Hallucination

It's amazing really how much you can get attached to a dream, a phenomena, a vision. Sometimes they can be more real than reality. They can be filled with wonder, awe, grace, glory, terror, fright, fear. They can contain so much that sometimes you find yourself wishing that you could live in those dreams. At least, that's how Eliza felt.

Life was not bad for Eliza. She had a decent job, worked with great people, she was surrounded by good friends, had a nice home, a running car, a dog that loved her dearly, and seemed mostly content with her lot. Mostly. On the way home one day it was raining, not something necessarily new in northern Washington, but this was different. The road was slicker than usual. The steering wheel wasn't catching as it should. The brakes seemed impossible to press, even as she careened into the sixteen wheeler.

Her eyes opened and she found that she was herself, but not herself. There seemed a glow about her and she noticed that her scars were gone. Her headache that she had felt before the crash had disappeared. She looked around her and found herself surrounded by flowers of all kinds- not a garden, but growing wild, roses, irises, tiger lilies, all together. None of these plants should have been growing next to each other, but there they were before her eyes. She heard a soft singing being carried on the wind and felt in her soul that she needed to find the singers. She ran as quickly as she could but the flowers seemed not to end. Slowly the voices grew louder but she could not see anything but the flowers. She needed to be there with those voices! Her legs moved quicker and quicker and felt no fatigue. Her mind became clearer, more focused as she ran on. After what must have been hours she slammed into a gloriously bright gate. She had not seen it before it was in front of her. The voices were coming from in there and she was desperate to reach them. She reached her arms through the bars, clawing, scratching, trying to force her way through but to no avail. She heard a warm voice surrounding her, chuckling gently as his wonder engulfed her. "Not yet, my child, not yet." And she began to fall...

Eliza bolted upright, blood surrounding her on every side, sirens wailing in her ears, her body broken, bruised, and beaten. What had happened? Where was she? She longed to hear those voices, to smell those flowers, to run as she had in that field, but she knew that she could not. Reality crashed around her as she looked at the mass of scrap that had once been her car. Had any of it been real?Suddenly the rain stopped and a warm breeze touched her face. "Soon, my child, but not yet..."