Possessing the Spirit
an excerpt

"Just leaving," Sessie replied, saving and switching off her computer. The ocean would wait. Still in a fuzzy headspace on her way home, she was halfway across the parking lot before Joanne's call to wait up registered, and she stopped. Her head was buzzing, it seemed, but to her knowledge the only drug she had consumed was a coke earlier, which could hardly do this to her.

"Hey, are you alright?" Joanne asked, and Sessie thought inanely that fish should be blue from living in the ocean, before everything went away. Nothing went black, there were no black outs, and as she was outside this was unlikely barring a solar eclipse. For a brief space of time nothing existed. Then the world lurched back into place, reluctantly reasserting its existence, as well as her own.

"What was that?" Sessie asked, looking up, but Joanne was gone.

"What was what?" Somehow Joanne was behind her, just now catching up with a few jogging strides, and looking perplexed at Sessie's question.

"I... never mind. I'm not feeling all that great, my head is..." Her head was fine. "Well something is wrong with me!" she said in exasperation.

"Whoa, whoa, sweetie, what's the matter? I never said it wasn't wrong with you," Joanne said, looking concerned. "For that matter there's something wrong with a lot of people, sugar, but why don't you go home and get some rest, ok? I'm sure you'll feel better tomorrow."

"I... Yeah, you're right, Jo. Some sleep will straighten me out," Sessie said, somehow managing to find her car, get in successfully and start the engine. The world seemed to be oddly tinted, however, and she wondered if it was quite safe for her to drive. "Turqoise or mauve tinting won't change anything," she reassured herself, and pulled out of her parking spot.

On the way home she spotted several schools of fish, which all waved energetically at her, surprising her by their frantic fin-work. "Red fish, Blue fish..." she found herself murmuring but nothing else of the verse would come. Her home was right where she left it, and she managed the door quite well. Once inside she fell onto her bed in exhaustion and resolved to sleep it off. Whatever it was.

Her dreams were filled with rather normal things. Chairs, people sitting on them, families sometimes, gathered around a table, maybe eating dinner. Then she began to watch the table expand with mouth watering appetizer after appetizer. Fowl is not foul at all, and quite edible food, while desert isn't made out of sand, were her thoughts as the bountiful table came to bare itself to her inspection. The food looked appetising, as it should, but it wasn't all appetizers.

After this thought, she noticed that one wall of the family's kitchen was made of glass and through it she could see a family of fish floating by. "One fish, red fish, blue fish," she murmurred, pleased to recall a bit more of it now. The kitchen drew back to give her a look at the house, and she had to praise it for being such a good little house. Bright blue trimming, on a spotless white A-frame, it looked quite... homey. As if someone lived in it. Happily.

She wondered if anyone ever lived happily ever after, and if the family would stay together. The kids would move out of course at some point, and the marriage might survive this or not. Now she was treated to a tour of the house beginning with the living room and for cube after cube, she noted each room's coziness, and lovely lived-in quality. It had every right to be called a home. Now she came to her bedroom, cluttered with books, and trash, creating a maze to walk. This... should be called a dump, she decided. And her house was nowhere near as stunningly well kept up as the dream family's dwelling.

She wanted to leave it now, to leave Happily Ever After, and all the sickening love that it entailed... but she couldn't. The dream was not done with her yet, whatever it intended. It moved sideways, to the neighbor's house, a house just as sparkling white with lovely emerald green trimming. Here a lonely old woman lived, surrounded by three cats, and nothing else. She talked to herself, and upon her living room and bedroom tables were fish bowls with small shiny creatures by the same name but not the bowl part swimming around. Sessilia wondered of this was the world she was living in, this old woman's head, which was filled with fish.