It took a second, but I realized I was now looking up at a man in a police uniform yelling into my face with deep concern in his eyes.

“Miss, are you okay?”

I couldn’t open my frozen lips to tell him that the answer to that question was no.

I have only been home from the hospital for a few years and I needed to write this all down because I don’t know if I believe what I was told happened to me.

Just before I was let go from the hospital they had me meet with law enforcement, a doctor and a counselor who explained my situation.

Collectively, they told me that I inhaled a large amount of fumes while cleaning out my parents’ unventilated basement and it caused me to hallucinate a series of events which were also amplified by a potential “cabin fever” I was suffering from spending a long amount of time trapped in my parents’ house. They believe that I left the house, went to my car, spent hours there, and eventually ran to town while under this psychosis. They explained that I finally passed out in the middle of the town and in the middle of the storm and that I was very lucky the officer who found me was making rounds because I would have died otherwise (this part I couldn’t argue with and was very appreciative of).

I don’t know exactly what I believe though. The whole experience was so unbelievable that I could believe something else was affecting me, but at the same time, it all felt so real. There was no taking away from my eyes what they saw. I asked them to talk to the pizza delivery guy about what he may have saw in the house.

I have serious doubts as to whether I will ever hear about that conversation they swore to me they would have with the traumatized kid from Domino’s.

What I do know is that I have been very concerned about the first thing I discovered when I got back home to my apartment. I remembered there was an old answering machine in a box in the back of my closet in my apartment. I retrieved it as soon as I got home, and, even knowing it may have been against my better judgement, plugged it on.

I was intrigued to see that there was a little red number one in the tiny little box which announced how many messages were on the machine.

I still don’t know if I am going to listen to it.