Chapter 6: WE Reflect What We Think We Are Not

Background

Charlie McRoy's way too young, having been subjected to the horrendous ordeal he's experienced. No one should have to endure the trauma he's witnessed in such a short time. But, then again, life doesn't take surveys of particular wants.

The abrupt snapping force of the knees buckling under him, arrived without warning, brought him to the hard ground. Of course, every event Charlie had experienced since landing upon the old castle's front steps occurred without approval or consent. Too much had happened, too fast. Although he felt he was too young to have been subjected to this kind of bizarre activity; it didn't change a thing.

Incalculable activity which could not easily be explained drove him to the point of 'almost' non-existence, IF there was such a thing. And, IF there was, why did his mind keep revolving? Pervasive thoughts kept spinning and spinning and spinning.

Infuriatingly, he deduced: he wasn't dead, asleep, crazy or disembodied as a spirit, so, what was he? While twisting, bumping, thumping, swirling, and in a topedo-like twirling at a rate that had to be at least twice the speed of light, (course, he really didn't know what the speed of light was; maybe 186,000 miles per second: he remembered Mrs. Mason's branded words), forced a 'shattering of molecules' in his human body sensation.

Spinning at such an infinite speed, he no longer appeared as human but a solid corporeal mass. In other words, he could not define himself as separate from the atmosphere in which he traveled.

It was as if his body had been changed into no more than a wisp of air, swirling in the conglomerate of all the massive wisps' of air. Like he had become the same gaseous mixture of pulsating energy which drug him along.

No human way to really describe what was actually taking place; one would have to reside in normal human circumstances to be able to explain it, and this place was anything but normal or human. When there are no words to describe such unthinkable action with the brain so deservedly shook up, lifeless inactivity occurs. Sort of like a flat line, probably, although Charlie did not know what having a flat-line felt like, either.

"I give up!" How the words formed or if they had actually formed he had no clue. He thought they had audibly passed through his nervous system, but what did that mean?

THAT sensation, (whatever it had been) stopped as he fell onto the cold floor, or what he imagined to be, as a floor. It was the bottom to something, anyway, with three foot sides, attached. That much he did recognize or remember or discern. The human frame lay perfectly still, encased in some contraption that he quickly summed up as being a steel coffin.

He accepted the fact he would never be able to walk again. In the midst of the dilemma, he was aware that the strangest fact existed. He wasn't dizzy a bit. Imagine that? Being turned at the rate of a million miles an hour, or more, and not be dizzy?

"If I ever get out of this awful place, they'll be no more of Charlie left. I don't know who will be in his place but I know it won't be me. No one could survive this and no one would ever believe me IF I tried to tell them what had happened. It doesn't matter anyway; they would know I'm totally certifiably insane. I'll just spend my rest of my life in Challenworth Psychiatric Unit."

He decided to try to stand up. To get out of the metal cradle, IF he possibly could. He didn't know if his eyes would stay in their sockets after having just finished the horrible ride. He drew up and drug one leg nearer to the other, put the palms of his hands out on what seemed like cold metal of some sort, and pushed his way onto his rubbery legs. The next burst of energy was to roll him out and over the cold rolled sides. To his surprise, he wasn't shaky a bit. Strange!

"Why do I think this is any stranger than anything else that has happened to me?" Glaring at the surroundings suspiciously, he amazingly discovered there were gathered about him, about one hundred other Charlie McRoy's who were staring back at him.

"What in the hell am I supposed to do, now?" Mind screeched.

Yes, he'd be the first one to agree, no doubt, he wanted and desperately needed some company but this was unresponsively ridiculous. Incredibly, he was looking directly into his exact replicas. All eyes were quarter size blue, about 200 to be exact, waiting for his next move. They possessed the same blond hair, goofy face, half-clothed body. He dared not speak.

"Okay, you guys; you fake Charlies; impostors, what do you expect me to do?" He drilled telepathically.

Hoping, maybe, they would supply an answer without his asking a question aloud was pretty stupid. "But, not half as stupid as 100 other identical boys' faces staring back at me." He quickly assured himself.

"Who are you?" he blurted out without further delay.

"Who are you?" returned their mouths.

"Am I supposed to be scared of you or something?" He asked.

"Am I suppose to be scared of you or something?" They replied.

"Well, I'm not!" he screamed viciously.

"Well, I'm not!" they screamed back in the precise tone and demeanor.

"This is just too freaky. Not only do they sound like me, they express the exact identical pitched emotion." He whispered in his mind.

Feeling not so comfortable with that particular approach, he figured he would try another.

"Entire situation is too dumb, when you really think about it," Charlie logically expressed to himself, hoping they could not read his thoughts, too.

With eyes half-closed, he continued thinking about what was beginning to be an impossible ordeal to dissect, no matter how hard he tried.

"It's kinda like battling with your thoughts outside your head," he exclaimed silently, yet confidently to himself, as if he had really discovered some great momentous truth.

Had he imagined the entire incident and none of this was actually taking place? He opened his left eye to see if they (about 100 of them) were still there. They were! What else could he do? The BRACELET. Yea! The BRACELET caused this horrible mess and the BRACELET had to be the solution to it.

He unlocked one of his eyes and glanced down at his right wrist. Gleaming, glowing, radiating, a crimson red force field of electrical current flooded Charlie, sickening him. He slowly collapsed to the ground or what he thought was the ground but it, too, disappeared and in its place a box like hole, big enough for his body to fit into, if he doubled up like a pretzel, engulfed him.

"Oh! No! It's that damned horrible coffin. It trapped me. My, God! I thought things couldn't get any worse." His heart pounded rapidly.

"I'm either gonna smother to death or be crushed like a tin can in a trash compactor. And, the bad thing is, I can't do a damn thing about it." he rampaged. "This cold metal human sized container's got me shut in, locked up, cramped into a place where there's no room for me to move around. I can't survive like this. This is it. It's over. I know!"

He wanted out! He had begged/pleaded/screamed bargained to be released from the painful predicament. His fragile mind just couldn't take it anymore. Either release him from his cage or let him die. At least, he'd be freed. He realized, for the very first and only time in his life, he was not afraid of dying.

"Anything's better than this! I feel like a Barracuda in a sardine can."

Why he was expressing emotions, at this point in the journey, was beyond his understanding, for in fact, he registered absolutely nothing, emotionally; just an unbearable physical sensation of being jammed, jarred, jerked, jolted into a terribly unbearably tight form of steel. If he could just stretch out, just lie down one more time, the rest of the trivialities of being alive didn't matter.

No conscious awareness of any other desire was left in him. No sooner, than he projected these non-resistant thoughts, he was lying on the sidewalk looking up at the curb. He gazed upward, consciously realizing where he was at that precise moment, or at least, where he THOUGHT, maybe, he was.

"Of course, this could be only another illusion." He jabbed, swollen and bruised.

Never in his entire 13 years, had he been in such an uncanny situation which caused him to doubt himself more than he did right that moment. Neither did he begin to imagine why, how, where, when and for what purpose was he laying on the sidewalk.

"Who am I? What have I been through? Can I dare believe what my eyes are seeing?" His bones chilled and shuddered as he asked the questions aloud.

As if rehearsing for a part in the play he began to recite.

"I am Charlie Braxton McRoy. I am the same 13 year old boy I've always been. Just because I can't explain where I've been, or where I came back from, how I got there or how I arrived here, don't mean anything. I'm here and that's all that matters. I'll go with that!"

Needless to say, what he had just come back from was unaccountably mind-blowingly traumatic. He realized he had been involuntarily returned from an indigestible labyrinthine fiasco. An acute awareness shifted into this mind. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that just 14 steps to the left of him stood Mr. Fleming's store where the genuine Red and White Sandblaster beckoned. He thought about the BRACELET, the jewelry store, the genuine Red and White Sandblaster.

"What am I going to do?" He couldn't have deciphered his bearings IF he had wanted to. To slow down his swirling emancipated thoughts was just about impossible.

He considered the seriousness of his journey. Was it real? Had it all been a daydream? Did it matter? Had he traveled into some distant land and into a time and place that refused to turn him loose until IT decided to? He didn't know. He didn't care. All he really knew was that he was very tired; he wanted to go home.

He stood up, letting the BRACELET lay undisturbed. He did not look ahead, sideways, backwards; neither, did he venture 14 steps to the left to view the once long all-consuming desired prize. His attention had been re-focused. Somehow, it just didn't matter to him anymore.

Because of the unique experiences of the day, he realized that he could not make himself any happier by wanting and wishing for things that he did not already possess. He would only add undo misery by striving, pushing, hurrying something before its own natural time.

He felt liberated to once more be in possession of his body, mind, and soul. To be in a situation whereby he made the choices and he could accept the outcome of the assumed responsibility for those decisions.

"Where are all these grown-up thoughts coming from?" He pondered.

He didn't need to experience the results of poor choices by having to go through any more of those hair-raising jolts of life-threatening situations. Glad just to be on the sidewalk able to make a viable decision to go home. All that really mattered was that he had returned to his present self alive, safe. The skateboard was not part of his present life, nor could it have helped him in any way with his journey throughout the castle.

All he needed was with him, inside him. If the skateboard was meant to be in his life, it would arrive. He would not have to go looking for it or try to devise ways to obtain it. Just as the castle had appeared, so too, would the Genuine Red & White Sandblaster if he was meant to have it. But, most of all he knew that he could no longer have anger or resentment for not having things outside his own human being.

Charlie suddenly realized he was overcome with immeasurable happiness; unshakable happiness had arisen from deep within him which had nothing to do with what was happening on the outside. The ownership of the genuine Red and White Sandblaster could not possibly make him any happier than he was right that second.

Why had he ever thought that it could? He jumped onto his already standing feet prepared to make the rest of the journey home. The trip would be short and sweet; and, Oh! So uncomplicatedly simple...

Author's Notes: I decided to use one of my own abstract paintings "Primal Energy" to denote a certain undisclosed realm Charlie is dealing with.