Mindful.Me (SIDE B)

A Journey into Mindfulness, Meditation, and Mirror Realms

Image: Alexander Mils via Unsplash+

This is part two of a two-part story. In Side A, we see one perspective; in Side B, we see another.

This project was inspired by a March Microfiction prompt: “Tell the story of a sleepwalker and his adventures,” shared by Mina Howell.

---

Most people can deal with the stress of daily life, but I’m not one of those people. As a result, I have my fair share of demons (usually in the form of drugs and alcohol), but at a certain point, not even numbing myself worked.

All the stress was affecting my sleep. Even when I could get rest, I tossed and turned, waking up more exhausted than when I went to bed the night before.

Try meditation, they said.

The next thing I knew, I was being served ads all over the Internet for a meditation app called Mindful.Me. So, one day, I downloaded it to try before bed.

I laid in bed, put on my headphones, and started the app. A soft voice spoke through the ambient noise of the track.

“Welcome to a short meditation exercise that will relieve stress and call attention to the points of tension throughout your body.”

I’ll believe it when I see it.

“Begin by closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing. Focus on the way your chest rises and falls. Focus on how the air flows into and out of your body.”

A series of three bell chimes cut through the ambient audio. The voice continued.

“Focus on the world just beyond the veil of your understanding. The one you’ve always known was there.”

Wait, what?

I opened my eyes and almost fell backward. Somehow, I had gone from lying down to standing without realizing it. The air around me was thick. It shimmered and flowed like the surface of an ocean.

I reached up to take the headphones off my head and realized they were gone. That’s when it hit me.

I’m still lying in my bed! What the hell is going on? Some kind of out-of-body experience?

I reached down and plucked the headphones from my body. Surprisingly, they came right off, but my body remained perfectly still. The voice was the same, but the message was totally different. I placed them on my head and exited my bedroom.

“If you’re hearing this, then you’ve successfully crossed over. Very few people can perceive what exists in the cracks between dimensions, but for those who possess the ability, an entirely new world awaits you,” the voice said.

I walked over to my bedroom door and pushed it open…

…And that’s all I remembered.

I could recall everything until that moment, but my next memory was waking up the following day. My body was sore. I felt like I had run a marathon in my sleep, but otherwise, I was well-rested.

Was it all just a weird dream?

I was so grateful for quality sleep that I just kept using it. Every night was the same. I would leave my body and then blackout as soon as I tried to leave my room.

I decided to try the app out during the day. Since I worked from home, I waited until my lunch break and tested it out in my home office while sitting in my ergonomic chair.

It worked.

I stepped out of my home office and into the hallway, listening to the ambient music in my headphones. I looked down and watched as ripples emerged beneath each step I took, expanding outward and through the walls.

I made it to the front door and pushed it open. An alien landscape greeted me.

Image: Alexander Mils via Unsplash+

Swaying blades of grass shimmered like tiny prisms, pulsating with a luminescence that reacted to my every move. In place of my street, a river of stardust flowed in both directions. Tiny bursts of light exploded within its currents like supernovas.

Parts of the world I knew still remained, jutting out from the landscape at awkward angles. My neighbor’s house was across the river, for example, but it was flanked by trees made from ribbons of color. Beneath them, strange flowers opened and closed in a steady rhythm, almost like breathing.

“Take caution in this realm,” the voice in my headphones said, “We recommend going in groups with fellow Soulwalkers so you can leverage their unique abilities against the many horrors that exist beyond our reality.”

What the hell is a Soulwalker?

I stepped forward, away from my front door, and paused as an ear-shattering roar rocked the ground beneath my feet. All around me, the grass flashed a bright red. The ribbon trees unraveled and zipped into the ground like a turtle’s limbs retreating into its shell.

In the distance, I saw a gargantuan beast galloping forward on four legs towards me. Its body was a mass of writhing tentacles with no visible head or limbs. With every step, its legs shook the ground like skyscrapers of flesh.

In front of it, a woman was sprinting towards me. She had piercing blue eyes and auburn hair that flowed wildly behind her.

“Get back inside, now!” she screamed.

I was still in shock, paralyzed by the sheer sensory overload. The woman collided with me as I stood there, slack-jawed and useless.

She grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. “When you wake up, come find me,” she shouted, pushing me back through my front door.

I landed hard on my back, blinked, and she was gone. I was back in my office, sitting in my chair, wearing my headphones. A bell sound chimed three times against the ambient audio.

“This concludes your meditation session,” the voice on the app said.

I tore off my headphones and stood up.

“Hello? Anyone there?” I asked.

I spun around my office, looking for any sign that what had happened was real.

Outside my window, I saw movers hauling furniture from a truck. They carried it past a “For Sale” sign with a “SOLD” sticker in the front yard.

A woman stepped out and pointed inside the house. She had flowing auburn hair, and when she turned toward my window, I saw those striking blue eyes.

No doubt about it. It was the same woman from my meditation session.

Guess it’s time to introduce myself to the neighbors…

---

Thanks for Reading! Here’s Your Musical Pairing

Listen to this after reading, like pairing a glass of wine with dinner.