s okay,” I told her, “it’s better now. We’re okay.”
Then I woke up. I was lying on my back in bed, Karen asleep next to me. She made a small whimper – had I been talking in my sleep? My brain ricocheted around in my head from the two successive impacts of reality, only two seconds apart. “Wow.” I whispered breathlessly.
Immediately the CD player whirred into life. It was 7:30.