The Pathway

Samuel sensed the eeriness in the air around him. It was difficult to recreate his surroundings with all this noise. Was it weird for a blind person to come to an electronic music event?

Startled, Sam lost his breath when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Lilly had come back from the washroom. But a few seconds had passed before Sam realised the touch of the woman he knew. This guide was the only reason Sam was able to tread through an environment of this kind. Lilly's smell tingled a few neurons in his brain. It was greatly known that smell was directly connected to memories. An instant jump down memory lane.

A trigger of visualisation.

Dr. Sorme was a maestro of consciousness but what Samuel was searching for was a remedy, yes definitely from the bed of consciousness, but not from the chest of it's identity.

The master called it The Pathway.

Not everybody is born the same and a deviation from the default system causes severe problems. The Pathway resolved problems for the ones who couldn't see the beauty of this vast universe, quite literally.

Samuel was not blind till the age of thirteen. He was a believer of Judas and basked in the irony and helplessly drowning in the same, his eyesight was taken.

A nerve injury.

A list of simple instructions from Sorme took one to the threshold of The Pathway. From there would be a lone journey. It took Sam a few seconds to register the feeling. It was like his organs were floating inside his body. Just like when an airplane is descending. But Sam could not figure out at that particular moment, whether he was going up or down.

The first thing Sam saw after this feeling was his beautiful mother. Yes, surrounded by nothing but darkness, Isabella stood gaping at Samuel.

Years of viewing an endless black screen, he had forgotten what the gift of vision was like. Sam's mother was covered in a rainbow of colours and each colour blended an aura around Isabella that was fighting to explode. Fighting to fill out the darkness around them.

And it did. The eruption was so bright that Sam had to close his eyes.

He slowly re-opened them expecting complete tenebrosity like always. But he saw something again.

Lilly and some of her friends had arranged the aerosols. There was a device in each corner of the venue, dispersing the different aromas as instructed by Sorme.

This was the trigger for The Pathway.

"I think he's entered phase 2. It's time"

Everything went silent. Sam never heard this silence before. Sam always heard the pin drop. But this was uncanny. The visual was pertinent and the aroma overpowering but all other senses seemed to have dissolved.

Sam saw a lengthy roadway in front of him and at the far end, a hot air balloon, rather difficult to focus.

He walked.

And with each step came a new fragrance, just engulfing the air and bringing with it a drawer full of some lost reminiscence.

He walked.

As the hot air balloon in front of him became more and more clear to look at, so did the memories coming alive around him.

He walked.

A wide smile and an vanquishing glee had replaced a confused frown and destabilising anxiety from Samuel. He looked to see he had come to the end of The Pathway. The balloon stood tall before him. The door opened.

Samuel entered.

A faceless man stood at the helm of this machine. He turned around to face Sam. The latter frantically trying to understand what emotion this slender man projected.

As Sam's mind had wandered off, the balloon had taken off.

The man with no features just faced Sam. Well, the term stared stops making sense here.

In a surprising instant, he pushed Sam off the flying vehicle.

Blind Samuel discernd the act very slowly.

He felt the door hit his back and then his feet dropping off the floor.

The fall felt abysmal. Endless. But the focus from the balloon was never lost. His eyes kept looking at the faceless man who was now facing downwards, as if looking right at him.

He kept sinking.

Sorme had not lied. A rollercoaster from Sam's subconscious. A trip from the under-mind.

"Do you think it worked?" Lilly had always been sceptical about this from the beginning.

"SAM?"

Samuel woke up with a violent jerk.

It took him only two seconds to index the surrounding around him

Four faceless bodies stared at him. The silence had remained.

Was the ritual not over? Where are the faces? Where are the sounds?

Sam began to panic. Confusion and downright fear fighting it out in his mind. He just wanted this to be over.

He wanted to cry out but no sound would escape his mouth.

"What is happening? Why is he unresponsive?" Lilly asked one of the partners.

"I think he took the wrong path."