I slept through my alarm this morning and was running late for work. I rushed out the door without eating anything and sped to work. There is no street parking by my work so I have to park in a parking garage around the corner everyday, but today almost every level was full. I ended up having to park at the very top and found out that the elevator was broken.
"Great, now im going to be even more late," I thought to myself. I was speed walking down the street looking at the nasty text from my boss when suddenly something hit me in the face causing me to jump back. I quickly looked around to see who threw something at me, but everyone around was walking briskly with their own destinations in mind. At my feet I noticed what hit me, a paper airplane. I picked it up and noticed it was two sheets of paper folded together that were both full of yellow writing. I wanted to read it, but as I was running so late I just shoved it in my pocket and ran the rest of the way to the office.
When I got to the building I pushed through the revolving door and made my way to the elevator. I got chewed out by my manager for being late and spent the next several hours in meetings and doing paperwork. When I finally found time for lunch I drove to a local deli I like and was halfway through my hoagie when I remembered the airplane. I pulled the two sheets of paper out from my pocket and smoothed them out. I am going to write out the contents of the letter here.
My name is Tara H and I am being held against my will. I went to a psychiatrist to talk about my depression, but I made a mistake. I told him about the changes I've been noticing. He seemed unconcerned with what I was telling him at first, but then he made a phone call and proceeded to tell me he was involuntary committing me to this Insititution. I was furious and screaming at him, I felt tricked. I wanted to run away but when he opened the door there were two large men waiting to escort me. He said I was a danger to myself and others. That wasn't true was it?
That was at least two months ago. They won't let me leave. The nurses keep telling me the only way I can leave is once the doctor determines I no longer pose a threat to myself, but he's never even here! The doctor seems to only come in once a week and every time he tells me maybe next week I will be cleared. There are around 15 other patients here with me. Most seem to be in a worse state than me. Some of them are nice. Some of them do nothing but scream or cry. We have no access to a phone and are not able to send out letters. There are visiting hours, but I have never seen a single visitor. Why wouldn't my mom visit me?
I started to tell myself I was crazy. Maybe this was good for me. If the medical staff is saying I am a danger to myself they must have a reason right? But then I noticed another change. My roommate's half heart tattoo was on her right arm instead of her left. I specifically remember her telling me she had hers on the left and her boyfriend has the other half on his right arm. I thought maybe I was just mistaken and brought it up to her joking about how forgetful I am, but she looked down at her arm and looked scared. She ran out of the room yelling about how her tattoo changed and the men who brought me in came quickly and took her out of the ward.
That was three days ago and she hasn't returned. I don't know what is going on, but I don't think they will ever let me out of here. I am writing this with a crayon because they won't let us have a pencil for fear we might hurt ourselves. There is a window high up on the wall that the nurses open sometimes when it gets hot. I am going to fold up this letter into a paper airplane and when no one is looking try to throw it out the window. Please if you are reading this please ask my mom to come get-
Suddenly my phone rang ripping my attention from the letter. It was my boss calling furious I was late to work and now late to come back from lunch. After a slew of apologies I ran out the deli and drove back to the office. Thankfully I found a spot on the street to park by the office and quickly ran up to the building. The doorman held open one of the double doors for me and after thanking him I got in the elevator. My boss chewed me out for a good half hour, but now I'm back at my desk. I should be doing work but I cant stop thinking about the letter. I looked up mental institutions nearby, but there are none for miles. Is this just a silly prank? Did some kid throw the airplane at me and then hide before I could see them? I don't know but I just can't stop thinking about it so I am posting this online for others to see. The story about the tattoo just seems so outlandish. Things like that can't change, right?
It wasn’t my usual sort of hotel. I like the big chains. There’s a reliability to them, and more than anything else that’s what I want in a night away from home. Even if the reliability is just “yup, someone’s been smoking weed in the stairwell again,” at least it’s familiar. At the end of a travel day, I’m not looking for surprises. Tried and true, that’s the way to go.
Unfortunately, that day I didn’t have much of a choice. My flight was canceled and while the airline was of course very apologetic, it was already approaching midnight and my options were to spend the night in the airport or to go to the only nearby hotel that still had rooms available. I’ve slept on airport couches before, and it’s a guaranteed way to end up with a crick in my neck for a week afterward. So, off to the mystery hotel I went.
It looked nice enough for what it was. It was one of those roadside deals with a bunch of single-story rooms all surrounding a central parking lot, with the lobby lurking at the center of it all. The parking lot was well lit, though, and the exterior was in good repair. It backed onto a sizeable forest instead of another road, which dampened the sound and meant I might actually get a good night’s rest without my earplugs.
Despite the late hour, the man at the front desk was alert and smiling, which I took to mean that he’d just started his shift. He accepted the airline voucher, handed me a key and pointed me to my room. It was an actual, physical key, not just a plastic card, but when I unlocked the room I was pleasantly surprised to find it was clean and well-maintained. Like the lock, it didn’t appear to have been updated in the last few decades, but I was only planning to sleep there, not host a party. I was a little concerned about whether the mattress was also original to the room, but when I laid down on it it felt perfectly comfortable. I turned out the lights and was asleep within minutes.
I slept through the night perfectly well, but I woke up the next morning with a stiff neck and back. A few minutes of stretching limbered everything up well enough to get me going, though I knew that the flight home would make it worse. Still, at least I’d be back to my own bed after that. I could deal with the discomfort for a day.
The flight home was fine, although I think I bothered my seatmate with how much time I spent turning my head back and forth, trying to work out the stiffness. It felt like my neck wanted to pop, but I couldn’t quite get it to that point. I knew if I could just get it to crack it would feel better. It remained elusive, right at the edge of relief, and we landed with that same nagging stiffness still plaguing me.
My back popped a couple of times when I stood up, and at least that felt better until the ride back home through midday traffic tightened it right back up again. I ended up getting out the yoga mat when I got home and trying out some stretches to get everything to release. It was much better by the time I went to bed, and I figured it would be back to normal by the next morning.
It was much worse. I woke up feeling like my entire body had calcified overnight. My neck did pop as I rolled it back and forth on the pillow, but it wasn’t enough to relieve any stiffness. It was more like breaking the ice on a frozen rope. My back crackled as I rolled out of bed, and even my toes popped as I stood up.
Weirdly, I could still bend over and touch the floor, despite how stiff I felt. I could touch my chin to my shoulder on either side, too. There didn’t actually seem to be any loss of motion associated with this. If anything, I was slightly more flexible than usual. But everything felt tight and unyielding, no matter how much I worked at it.
The following day was worse again. When I woke up and stretched, my shoulders, elbows and even wrists popped as I forced them into motion. I clenched my hands with a sound like crushing bubble wrap. Windmilling my arms for a while released the tension in most of the joints, but I ended up having to pull on my fingers to get the last pop out of each of them. It was fiercely satisfying when it happened.
My neck was still the biggest problem. I did get it to crack by turning it rapidly from left to right, but although that eased the tension slightly I could feel that there was still more to go. It simply would not loosen up, and while it wasn’t exactly painful, it was a constant nagging annoyance throughout my day.
I made an appointment with my doctor, but by the time I got in to see her it had been weeks. I’d honestly felt a bit silly making the appointment, figuring that the problem would have resolved itself well before there was an opening in her schedule. As the days wore on, though, it only got worse. No matter how much I stretched, no matter what I tried, everything just felt more stiff every day.
Muscle relaxers did nothing. I tried heat. I tried ice baths. I tried tea. I went for long walks. I spent an entire weekend not getting out of bed.
I was on the yoga mat for hours most days, but still the stiffness persisted. Through it all, my neck was the worst. I worked and worked at it, but I could not get it to pop like I wanted.
My doctor’s reaction was not what I had expected. She asked me to show her the problem, so I demonstrated. I flexed my hands, listening to the symphony of cracks from my fingers. I clasped my hands behind my back, eliciting loud pops from my shoulders. I swung my head from side to side. I could still feel that elusive crack I wanted from my neck, just out of reach.
“Do that again,” said my doctor. I turned my head back and forth once more.
“Wait here.” She left the room and came back pushing a metal stand. It had a platform for my feet and an extendable metal rod with a brace that ran up my back. The top had a pair of thin metal arms that she swiveled in to rest against my cheeks as I looked forward.
“Okay, now turn your head for me one more time, as far as you can to each side.”
The brace held my shoulders in place as I rotated my head. The stretch felt good, but still my neck stubbornly refused to release its tension.
I stepped away from the device and my doctor examined the metal arms, which had swung to either side as I moved my head.
“This is impossible,” she said. She motioned to the device. “You’ve got almost two hundred and forty degrees of motion.”
“What am I supposed to have?”
“One-sixty, maybe one-eighty.” She moved the arms to demonstrate. “This is what a normal person’s range of motion looks like. What you’re doing is so far beyond that—honestly, it shouldn’t be possible.”
“It still feels so stiff, though.”
“Stiff? You’re flexible past anything I’ve ever seen. I want to get you in for a scan, in fact. I’m worried that something’s gone wrong to allow you to turn your head that much.”
She scribbled something on a piece of paper. “Take that to the front desk and they’ll get you set up. It probably won’t be for a few days. Until then, I don’t want you messing with your neck at all. No massaging it, no stretching, and definitely no more popping it. Something’s very wrong. You could end up paralyzed. Or dead.”
I tried to follow her advice. I even wore the neck brace she gave me for several hours, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. When I ripped it off, the relief was instant. I kneaded at my neck, feeling the soothing popping of my knuckles against the muscles, and I whipped my head back and forth.
She was right. I really could see concerningly far over my own shoulder. It still wasn’t enough, though. There was more to go. I could feel it.
I dreamed that night of the thick, dark woods that had loomed behind that hotel, the place that had started it all. Dozens of pairs of glittering eyes stared out at me from the trees, beckoning me to join them. I opened my window and climbed down from the second story, headfirst like a lizard or a spider. My long, stretched fingers gripped the siding easily, as did my hooked toes. My legs and arms were spread wide to distribute my weight. My neck was bent back, much too far back.
It felt amazing.
I ran with the others in the woods, our bent bodies twisting from tree to tree. We flowed up and around them, racing across branches and scuttling over the ground. No solid obstacle could stand in our way. The night wind whipped against us, urging us to ever greater speeds.
We startled a deer from its resting place. It bounded away from us, but we were faster still, surrounding and downing it. When I leapt onto it and twisted its head around backward, the crack I heard was almost sinfully pleasurable. It was the pop I had been waiting to hear from my own neck all this time. I was close, so close.
We feasted on the deer, digging into its belly with our strong, sharp fingers, its entrails steaming in the night air. When we had eaten our fill we scuttled off into the night, squeezing ourselves into cracks and caves, our flexible, wonderful bodies bending to allow us into any space. I fell asleep in the tight embrace of a hollow tree barely as big around as my neck, feeling right for the first time in weeks.
I woke in my own bed with no blood on my hands and no dirt on my feet. The woods were behind the hotel and not behind my own house, but my bedroom window was open and there were marks on the siding as if something large had been climbing there.
I stretched and flexed, listening to the beautiful crackle from my joints. I bent over backward, arching my back until I could touch the heels of my palms to my ankles. And I swung my neck back and forth, smiling as I felt it stretch.
Soon I would hear that final pop. Soon I would be running with the others in the woods.
I’m not quite flexible enough yet.
But .
