The Staircase

 AUTHORS NOTES:

        Written in 2022. This story is the closest thing to describing how anxiety feels and looks in my mind. It is a little over dramatic but I feel like it needs to be in order to get the point across. 

The Staircase

By Clancy Tresemer

Darkness engulfs around a girl standing in an emptiness. She remembers that her name is Jazzy. She has blonde hair and brown eyes that glimmer when she smiles. Jazzy is not smiling now but standing still with her eyes open. She doesn’t know where she is and can’t see a thing, but a feeling of comfort keeps her from fear. She walks through the darkness, hoping to find some light and is blinded from an iridescent glow that emerges from afar. Jazzy covers her eyes with her hands until the glow dims enough to where she can see again. The emptiness is now white light instead of the suffocating darkness, but it goes on for what seems like forever. Jazzy looks around calmly and spots a staircase with an ebony railing. It was a spiral staircase that seemed to go up to nothing, but it intrigued Jazzy. She walked towards it and rested her palm on its cold metal railing and looked up. It seemed like it was pointless to climb, but Jazzy couldn’t help feeling a pull towards it. She took the steps cautiously as she climbed into the whiteness and was blinded yet again. She kept climbing carefully until the light dimmed once more. 

At the top of the staircase, there was another emptiness, but this one was filled with a very obnoxious blush pink light. Jazzy stepped off the staircase and looked around. It seemed empty again. She started walking away from the staircase looking for something, anything. There was just endless nothingness, other than the pink light that filled it. She turned back to go back to the staircase, but it had disappeared. Jazzy continued walking in hopes of finding something eventually. After a few minutes had passed, she started to feel a strong wave of weakness in her body. She stopped walking and sat down. She still felt calm as she sat, but slowly started to feel uneasy. Jazzy looked up and saw a group of women about her age standing about 5 feet away from her. They were all looking right at her with a look of judgement on their faces. They were all as thin as a rail with perfect features. They wore clothes that showed off their bodies in ways that Jazzy could not. Jazzy immediately feels uncomfortable and tries to keep it from showing on her face. The group of women start to take turns telling Jazzy all the things that are wrong with her figure and her features. One said she was too large. One asked what she had been eating. One said her eyes were bland. One said her hair was too frizzy. One said she had a double chin. One said she had awful teeth. Jazzy wants to tell them off and explain why she is not like them, but she can’t get her voice to form the noise. She feels suffocated by their echoing words and tries to back away in a crawl. The group of women follow her as she slowly tries to crawl away, their voices rising to a deafening volume. Jazzy begs her body to crawl faster or to get up and run, but she feels so weak and tired. She closes her eyes and focuses on crawling when she bumps into something. She looks up and sees the staircase again, this time going up like before, instead of going back down. She pulls herself up the staircase by the railing as the group of women are walking closely behind her, catching up with every second, their voices still loud and sharp with hatred. Jazzy makes it into the blinding light as one of the women grabbed at her from below and all the noise, feelings, and color wash out. Jazzy must close her eyes again and keep climbing the staircase. Silence sweeps over and Jazzy’s weakness disappears, so quickly that Jazzy thought she had just imagined it. She opens her eyes once the light dims and finds herself at the top of the staircase.

The next emptiness was filled with a creamy, yellow color, as Jazzy steps off the top of the staircase. It once again disappears behind her. Jazzy walks forward, feeling a wave of energy rush over her. She has a feeling of nervousness and jitters that could carry her on a five-mile run. She walked a little more briskly than she was before. Suddenly she stopped. Jazzy thought she heard a voice and listened. The voice spoke again, but it was familiar. She realized it was her own voice talking to her. Jazzy turned her head to the right and saw a large group of people, men, women, and children, splayed out into the emptiness. They were all staring at her with questioning faces. Jazzy walked through the crowd and listened to her own voice echo through the emptiness. It told her to smile, but not too hard. It told her to smile harder. It told her to smile softer. Jazzy felt overwhelmed and confused, but she followed the voice’s instructions. It told her to say hello to a young girl that she passed. It told her to say, ‘how are you?’ instead. It told her to not say anything. Jazzy listened and kept walking through the crowd. Then, every person started pointing at her and following behind her in a slow, zombie-like, walk. Jazzy felt sick. She started to pick up the pace as she made her way through. The voice told her to suck in her stomach. It told her to relax her shoulders. It told her to look pretty. It told her to run faster. It told her to stop running and give up. Jazzy was bombarded with instructions that didn’t make sense. She kept running away from the growing crowd that followed her with their fingers. She ran so hard that breath ran also. She heaved her lungs to chase breath. The voice started repeating itself like a broken record player. It told her to stop running and give up. Over. And over. And over. And over again. It told her to stop running and give up. Jazzy, still running full speed, closed her eyes and screamed as loud as she could to make the voice stop. She slowed as she noticed there were no more people, longing for oxygen to return to her lungs, and turned back to see how far she was from the crowd. The voice stopped abruptly, and silence fell over her. There was no crowd. Not even a hint that there was one. Jazzy turned back to where she was headed and saw the staircase. She no longer felt nervous or jittery or overwhelmed. She wasn’t out of breath. Jazzy climbed the staircase once more and closed her eyes against the blinding light. 

The next emptiness that Jazzy encountered was a bright scarlet red. A light breeze caressed her body as she stepped off the staircase and it disappeared behind her. She immediately felt an overwhelming sense of fear. Tears ran down her eyes uncontrollably. She walked forward through the emptiness and saw the next staircase in the far distance. She started to walk towards it as the wind blew at her. The wind picks up and Jazzy hugs her body for warmth. A small pinching prick on her left bicep alerts her and she studies her arm. A surgical needle sticks out, stuck; impaled in her arm. Jazzy winces and slowly pulls it out. Fear floods her senses as she tosses it to the ground. Soon after, another one hits her right calf, another hits her right shoulder. She turns white and pulls them out as well. The punctured holes trickle with blood. Suddenly, the needles fall from above like rain. Jazzy feels them hitting and sticking to her and she starts to run, her heart racing fast. The wind picks up heavily now. She tries to protect her head by covering it with her arms. Jazzy’s whole body starts to be covered with needles sticking out of her. The pain is unbearable, almost as unbearable as the fear that blinds her ability to think. She trudges through, the staircase in her sight, but still far away. Jazzy falls as a needle pierces her neck and causes a burning sensation in her body. Her face is drenched in tears and sweat. She closes her eyes and curls up into a ball, her head under her arms, and cries. The pain ceases, the needles stop falling, but the wind is still blowing hard. She looks up again and her body is fine. Not one needle in her. Jazzy stands up and looks around. The only thing that is visible is the staircase. She starts to walk towards them again, pushing herself through the pressure of the wind that is now amping up to the strength of a hurricane. Jazzy presses on for a long time and can never seem to get any closer to the staircase. Confused, she tries to start running through the storm and still fails to grow any closer to the staircase. Frustration and the feeling that she would never make it, pounded its way into her bloodstream as her lungs and heart picked up speed. The realization of the fact that the staircase was not getting any closer and that her body was fatigued from running settled in. Jazzy slowed and fell to her knees, tears streaming rapidly down her cheeks. She screamed, but almost no sound was heard in the bustling wind. She hugged her knees and rocked, praying that the storm would stop and allow her to make it to the staircase. Fear hugged her heart. The one thing that Jazzy knew she wanted, must, do was to reach that staircase, and she failed. She would never make it. The feeling of failure clung to her lungs as she struggled to breathe. Panic took over. When Jazzy believed that she was about to die, all the emotions and wind stopped. Exhausted, Jazzy looked up and saw that the staircase was next to her now. She had made it. Jazzy pulled herself up and eased herself toward the staircase and climbed. 

After the blinding light, the next emptiness was noticeably a dull blue, almost grey. Jazzy walked in and felt nothing. She was expecting to feel a wave of emotion or feeling, but there was none. She continued to walk and waited for something to happen. She constantly looked around. Nothing. Jazzy yelled a weak hello and asked if anyone was there. She got no response. She yelled again and asked if anything was going to happen. No answer. Jazzy was tired of walking, so she sat. It seemed like hours went by and nothing happened. Not even a staircase appeared. She felt empty. She began to grow impatient and started to cry in frustration. She screamed for someone or thing to appear. She felt lost and alone. Jazzy cried, please. A voice spoke and said the number ten. Jazzy said hello again. The voice didn’t answer. Jazzy stood and looked all around. She asked the voice where it was. No response. Jazzy sighed. The voice spoke again and said nine. Then eight. Then seven. Then six. Jazzy asked what it was counting for. Five. Four. Three. She frantically looked around and held herself for comfort. Two. One. Jazzy lost her eyesight as everything went back into that cold darkness she felt in the beginning. The voice said her name. She squeezed her eyes shut. Jazzy. She opened them to see a brightly lit room. She lay on a sofa looking towards a picture of an African landscape hanging on the wall in front of her. She sat up and her gaze drifted to the other half of the room. There was a bookcase that was stocked and a desk that was cluttered but organized. A woman sat on a chair next to Jazzy, staring back at her. Her brain scrambled for the answer to where she was and why; eventually she remembered. Jazzy knew the woman as her therapist who conducted a hypnosis session to understand Jazzy’s brain more accurately. The therapist smiled at her. She smiled back. Jazzy felt as if something didn’t feel right. She shook it off and concluded her therapy session. The therapist walked her out and said goodbye. Jazzy opened the door and walked out and fell into a hole of emptiness. She was falling. She screamed in terror and tried to see where she was falling. There was no bottom. She looked for something to grab or stop her fall. There was nothing. Jazzy flung her arms and legs, doing anything that could help her stop, but nothing worked. She thought this was the end. It all went black. 

Jazzy flew up from her pillow, out of breath, and saw that she was in her bedroom. She pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming again. She wasn’t. Jazzy wondered what in the world had caused her to have such a crazy dream. She looked at her phone. It was 9:13 A.M. She got up and changed her clothes, brushed her teeth and hair, and stumbled downstairs to eat some breakfast. As she was halfway through with her eggs and avocado toast, her phone buzzed. She looked at it and dropped her fork. Her phone read: Therapist Appt. Fear flooded through her body as she remembered she was going to try out the hypnotherapy today. She emotionlessly called the therapist’s office and cancelled the appointment. They asked her why and if everything was okay. She said she just felt ill and needed to stay home. She hung up and stared at her half-eaten breakfast. Jazzy didn’t feel hungry anymore.