Topsy-Turvy

Topsy-Turvy by Maxwell Blue

The local Hotel had run a special on their rooms and David's mother decided to take a weekend vacation from living at home. No cooking or cleaning. Beds made with little chocolates on your pillows. All the amenities were just a ten minute drive away. David questioned why swim at a hotel when you have a perfectly good pool at home. He had been reluctant to come along, but any reluctance evaporated when he met Lauren Fox.

He first saw Lauren and her younger sister splashing around in the shallow end of the hotel pools when he first arrived. She started to pay him a lot of attention. Whenever he got out of the pool to rest in one of the hotel lounge chairs she would beacon him to return to the water like a siren. She was shapely in her swimsuit and her skin glistened in the dry summer heat. They talked for the longest time and she would a consistent flirt.

Lauren had one maneuver where she would stand on her hands in the pool and slowly outstretch her legs in a provocative manner. Her dark brown hair kept getting in her eyes when she did this and she would dunk her head into the warm waters slowly and pulled back the strands of her wet hair with both hands.

Before she left the pool she confided with him that she wanted to have sex. Until this point David had not taken anything she said seriously. He tried to let the whole day wash right over him so he told her that he would have sex with her if her sister got in on the action. Lauren didn't take that as a jest and informed him that her sister already had a boyfriend. There was a certainty about the expression of her face that started to break David's cool facade.

Where did she want to have sex? David asked her. She told him that she would meet him here at midnight. There was one blaring problem with that proposal. He was leaving the hotel this afternoon with his mother, but all he could really do was agree to the offer. Lauren and her sister slipped away and David was left in the water floating with his thoughts. He watched the sisters leave the pool; before this moment Lauren appeared to be a playful girl and now she seemed to be a mature woman. The rest of the day David could not think of anything else. Why would Lauren want to have sex with him? Was she serious? David pondered the question. As midnight approached David thought he would take a chance. What did he have to lose? The only problem was he couldn't drive so he decided to walk the entire way to the hotel from his home. The distance was about three miles.

The ten minutes by car turned out to be more than an hour by foot. Even though it was the middle of the night in the pool area the hotel grounds were well lit. It was just before midnight, but no one was about.

David stopped to get a better look around when he spotted two security guards patrolling the area.
They gave chase and David ran off like a rabbit and didn't slow down until he was back on the street.

The next morning David's mind was spinning. He was overcome with the clarity of his thoughts. Was he fooled? Possibly. He guessed he would never really know what happened that night. Yet his best friend
Tom tried to talk some sense into him. Tom, a much better student, always acted like he knew best, but David wasn't having any of that today. His mind was working at lightning speeds now and his newfound grandiosity was working overtime. He quickly jumped into tirade with his best friend and easily put him in his place. That was something that he had never done before. He even knocked some chess pieces off of their checkered board for effect.

As the days went on David needed less and less sleep. He was talking more often and more quickly than normal, almost at a ramble. And he would spend a lot of money. When there was something he wanted he would purchase it, no questions asked. He had no impulse control. He was making himself famous in school by buying all the chocolate used to raise money for school programs. Several students volunteered to carry boxes of chocolates from classroom to classroom to raise money from donations. Each bar of chocolate cost one dollar and every box held forty bars. Whenever David saw a student selling these bars he would buy the entire box and then hand out the bars for free. During lunch he would literally throw them away.

Then he stopped sleeping all together.

Five days later David was still going strong. He was busy writing music at his keyboard while a pop song played on his stereo. The song was set to repeat and it had been doing so for the past three hours. Elsewhere in the room a movie was playing on a laptop. There was a stack of DVDs on the floor waiting for their turn on the rotation. But still this was not enough so a boom box blasted a talk show into this cacophony. Every so often David would stop what he was doing and write in his notebook. The world seemed to be asleep and he was destined to wake it up. Everyone was slow next to him and he could make no mistakes. By failing he was succeeding. Any move he made was right because it was one step closer to his goals. Ultimately he knew he would draw everybody into his brilliance.

Then he had a revelation fearing the implications. What if he was God? The thought drove him mad enough to lash out and topple a bookshelf and every last item on it. It was all making sense now.
He was in control of everything. All the famous people would soon know who he was. He would have everything because he was everything. He quickly wrote some more into his notebook. This would be the new Bible. He would write all the answers in it.

We are all connected. That was truth. Everything is connected to everything else and that is connected to him. He thought it over and over again until he was distracted with the pop song and then the movie and then the radio program. He was splintered like a block of wood beaten into submission by a mallet, but no matter how many hours pasted he would not tire.

He reveled in the notion that everyone will know him and marvel in his greatness. Could he be killed?
David thought not. He would life forever. He would outlast everyone. He was not a like mortal man. He was quicker and smarter. A million ideas beamed into his head a second. He had a list of projects a mile long and he was doing them all at once. Who had the ability to accomplish that? No one could see what he could see. The universe only came together in a way that he could image it.

He saw himself falling and the room coming apart like one enormous puzzle. The colors were so lifelike - more than lifelike. There was a surreal glow around everything. We are all connected he thought. We are all connected. The thought repeated in his mind a thousand times at once playing over and over like the pop song on an endless loop. He never tired of it. Play it forever. He could take it. He would hear it.

The movie on the laptop was over so he picked a new one out of the stack of DVDs on the floor and placed it into the machine and hit the play button. He has seen this film before. He knew it well. Not content to watch it form the beginning he fast forwarded it to one of his favorite scenes. But the scene made him emotional – more emotional than normal. Like his thoughts his other senses were heighten too. He was more compassionate - more feeling. A tear dripped down into his lips before he could wipe it away.

How would he spend forever? The thought slipped into and out of his mind buffered by the rest of the audio playing throughout the room. David knew he could not remain where he was so he left his house and started walking. After a few miles he got a ride to the city. He thought this was a great place to start spreading his message. Upon entering a diner David talked about how everything was connected and how he had special powers. That he could see things others could not see. How he could brainstorm answers at lightning speed. He didn't come out and say he was God, but he alluded to it just the same.

Several minutes later six police officers entered the diner. One of the officers called his name.
David laughed and pushed past them. He had his message to spread. He was going to change the world. He couldn't stop now, yet the officers did stop him and then they handcuffed him and placed him in a squad car.

As they drove away David tried to instill in the officer driving the squad car that his will was too strong to be denied freedom. If the officer only listened he would know David knew the officer was committing a great wrong. That a tremendous reward would be given if he was released and eternal damnation will be cursed upon the officer if he was not set on his way.

Despite his efforts David's powers of persuasion fell on deaf ears. Their destination was a large nondescript building. If they thought they could keep him here they are going to be gravely mistaken. He had all the powers of the universe at his command and what did they have but a few walls.

Just inside the building the double doors closed and locked behind David and the officer. Then they went down a long hallway and through another pair of doors and then another.

A middle-aged man introduced himself as a doctor when they got to where they were going. He gave David two options. He could either swallow whatever was in the little paper cup the doctor was holding or be forced down and injected with a cocktail the doctor had prescribed. David picked the former option and he told the doctor that that wasn't much of a choice.

The pills that the doctor gave him hit unexpectedly. All the wind had been let out of David’s sails. It was like he had encountered a dead calm. The waters were as still as ice and his head was in a fog. He could no longer think with any speed. He was moral again. He did not believe in greatness anymore. He embraced failure instead.

Someone showed him to a bed and he fell into it in pieces. He felt broken. This was the first sleep he had in days. When he woke he was given more pills. The weight on his psyche was that of an anchor.
David knew it was drowning him as he was lost in the darkness below. All kinds of doubts flooded his mind, including the escape of death, living forever did seem to be an option anymore. His self-worth was wadded like used tissue paper and thrown away. The world didn't seem to care.

He was too unimportant to be cared about now. Dark Thoughts clouded his thoughts. A sweet sorrow hung on every word. The tale of goodbyes played like a broken lullaby calling him closer towards the darkness. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing mattered.

Even in the brightness of day David saw shadows everywhere. Out of every corner of his eyes. Behind every doorway. Nights were starless and days were hopeless and dreams were pointless. He could barely breathe in life and nothing in what little he had was solvable. For every right there were a countless number of wrongs blocking out the sun. He wanted it all to end.