They All Had Glow Sticks

Her glowing fluorescent head was green. It flashed on when I squeezed her. Nobody understood my urgency in losing her, my glow worm doll in this madhouse. I had her since I was six years old. Her phosphorescent light had been my guide so many times in this life. When I was six, it had been because I was afraid of the dark in my bedroom at night. When I had been ten I needed light alone at night in that same room for very different reasons.

“Thrashing about, I woke up in sudden and distinct fear again. The dogs who chased me were after me again and I had run in my nightmare to that end of the wall again, the one from which I could run no more. A large canine with disheveled and hackled hair was growling at me and baring his teeth. He was black with tan trim. I was tiny in comparison. I shook and cried in my mind and aloud in my fitful sleep. My hand inadvertently hit her just then, my glow worm in my bed. This happened on several occasions but scared me awake to save me each time anew. Her head would glow, that queasy sick yellow-green into the night of darkness. I would jar awake, with her flashing light, but I would be able to live yet again.”

“Nooo, I Can’t leave, not without her!” I wailed to onlookers as my one friend tried to pry me away from the spinning, pulsating room to take me outside into the cool air. The crowded, stale room spun as I tripped over my feet, which now felt three times as heavy as normal. The rave, the loud throbbing music, the Extasy, the unceremoniously crashing.

Nobody heard me yell for my doll baby worm or nobody cared what I was muttering. Someone physically stronger than I grabbed me from behind and shoved me, dragging me away. I felt like I had lost everything that mattered if I had lost my way, my green light glow worm. There was nothing left to help me.

There was an ambulance, an ER. More crazy lights, but all of these were red.

“Checks!” the warden called, shining a flashlight in my face, but I knew not where I was nor who she was. Suddenly a blood pressure cuff on my arm squeezed at me, pinching my little arm fat from the bone. It would be days before I fully woke up, days before I would realize I had lost days out of my life, again.

The warden would be back every fifteen minutes on the dot for days and nights for what amounted to two whole weeks. She was keeping me safe. Her light was a blaring yellow in my eyes. It would seem abrupt each time and make me want to vomit. My worm had been the most pleasant glowing green.

It took me the full two weeks to get over learning of my glow worm’s nonexistence, lost forever. A sea of people with hollow zombie faces could have been the culprit. It was my fault I had lost my baby. I had not taken proper care of her. I had not protected her as she had protected me. I might even have set her down with false confidence that somewhere I could really go out in the world and trust others to want to dance with me or caress. I still feel the loss of my child. I had planned to live through her. I had imagined her blinking green light head to be of my own mind, my solace when times were clearer. My body breathes, yet I feel intrinsically numb.