The First of the Strangeness

I was asleep. And then..

I was in ‘my room’ wherever that was because it wasn’t any of my normal rooms. I lived at ‘home’ but it was not any I have actually lived in. That was one weird unexplained world right there, but I was looking out the window of this room and I noticed that with my right eye, I could see a lot of buildings, buildings that in my mind were not supposed to be there. I was curious to see these buildings. I guess life was so boring that buildings that were not supposed to be there were exciting. I reasoned that maybe my other eye could see them too, so I slowly closed the left eye and then reopened it again and then it could see the buildings with that eye as well.

I felt that if I concentrated hard enough, I could keep the new world in view. I noticed many big long buildings with many doors like at a school yard. There was one that I was apparently ‘in’ now and then there was another across a hall and parallel to mine. To the right there was some open space of dry dirt and sparse weeds and another building that was at right angles to the first with the bulk of it out of sight behind me. The buildings had dark brown fascias and eaves and what looked like white stucco on the sides. They appeared well kept, something one might see in the 70s, but the humans seemed to dress a bit old fashioned, with the women wearing longer dresses with subdued colors. The men wore clothing like one might see the amish wear or like from older times, dark colored pants, white long sleeved shirts with the cuffs rolled up, sometimes with vests, and hair short. I remember seeing a keychain coming out of a pocket. The feeling of the people was not of being overly strict on dress though, just that this was how people typically dressed here.

This place was busy! Adults were going about tasks and I saw maybe one or two adolescent males, also working. There were some carts and tables with stuff on them but I did not look to see what the stuff was. My overwhelming impression was of these many big buildings and also of lots of clutter, ropes hanging coiled on a wall, tables, carts, people, the halls and walls were just plain cluttered up with no blank spaces.

Now I was curious if this world was real so I decided to go out the window and see if I landed in this strange new world. I began pushing hard on the window screen and it bowed outward impossibly far and put up quite a resistance. And then I was out and standing on the pavement in the hall. The new world surrounded me. I ran up to a middle-aged woman with a smock and long frizzy curly blond hair that was pulled back in a loose pony tail. She looked busy and harried but I tried to ask her a question. However, the words stuck in my throat in shock.

My voice was coming out all small and squeaky! I realized it was the voice of a very young girl. Even for a young girl, it was a high voice, and there was a strange accent to it. I paused at this realization and the busy woman looked disgusted with me and walked off about her business. I tried to place the accent. It wasn’t quite like anything I have ever heard. I realized the others were talking with it as well, a long sort of drawl. The closest I could describe it would be similar to a slow southern drawl mixed with some kind of unknown foreign country accent.

I approached another person, a man this time. He barely paused his fast walk and then absently waved me off. Then I tried another woman and stuttered something about ‘why, who?’ She tried to listen, but I trailed off. I was confused now. I wasn’t sure what it was I even wanted to ask. I was in this place, a child here obviously, and these were my parents, relatives, and my community, all busy. And they had no time for childish questions. There was nothing really to ask. After that, I have no recollection.