Throwback Thursday

           I have had a bad history of seizures. I have been having them ever since I was about four years old. They were the kind of seizure that really had no warning- one minute I’m dinking around not doing much and then the next I’m convulsing on the ground.

           Having seizures sucks. It’s embarrassing for you. One time, I was taking a math test, when I totally lost it. I go to a public school, and let’s just say a lot of kids there are not very “understanding” of my my condition. A lot of kids became a little creeped out around me, as they were worried that I was going to start having another seizure at any time.

           Here’s the deal- I never know when a seizure is going to strike. Usually there is a slight warning, maybe like an arm shaking or an involuntary vocalization, and then I just loose it. Now, I don’t always remember what happens during my seizures. I just loose it, and then the next thing I know I’m usually on the nurse’s bed with some random teacher breathing above me. The funny thing is, whenever I seizure hits, there is always maybe ten seconds or so after the seizure starts to when I black out that I am conscience of   the seizure occurring. Whenever this happens, I always hear some weird band music, like a five or so piece string ensemble playing some old-timey tune. It always sounds a little distorted, and in the background, I can hear people screaming. Not screams like they are cheering the band, but screams of panic and despair.

           My doctor said something like that is common, for people to have weird hallucinations whenever they have a seizure. So I always just dismiss it, even though I’m always creeped out by it.

           School life is a little rough for me. I don’t have too many friends, and the only friends I do have are the teachers and adults that work at the school. People always go around calling me a “teacher’s pet” for this; though I try my best to just ignore them, as ignoring bullies always makes them lose interest in bullying you.

           I have a few weird obsessions that I really can’t control. I know everything there is to know about speakers. I don’t know where it came from, but I am fascinated on how speakers work. I also have a knack for repairing old video game consoles. But there is nothing that I am more attached to that the story of the ''RMS Titanic. ''

           I’m not really all that sure where it came from. I’ve just always been obsessed with the Titanic. You literally could ask me just about any question about the ship, and I’ll have an answer in about five seconds. Most of my friends dismiss my passion as being a bit “nerdy” and they will always try to shut me down whenever I say the word ''“Titanic”. ''

           Now, I do have a theory on my obsession. The first time I’d ever heard of the Titanic is when my mother bought the James Cameron movie one day. I saw the DVD cover soon after she brought it in. It just had two young people kissing on the top with a bluish picture of the Titanic in the middle of the cover.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           That is when I had my first seizure. That was the first time I heard the creepy band music and the screaming. I watched the movie one night with my parents and my older brother. Of course, we skipped around a bit, but the creepy part is while I was watching the movie, I had the feeling I had seen it somewhere before. An early case of déjà vu you could say. I’ve always branded it as nothing important; people see things all the time and think they’ve seen it before.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           The Titanic was practically my life by the time I was in high school, which is where I am now. I thought about the ship everyday, and I have to admit, even I was a little disturbed at this. You could indeed say the Titanic was my “guilty pleasure”.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           One particular Thursday, I was feeling a little depressed. I had failed a geometry test earlier that day, and now I was just waiting for my dad to beat me up when he picked me up.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           The last period of the day is Spanish class. I’m not real fond of Spanish, though I am somewhat good at it.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           On my way to Spanish, I noticed something odd. As I was walking through the hallway, a young man about my height made eye contact with me. He was dressed in clothing that was definitely NOT 2013 style. He had on a brown sport coat with black pants. He had a top hat on, and he tipped it at me. His hair was extremely neat.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “Top of the morning!” he said in a British accent. I waved to him, not knowing who he was. When he brushed past me, I felt this sense as if I was being struck by a lot of cold air.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I’ll admit, that scared me. I didn’t look back at the man, I just continued forward into Spanish.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I entered the classroom, and sat down. I was usually was the first to arrive; I came prepared with all my books and really didn’t have much to do between classes.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           My fellow students started to file in, sitting down one by one.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           The girl I liked walked in. I got a little shaky, but this was typical. I always got nervous around girls, especially this one particular one. I didn’t really know her all that well, but for some reason I felt attracted to her.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           Our teacher walked in, and the last couple of students followed. The bell rang, and the teacher gave us a minute to talk while he was setting up his computer.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           It was feeling slightly cold in the Spanish room, yet again it always was. I was wearing a sweatshirt, but even then I felt a little colder than usual.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           Because I was in the presence of the girl I liked, my leg started to shake. This was typical, and happened whenever I got nervous over ''anything. ''

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           But my leg started to shake harder than usual. I thought, “Oh God, here it comes....”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I closed my eyes and waited for the seizure to start. But nothing happened. My leg kept shaking, but I was still fine.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           But it started to get colder. I could actually feel the temperature dropping. This was not normal.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “Teacher, can you turn the heat up? I’m getting really chilly for some reason,” I said.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           The teacher looked at me kind of funny, then got up and turned up the heat a couple degrees.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           But that really didn’t do much. It got colder, and colder, and colder, eventually to the point were I couldn’t bare it anymore. I sort of cried out, as the cold was actually staring to HURT.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I started to feel really dizzy. I knew up the impending seizure, but this time I was really scared, as a seizure like this had never happened before. By now, my leg was shaking so hard, I was worried it was going to pop out of its socket.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I could hear my teacher call my name, but it was muffled. I expected to hear the creepy band music again, but this time I heard something different.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I heard sort of a groaning sound, then I heard what sounded like firecrackers going off. I could hear a large amount of people screaming. The sound got louder, until it sounded like a bunch of fireworks going off at once. Then I heard this tremendous whooshing sound, then something that sounded like a constant thunderclap. I heard what sounded like a really loud splash, then it all whet quiet, except for the screaming.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           By now I was on the floor convulsing. I was still aware of my surroundings, though I couldn’t hear anything but what sounded like a lot a metal groaning. I yelled out “Help...me...” before losing it.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           It was now pitch black. I looked around. It was extremely cold. So cold I really couldn’t feel any of my body.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           My mind was a total blur. I didn’t know what had happened or were I was. All I knew is that it was dark, cold, and people were screaming.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I could see something in the air. I really couldn’t make out what it was. I noticed it was moving downward rather quickly. I could still hear the screams.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           The big thing in the air was sticking out of the blackness, and it was literally being consumed by the blackness. After maybe after thirty seconds or so, I saw it vanish. I heard this loud gurgling sound which lasted for about a minute, then stopped.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           All I could see was blackness. I felt stunned out of shock. I looked below me. I was lying prostrate on some big wooden plank. It appeared to be some kind of door or piece of wall. It was bobbing up and down, so I figured I must be in water.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           Suddenly I got really dizzy again. I felt myself pass out, falling face first onto the plank.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I came too. I tried to lift my head up, but I found it difficult to do so. It was dead silent. And I mean silent. All I could hear was the bobbing of the plank that I was on.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I was completely numb from the cold. I couldn’t move any of my lower body. I could only move my head.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I tried to look around a little bit. Something was starting to focus in the blackness. It was a bunch of white things floating around. My eyes focused a bit more, and then I realized that the white things were dead bodies.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I tried to let out a scream, but I was so numb I couldn’t even make a sound. There literally were dead bodies floating all around me. They all looked frozen solid, like if you took someone and threw them in a meat freezer for a couple days to let them freeze to death.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I tried to yell for help, but I was completely muted. I tried to wave my hand, but it was parlayed. I was stuck in the middle of a freaking mass grave, which in itself was in a freezing lake in Alaska or the Arctic Ocean.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           My vision blurred again. I suddenly could hear this weird noise. It sounded sort of like demonic speech. Kind of like a warped, twisted, and a deep gurgling sound.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “This is hell,” I thought. ''“I’ve died and gone to hell and the devil is here to take me off to the depths.” ''

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           The sound got a little louder. I could tell it was some kind of warped, distorted, incomprehensible speech. It was coming from something that was moving from the left of my vision moving to the right. It was somewhat close, maybe twenty or so feet away.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           There was a light shining around from the object. It was moving back and forth, sort of like a lighthouse.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           Whatever it is was it was looking for something. I quickly started to shake my body around and get the plank splashing. I could barley do it with the little strength I had.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           Suddenly I was blinded by the light coming from the thing. I kept shaking until I started to cry. I could hear the voice get louder. It was shouting something.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           The light practically blinded me, so I couldn’t see the thing anymore. I could tell it was coming closer, as the speech was getting louder and louder.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           Suddenly I was grabbed by something. I was pulled up from the plank and into the thing. I felt myself fall onto a curved wooden floor.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I looked up. A man looked over me. I started blinking like crazy to let him know I wasn’t dead.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I could hear more distorted speech. I felt my face being slapped by someone. I rocked my head back and forth, and let out a pitiful “Help...”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I could here more speech again. This time, I could sort of make it out.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “That’s the sixth one we’ve found alive out here,” it said.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">             Suddenly, I got tired and dizzy again. I felt the cold consume me, and then finally, I just let go and gave in.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I opened my eyes. I was blinded at first, and then I realized it was daylight.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I was aware of my surroundings completely now. I was in a small boat, wrapped in a blanket. There was a uniformed man standing above me.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “DROP DOWN THE LADDERS!” he yelled.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I looked up. I was staring at a huge curved metal wall. I looked up further, and then I saw eight big white letters on the black wall.

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I suddenly gasped and sat up. I immediately realized I was in the nurse’s room, like that was a big surprise.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           There were a few fellow students looking down at me. The girl I liked was there, and seeing her face made me feel a little bit better.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “Holy shit dude, you should have seen yourself! You were on the ground going CRAZY!” a fellow student said.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “Are you alright?” asked the nurse.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I didn’t reply. I just thought about those eight letters. I tried to remember them, and then it hit me.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I suddenly yelled it out.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           “Carpathia...”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Century","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">           I didn’t have any more seizures after that day.