Secret Letter

The yank came without warning—sudden, forceful, pulling me from the safety of my chair like invisible hands had decided my time of rest was over. My body lurched forward, the familiar world tilting sideways as I stumbled, caught off guard by the violence of the movement. Something had shifted, though I couldn't name what. The air felt different, charged with an electricity that made my skin prickle.

For hours afterward, I couldn't shake the feeling that something fundamental had shifted. I moved through the rest of my day in a strange, heightened state—as if that violent pull from my chair had torn a hole in the fabric of ordinary reality, and now other worlds were bleeding through.

The dreams started while I was still awake.

Standing at my kitchen counter, I would suddenly find myself somewhere else entirely—walking through mist-shrouded forests where the trees whispered secrets in languages I didn't recognize but somehow understood. These weren't daydreams or idle fantasies; they had the weight and texture of lived experience. I could smell the damp earth, feel the cool moisture of fog against my skin, hear the distant call of ravens that seemed to know my name.

I would blink and be back in my kitchen, but the sensation of otherwhere clung to me like perfume. The boundaries between sleeping and waking, between this world and others, had become dangerously thin.

By the time I finally made it to bed, exhaustion should have claimed me immediately. Instead, I lay there in the dark, my body heavy with fatigue but my mind crackling with an energy I'd never felt before. The pillow beneath my head felt insubstantial, as if it too might dissolve at any moment. I closed my eyes, willing my body to relax, when suddenly the mattress beneath me did exactly that—it disappeared completely.

I was falling—not through air, but through darkness itself, through layers of reality I hadn't known existed. The descent was both terrifying and oddly peaceful, as if I were meant to be here, meant to tumble through this void between worlds. When I finally stopped falling, I found myself somewhere else entirely.

Lucifer's world spread before me, not the fire and brimstone of Sunday school warnings, but something far more complex—beautiful and terrible all at once. The landscape pulsed with its own dark light, shadows that seemed more real than the objects they should have been cast by. This was a place of profound transformation, where the rules I'd always known no longer applied.

Here, in this realm that existed parallel to everything I thought I knew, the waking dreams that had been haunting me all day suddenly made perfect sense. They hadn't been intrusions or hallucinations—they had been preparations, glimpses of the journey I was meant to take. My consciousness had been practicing for this moment, learning to navigate between realities.

I walked through crystalline corridors that sang with each footstep, past gardens where flowers bloomed in colors that had no names in my world. Time moved differently here, flowing like honey, thick and golden. I could have been there for minutes or millennia; both felt equally true. The weight of ordinary concerns—bills, appointments, the mundane architecture of daily life—fell away like shed skin.

But then something shifted again, the scene blurring and reforming like smoke reshaping itself. The oppressive weight of that underworld gave way to something older, wilder. Celtic mists rolled in, carrying with them the scent of battlefields and sacred groves. I felt her presence before I saw her—the Morrigan, goddess of war and prophecy, sovereign of the space between life and death.

She appeared not as the fearsome crow-woman of legend, but in a form that was achingly human yet unmistakably divine. Her eyes held the wisdom of countless ages, the sorrow of every battle fought, the fierce joy of warriors who had found their courage. When she approached me, I felt no fear, only a deep recognition, as if I had been waiting for this meeting my entire life—as if every waking dream that had visited me that day had been leading to this singular moment.

"You've been traveling between worlds all day," she said, her voice carrying the sound of wind through ancient stones. "Most never learn to do it consciously. You're already walking the paths." Her voice slowly turning into a familiar sound, gentle but gone, like air.

The sound of jingles came next, a cold crisp feeling washed over me, like I was suddenly on the highest snowy mountain somewhere near the Alps, two trees spun to my left where my dresser usuallly had been and then I heard him.

My brother, my dad, my uncle Eric, my friend Jake, my Grandfather Jimmy, a mix of male voices, soft and fare. welcoming in it's gentle tone say aloud and to the right through the jingle

"You want to ride in the Glass Elevator?"

I did not answer, but then again everything around me had changed.

Then came the touch that undid me completely.

Her fingers found my hair, moving through it with infinite gentleness. Each strand seemed to sing under her attention, and I understood that this was both blessing and claiming, a marking that went deeper than skin. Her touch carried the weight of prophecy, the promise of transformation, the acknowledgment of something in me that I hadn't even known existed.

In that moment, suspended between worlds, claimed by forces I barely understood, I felt more awake than I ever had while walking in daylight. The goddess's fingers in my hair were an anchor and a doorway all at once, grounding me in this impossible experience while opening me to possibilities I'd never imagined. Each gentle stroke seemed to weave together all the fragmentary visions I'd experienced that day, creating a tapestry of meaning I was only beginning to understand.

"The veil was always thin for you," she whispered, her breath warm against my temple. "Today it finally tore completely."

When I finally returned to ordinary consciousness, the transition was gentler than I expected. The room materialized around me slowly, piece by piece, as if reality were reassembling itself with careful deliberation. But I was changed. My hair still tingled where her touch had been, and the memory of those waking dreams felt as real and substantial as any physical experience. The yank from my chair had been just the beginning—an invitation into a larger story, a deeper mystery that would continue to unfold long after I opened my eyes to the familiar world of morning light.

I understood now that the boundary between dreaming and waking had dissolved for me permanently. The other worlds were always there, always accessible, waiting for me to step across the threshold that had been torn open by forces beyond my comprehension. The Morrigan's touch had been both blessing and initiation, marking me as someone who would never again be confined to just one reality.