My mind was swimming. It refused to focus on anything, flitting from topic to topic, thought to thought, but the movements were halfhearted. They were weak. It was like I didn’t really want to focus on anything; it was just searching for things at random. Anything that might entertain me, even briefly. I didn’t mind too much, though. It was kind of nice, actually. Peaceful. For once, I didn’t feel anything bad. There was no anxiety or worried, racing thoughts, just… nothingness.

It felt almost like my brain had been removed from my head and wrapped in something warm and cosy. My body too. It felt like I was floating on a cold of cotton candy, but not sticky. I felt protected, loved and safe, and I stayed that way for so long.

I don’t know how long it was, not really. My mind just stayed there, floating in space without any real conscious thought or decisions until the realisation that I could leave hit me slowly. I could leave. I could go back to my other life, the real world. It didn’t quite feel real to me, though. It felt detached, far away and unreachable. Was time moving there? Was it passing too fast whilst my time in the other world seemed to be frozen?

I needed to go back. I knew that, but I didn’t really want to. With great difficulty, I pulled away from the world where I felt so protected and started swimming through the dizziness in my mind. The movements felt different to normal. More physical. It was almost like I was actually trying to swim through the thick, gloopy river of my other worlds. The texture was like syrup, and I could feel it slipping over my skin and clinging to it. Not syrup. Something nicer. Something that I’d actually want to swim in. What thick liquid wouldn’t feel horrible against my skin and wouldn’t be sticky? Maybe golden syrup.

A giggle slipped out of my lips in one of the worlds. I wasn’t sure which one, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t want to swim in golden syrup. I knew that, but the thought still made me laugh. It would be so sticky and horrible, and it would probably never come out of my hair. I could probably wash and wash for hours, and it would still feel horrible to run my fingers through. Sugar would still probably be crystalised in it for days, if not weeks, and the bugs…

Disgust turned my stomach at the thought of bugs and insects embedded in my hair, and I felt myself lurch away from that world, finally finding my reality. How I knew that it was mine, I wasn’t sure, but I did. It was hard to force myself back into my real body and to make myself open my eyes. It felt like they’d been glued shut, and I had to fight to pull them open slowly, inch by inch.

I was being watched. Something or someone was watching me. That was my first realisation. There were eyes everywhere, and they were watching me, just like in the other world. The faces on the wall stared down at me, their flat, emotionless gazes fixed on my body, barely hidden under the duvet I was wrapped in.

Pictures. They were just photos. It took me far too long to realise that. I was still at my grandparents’ house, and the wall was covered in pictures. No one was watching me. It was just cutouts glued to the wall.

Confusion built within me. It was still dark outside. The sun was starting to rise, but it was still nighttime. That meant that barely any time had passed. Either that or an entire day had gone by without me even noticing. Fear shot through my mind, waking me up and chasing away any residual sleepiness as I grabbed for my phone. I had fallen asleep, slipped into the other worlds, before plugging it in. It only had three percent battery left, but that was enough for me to see the date.

I hadn’t missed anything. It was four in the morning, the next day. I’d only been asleep or in the other world for a few hours, nothing more. I sagged against the duvet in relief before reaching for my charger and plugging the phone in. The brightness of the screen hurt my eyes, but I peered at it, struggling to read the messages from Phoebe that had been sent just two hours earlier.

Okay, hear me out, she had typed. I’ve done my research, and they do sell lobsters a lot more often over here. Some places sell them still alive, and I’m pretty sure I can get it on the plane without anyone noticing, but I worry about it being crushed in my suitcase. What do you think I can leave here? Annette will definitely post some of my clothes back, right?

A smile grew on my face as I scrolled down, reading the next message that she’d sent ten minutes later.

So… it might be illegal. I just saw something about there being sniffer dogs and stuff that search luggage at airports, and apparently, animals can show up on the scanners they put all of the bags through. Do you think if I pack my suitcase really well, I can hide it somehow? I want to call it Leroy Junior.

I snorted softly before starting to reply.

You need to stop watching that YouTube channel, I wrote. If you get arrested on the way back for smuggling a lobster into the country, your mom will be so annoyed. She’ll definitely ground you this time.

She didn’t like to ground Phoebe for anything. It was kind of weird to me at first, but she said it made her uncomfortable. That punishment should make sense and be tailored to the crime or the rule that had been broken. Phoebe had been made to tidy the entire house (for spilling something on the carpet and hiding it from her mom, causing it to stain) and had to work at her mom’s business doing admin for a few weeks to pay her back for the glasses she broke last year after getting drunk, but every time, her mom made sure to help out and not make her do anything too bad. Phoebe complained about it, but she understood why her mom was making her do it, and she knew it wasn’t unfair.

I never really got grounded, though. I don’t think I really did anything worthy of being grounded. I wasn’t a particularly bad kid. I probably drank more than I should, and I hid that from my parents, but it was just at parties. I never drank on my own. Apart from that, I didn’t do anything bad. Not that my mom would ever believe that. She was always accusing me of doing something wrong.

She didn’t really punish me for it, though. Not consistently, at least. She liked to threaten me. To tell me she was going to kick me out of the house, leave me at the side of the road, or lock me in my room for a week, but she never followed through. She normally just exhausted herself with her anger and gave up. I didn’t mind that, though. It was easier.

I glanced at the time again before rolling over. Sleep. I needed more sleep. It was still too early in the morning, and I didn’t need to get up for another few hours at least, but I didn’t really want to go back. I knew that when I fell asleep, I’d probably go back to the other world. The hospital.

That scared me. I’d been drugged. That nurse, Andrew, had drugged me. I guess I kind of expected to be given medication there, but I didn’t expect anyone to force me to take it. I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Maybe that was just what happened at the hospital, though. Perhaps it was normal. It didn’t feel normal, but then again, nothing at the hospital felt quite like it should. There were weird things happening there, that was for certain. Like the window. I’d seen time passing. The sun had sunk lower and lower before my very eyes, but the nurse had said that he hadn’t seen it. That had to be a lie. How could he not see the sky darkening?

Or perhaps there was nothing for him to see. Maybe nothing had happened to the sky, and I was just staring out of a completely normal window. There might not have been a window there at all. Maybe I just thought that there was. It could have happened. I could be seeing things that weren’t really there. I was in a psychiatric hospital. Maybe I’d lost my grip on reality completely.

But I didn’t think I had. It made sense to me why I was there. I understood it too much. The anxiety and worries I had been feeling, the sheer panic, all felt completely normal. If I had flashed Duncan and done some other things that I didn’t feel like I could control, I would be scared too. I wouldn’t want to leave the house, go back to school or even look at my phone, so I didn’t think I was really losing my mind.

Part of me did want to go back there. Even though it was scary, and I didn’t know what was happening, I wanted to go back. There was something about the world that I was drawn to. I could feel myself drifting back there without even meaning to. I wasn’t sure if it was because part of me wanted someone to help me. I wanted a professional, someone who knew what they were doing, to tell me that I was not normal and needed help and then to help me. I wanted them to look at my mom and how she acted and to tell me that it wasn’t okay. That the way she treated me wasn’t okay.

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My eyes fluttered shut. It was too early in the morning, and I was too tired. I could feel sleep hovering at the edge of my mind, pulling at me and making my vision swim as I fought to keep my eyes open and not succumb again. The world around me became hazy. It warped, twisting and making me feel nauseous until I gave up.

The strange floating feeling overpowered me again. I felt myself swimming in the thick lake of other worlds, but I couldn’t stay afloat. I sunk like a rock, my mouth squeezing shut to stop the worlds from finding their way in until I finally hit the bottom of the river. But I didn’t stop then. The ground was too soft. It gave way under me, and I fell through the mud, emerging on the other side.

I started to fall. I caught sight of the mud-covered underside of a giant floating city for just a moment before turning, tumbling and free-falling through the air. The world around me spun out of control, and I grabbed desperately for any other dizziness. I needed another place to go, another reality to disappear into so that I wouldn’t be there when my body finally hit the solid ground far below where I was.

Flashes invaded my mind. Fragments of place, of memories and people that I was in other worlds. Warm water slipped over me as my head finally broke the surface somewhere I didn’t recognise. The sun glinted off the sea, blinding me, as a laugh slipped from my lips. Salt clung to my skin, making it feel tight as I pushed my goggles back, eager to see more of the beautiful land I was in, but it was too late. I was already consumed by the dizziness.

The air was frigid. There was a stale, musty quality to it that made me reluctant to breathe too deeply. Each inhale hurt. It was too cold. I had been too cold for too long. Our journey under the frozen and ice city had been a long one, but it was far from over. We still had more than ten miles to walk, and each step hurt. My shoes were too tight. They pinched my toes and rubbed on my heels, but it didn’t matter. Stopping wasn’t an option.

“Are you ready, Grace?” someone asked.

I didn’t recognise the voice. I didn’t recognise the face that slowly came into focus as I was dropped into yet another world I had never seen before. I stared at the sun-weathered face, but I didn’t know who he was. He looked scared. He looked terrified as he waited for my answer, his eyes darting to the doorway just beyond that led to the desert. I opened my mouth to reply, to ask him what was happening or who we were running from, but it was too late. Dizziness was pulling at me again.

Warmth was the first thing I noticed. I was freezing. Painful shivers wracked my body, but whatever I was lying against was radiating heat. I thought it was a chair at first. A sofa or maybe a beanbag. It wasn’t, though. The soft movements, the gentle rises and falls, made it clear that I was leaning against a body. I tried to turn my head to look at whatever it was, but I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t respond to me. All that I could do was shiver, hearing my teeth chatter loudly in the tepid forest air.

The thing I was leaning against, the creature, seemed to know what I wanted, though. I watched out of the corner of my eyes as it lifted its giant black head and licked my cheek, washing away the tears that had been leaking uncontrollably from my eyes. I couldn’t see what it was, though. All I could see was a mass of wild black fur before the world started to spin again.

I was in a gym. One I recognised immediately. I’d been there many times, and I was there again. My body felt stronger there. I was no longer decrepit and waiting for death to come for me. I was strong. And happy. There was a boy in front of my rowing machine. He was laughing at something that I had said, his eyes dancing with light and joy. I wanted to stay there, but I couldn’t. Strength leeched out of me as I was pulled away, dragged to another world.

Brightness invaded my brain. I clenched my eyes shut, waiting for dizziness to appear again and rescue me. But it didn’t come. I could feel it pulling away, leaving me in the blindingly bright world. I needed to open my eyes again. I had to open them and check where I was, but it was hard to convince myself to do it. I knew it would hurt. I knew the light would hurt my eyes and make my head throb, but I wanted to know where I was.

Slowly, I cracked my eyes open just a little and blinked up at the bright room. Why was it so bright? I couldn’t even tell where I was at first. My vision was blurry, but I looked around, waiting for it to become clearer.

I was in the hospital. I sat up quickly, dizziness and pain stabbing through my mind as panic sparked dully in my heart before dying out and leaving me numb. That didn’t feel right. The anxiety had lasted for a couple of seconds but no longer. That wasn’t normal. Something in the back of my mind pulled at me, but I couldn’t work out what it was as I continued to stare blankly at my surroundings.

Alone. I was alone in the room. There was no one there to greet me and no one watching over me. There should have been. I almost wished that there was because being alone felt weird. It made me uncertain and unsure of what to do. What was I meant to be doing? Was I meant to get up and find someone, or was there something else I was supposed to do? Should I have even been awake?

I pushed the duvet back, eyeing the door suspiciously. Surely, they would know that I was getting up, and someone would come and get me. That sounded right. I started to stand, my legs feeling unsteady, and took a step forwards before stopping. Something didn’t feel right, but I wasn’t sure what. I glanced down, staring at my bare feet before the answer came to me slowly.

I was wearing different clothes than before. When I’d first been dropped off, I was wearing leggings. That’s what I had been wearing when that nurse had drugged me, but I was in jogging bottoms and a long-sleeved t-shirt now. Fear shot through me, clearing some of the fog from my mind, and the hair on my arms stood on end. Someone had changed me. That meant that someone had seen me naked. They had put me into different clothes when I was unconscious, and that was a horrifying thought. They could have done anything to me, and I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t have been able to stop them or fight back.

No. That wasn’t right. I had gotten changed myself. Bits and pieces of memories slowly filtered into my mind, flickers of things that had happened since the last time I had been in that world. So much time had passed. I wasn’t sure how long it had been, but I knew that it had been a while.

But it had only been minutes in reality. Just long enough for me to wake up, tumble through the other worlds and find my way back to the hospital. How had so much time passed there? I could remember it. It felt like an endless blur of monotony. Countless appointments with doctors who asked me questions and typed notes whilst I sat there awkwardly. Blood tests. There had been so many blood tests too. I remembered vials and vials of viscous liquid being coaxed out of my veins and carried away on a tray whilst I sat there and watched them go. There were other tests too. I could vaguely remember having to lie still whilst a machine buzzed around me, the noise almost deafening.

So much time had passed, but I didn’t feel any better. I didn’t feel anything. My life was a flat stream of nothingness. The doctors weren’t doing anything to help me. The tests were pointless. They never learnt anything from them. They just conducted them and stared at me like I was a lab rat or something, waiting for me to do what they wanted me to, but I didn’t know what that was. No one had explained it to me, and I couldn’t work it out.

Not that I really cared. I’d stopped feeling anything about the tests. They were scary at first, but I had been filled with hope. Hope that they’d find out what was wrong with me and that they’d be able to help, but that seemed less and less likely.

My gaze roamed the room again, searching for something that I couldn’t find. I wasn’t even sure what it was that I was looking for, but it didn’t matter. My eyes landed on a mirror on the wall that I hadn’t noticed before, distracting me. I stepped forward, straining my ears to make sure that no one was approaching my room without me noticing, and stared at the mirror in shock.

Lifting my hand, I felt genuine shock when my reflection moved too. I didn’t recognise the person I was looking at, but the skeletal hand was moving. The wide, glassy eyes stared back, blinking in time with me. It was me, and the realisation made me stumble backwards. I looked horrible. I wasn’t sure how long I had been in hospital, but it seemed like I hadn’t eaten in that time. Or maybe it was the medication they were giving me multiple times a day.

I needed to leave. I had to leave, and I had to go quickly. If I stayed for much longer, I would die. Either the doctors would kill me, or the medication would. Or maybe my body would just stop fighting to keep me alive. I stepped toward the door, pausing to listen for footsteps before reaching for the handle.

The corridor was quiet and empty. There were no people there, no other patients and no doctors, but there was a camera positioned high on the wall opposite and pointing directly at me. Someone was sitting behind it and watching me. I had to move fast.

But I didn’t know which was to go. Left was the obvious choice, but the way out that way was locked, and I didn’t have a keycard to get out. I’d need to take one from Andrew or that other nurse who came to see me sometimes, the dark-haired one. That wouldn’t work. They were too strong. Andrew had already overpowered me too easily when I’d first come to the hospital. He’d been able to force medication into my mouth without even breaking a sweat. I wouldn’t be able to get the card off of him, and the woman looked strong too. She wasn’t particularly tall, but there was something about her that made me think I wouldn’t be able to beat her in a fight. Especially not with how malnourished and weak I had become.

That left me with only one option. I needed to find another way out.