Black Out (snipit of my manuscript)

All is black.  I am jarred from an abyss into reality.  Each sense sparks to life with new awareness yet I am hesitant to make the connections between senses, memories and the present moment. 

Eyes open.  Dull light is coming in through the window, but what window is this? The surface below me does not feel like the feather top Mom laid over my unyielding dorm room bunk.  Afraid to turn my head, my eyes scan the room as my fingers begin a search for answers from the material beneath me.  The texture thick, course and littered with holes like the worn couch I used to play on in Grandmas basement.  Near my left hip there is wetness. 

My head aches.  I hear my heart beating faster and with each pulse pain slices through the memories I am trying to reconstruct.  It starts out black and empty before pictures begin to shuffle in.   Black spaces remain where the pictures misconnect.  Pieces are missing.

I hear breathing.  Risking more daggers in my brain I turn toward the sound.  I think he is from my Psychology class, and she might be from Study Hall.  Do we know each other beyond a glimpse in a jammed lecture theatre or eyes darting over a laptop?  They remain passed out on a rusty carpet, strewn with bottle caps, pizza crust and more anonymous liquid. 

Where was I last night?  I strain to summon my last memory.  With each attempt at recollection, the blood pounds harder in my head.  I hug myself, attempting to calm the furious beating of my heart.  Flashes begin to cross the backs of my eyelids as I pull the pieces of the puzzle back together.  New pieces appear.  Amanda was with me last night.

Where is Amanda now?  Not here.  No one here I trust to assure me nothing bad happened.  I think I am safe if I lie still.  I hear a dog barking.  I smell urine.  Oh God, what have I done?  I can’t stay here. Somehow I think if I remain here and still the reality of what happened to me will never hit.  I am frightened of the truth but more scared of being here so I move.

As I twist to sit, and then stand I shiver from cold and moisture on my mid-section.  I look down.  My skirt is raised to my waist instead of modestly covering me and ending at mid-thigh, as it should.  My tights seem to have repelled from the skirt and are rolled down to rest just above my knees.  Together my skirt and tights reveal a space of cold and wet over my most private assets that are currently covered in urine.  My own, I expect as I glance back at the circular puddle on the moth-couch I have just emerged from.

A mass of dread is sitting on my chest as I hurry to cover myself.  Did someone hurt me in some way?  Why the pee?  Was this done to me or did I just do it by accident?   I am awake yet have no idea how I got here, or how I became revealed and defiled. 

Another flash of memory returns.  Amanda and I were leaving the bar with a group of people.  We were house-party bound after too many Vodka shots, celebrating the end of an intense round of exams.  I know why I don’t remember but not where I am or how I came to be this way. 

 I feel contaminated and panicked.  I must escape. I silently search for an exit before I am noticed.  Sneaking through the maze of arms, legs and torsos polluting the mix of rusty carpet and worn linoleum tile, I gain sight of a glass door, promising escape to a street.  The light of early morning is brushing the air.

I go through the door.  The cool air reminds me of the wet clothing.  I curse the pain in my head as I pause to tie my hoodie around my waist, hiding the evidence of yet undetermined shame.  I see the tower in the distance.  The safety of my dorm is near that tower.  I begin walking, first left then right and onward. 

Suddenly I freeze with angst, pat my torso and have the first ripple of relief as I feel my small cross-body shoulder bag.   I confirm my ID and smart phone are still inside.  Pulling the phone out I see the time; 6:45am on Saturday.  I check text messages.  Amanda with, “txt me if u chng yr mind”.  From relief I soar to terror as the possibility of pictures occurs to me for the first time.  I was exposed. 

Maybe I just went to the washroom and was too drunk to pull my clothes back up.  At best it could be a memory I can push away.  At worst – no, I can’t let myself think that.  I’m sure I just had a washroom accident and the worst could be a ‘jpg’ image, threatening to haunt each relationship, opportunity and journey of my future.  My ‘Camera Pictures’ have no evidence of this night but what about everyone else’s?

The dorm and Amanda are near.  I move with urgency now, climbing, praying, and finally opening the door to our shared room.  She’s in her bunk and rises to my panicked pleas, “what happened to me last night – where did you go?”  “Whoa – what time is it?” She rubs her eyes, focuses on my state and just as she begins to speak, my phone alerts of incoming mail, and then so does hers.   

A whip of dread slices my chest.  I open the attachment and view the evidence of my black out, floating in an internet cloud of doom.  It is much worse than a washroom accident.   I imagine that beeping sound echoing through the entire campus and then the world.  And so it begins and ends for me.