The October Amaryllis: Everything Has a Cost

Chapter 19 - March 13th, 1931 3:22 P.M.

Do you ever get that feeling that everyone is watching you without actually checking? Well… that is precisely what I experienced as we were walking to Kerry Park. It most likely was due to me fearing that people would judge my clothing, which by 1930s standards looked ridiculous. Wearing an Infected Mushroom shirt during the Great Depression was not among one of my life’s highlights. I’ll admit I didn’t plan out my travels very well. Oh, well, what could they do, look up the group? They certainly didn’t have any iPhones back then.

Walking towards Kerry Park, I knew that I couldn’t exactly expect the Space Needle to be there as it didn’t get built until 1961. I didn’t know what to expect at all; actually, I had never read about its history that far back. My entire plan rested on hoping that Delilah would fill me in on whatever was there. I was a tourist here as far as I was concerned.

“Ya know, the police are really corrupt in Seattle,” Delilah randomly commented. I had almost forgotten that she was right there by my side. I was distracted by these strange palpitations in my heart as if I had drunk all the energy drinks in the world; I, however, ignored it and focused on her instead.

“It’s a shame really, I mean, if you’re only doing something for the money and all, it’s like you don’t even really care about what you’re doing. So many people only do good things because they get paid for it,” I said, shaking my head.

“I agree; money isn’t everything in this world. Some things I reckon are far more valuable,” she said sneakily, smiling. I knew what she was hinting at, and it nearly made my heart explode from fear. I couldn’t pull off a Back to the Future. What was I even thinking when I thought of going here?

I need to get out of here and fast. Things will only get worse if I stay. I have put this curse upon myself; I am to blame for this calamity.

After she said that, my palpitations got even worse, and it felt as if I had a mini heart attack at that moment. I was about two seconds away from hyperventilating. It was at this point that I began to worry about my health.

“You’re smarter than most people your age,” I commented, trying to move away from the awkwardness I had felt.

“Oh? I have never had anyone tell me that,” she said, giggling. She was the brightest shade of crimson you’d have ever seen; she looked just like a strawberry at that moment.

I screwed up…

“What do people usually think of you?” I asked curiously.

“Well… I’ve been called an “uptight brat” by Margaret Winston, and James Green called me uncultured, whatever that meant… It’s always uncultured people who call others uncultured,” she said, shaking her head with a frown.

“Yeah, well… sometimes people are wrong,” I said supportively, smiling.

“How do you know they’re wrong, though?” she asked, shaking her head again.

“Sometimes, you know that something is true, but you don’t have any proof to back it up. I guess it’s a bit like how people believe in God? That’s the only way that I can explain it properly anyway,” I said before running headfirst into a light post with a bonk. I was becoming dizzy at that moment, and my measurement of distance had become wonky; I felt like I had just gotten off the world’s fastest merry-go-round. Everything felt like it was miles away despite being right next to me, it was almost as if someone zoomed out in a game.

Will I die tonight?

That set her off right there; she laughed for what felt like hours until finally, she started choking from oxygen deprivation. My forehead kept throbbing and felt like it was on fire the whole time. You have no idea how crappy I felt at that moment; that pain that I was experiencing kept growing worse by the minute, and I had experienced what felt like mini-seizures; my hands kept jerking suddenly like I had Parkinson’s Syndrome. The best way to describe it would be like being electrocuted.

“I am so sorry; I found it funny for some odd reason,” she said profusely, apologizing and speaking at the speed of sound. It almost sounded like she spoke Iamsosorry, Ifounditfunnyforsomeoddreason instead of a proper sentence.

“It’s okay; we all laugh at things we shouldn’t sometimes. So, where is this park? We’ve been walking for what felt like hours,” I said, feeling tempted just to sit down and fall asleep on the pavement. Perhaps it resulted from time travel, or maybe I had just been naturally tired, but I had felt as if I hadn’t slept in days at that moment all of a sudden. It was akin to what I experienced on antihistamines, where I physically couldn’t stay awake. I once got really addicted to Benadryl by using it as a sleep aid; it was the only thing that allowed me to actually rest. I’ve had insomnia ever since I was eight; my doctors won’t prescribe me Ambien for some stupid reason, so I’m stuck fighting my thoughts the whole night.

“Right around the corner,” she said, stifling another laugh.

When we finally arrived there, I gave the view one look and found myself massively disappointed. It looked kind of… dystopian, I guess? I didn’t recognize a single building by name. All I saw were shades of gray and black in a way that reminded me of the world after a nuclear war. Take the color palette of Fallout 3, and that’s what you end up with.

I feel like I’m in downtown hell.

“This park was a gift to us in 1927 by the Kerry’s! Alfred and Catherine said that they donated it so that everyone might enjoy the view out here,” she said excitedly. Either she drank all the coffee in the world, or I was simply lethargic.

That I did actually know.

“I don’t think I know any of these buildings,” I said, disappointed.

“I don’t either, to be honest with you. It must be boring working in those large buildings, having to file taxes all day or whatever they do on their little Remington typewriters. It would drive me mad, honestly. Imagine doing the same thing every day for forty years; I don’t know if I could handle that,” she said, yawning right after finishing her sentence.

Tell me about it…

“Let’s go sit down,” I said, feeling like I was on the verge of going unconscious. I’m not sure what was causing my health to be this bad, but I felt suddenly as if I was dying. One of the most noticeable things that I had experienced was a blurriness in my vision; it was as if I was struck on the head with a sledgehammer. I heard a faint ringing in my ears as if someone threw a flashbang near me.

As we walked towards the closest bench, I blacked out and found myself on the pavement facefirst. I couldn’t process how I ended up there, but I knew I wasn’t always there. I felt delirious, could barely move, and felt like I was half dead. My memory at that moment was so poor that I couldn’t even finish a single sentence inside of my head; all that I could process was one or two words at max. I kept repeating the same one or two words but could never process it into a proper sentence; it was as if someone kept playing repeat on my life.

“Help him; he’s had a seizure!” Delilah yelled somewhere in the background. Her voice was beyond muffled and sounded as if she was screaming into a pillow. I wanted to ask her what happened to me, but I practically forgot how to formulate a sentence, so I didn’t even bother speaking. All I knew was that I was growing weaker and weaker by the moment; I couldn’t even remember my own name or when I was born.

An unknown time later, an ambulance came, and I heard the paramedics saying something to me that sounded like absolute gibberish. They were saying something along the lines of “Orion blah blah collapse.”

“You’ll be okay,” one of them said as they loaded me into the back. I felt so peaceful at that moment that I had felt that this was all a dream and that I’d soon wake up from it unharmed. My body grew number by the minute until I couldn’t even feel that I was lying down; it felt more like I was floating in the air. I accepted death at that moment and expected that would be my final moments.

“I’ll be okay. I’m okay,” I whispered as they drove me to the nearest hospital. I couldn’t get the greatest view of the city from the back, but it somehow all looked alien, I guess? Everything looked as if it didn’t belong in the 1930s, as if two different timelines had converged into one and exchanged buildings. I cannot be sure whether what I experienced was a hallucination because of my delirium, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if I had ruined the two timelines by then.

Whether I had gone temporarily insane or actually saw two different timelines there, I still do not know to this day. Sometimes we see things that are so crazy that they defy any explanation with words.

You thought that was bad? Hold on; it gets worse.

Much worse.