The mud was a living thing, a murderous force.
It forced me down, pushed me, rolled over me, covered me, smothered me, lifted me and swept me away.
It was in my nose, eyes, ears, mouth. It billowed beneath my clothing, squeezed into my shoes. I weighed a thousand pounds. I moved like a man asleep, I moved like a slow-motion special effect, swimming in pudding.
I held my breath, lungs burning, tried to spit the stuff out of my mouth only to have the pressure of the mud fill my mouth further and threaten to force its way down my throat to clog my lungs and bloat my stomach.
All at once I was atop the wave, floating, uplifted on a rushing river of mud. I was a bit of bark tossed along on the rushing stream, not sinking but threatening to be swallowed up by the ripples and currents and eddies.
Down a tunnel. Through the bowels of the earth, raching beneath a low rock ceiling, and then, all at once, sunlight!
The ground vomited me up and I was turned around, lost, dazed, upended. I had the illusion that the mud flow was suddenly above me, that it was flying over my head, even though I was still in it, still stuck in the goo.
I felt I had to grab onto the mud, had to clutch at it to keep from flying straight down into the sky.
Then, the mud washed me up, like a murderous tsunami that in the end comes to little more than a rush of foam on the sand. I was a beaten, barely-survived surfer, staggering up/down, falling, no falling upward, what was happening?
The sky, bright Clorox white and flecked with blue clouds, was below me, under my head. I was standing but my feet couldn't possibly stick to the ground, couldn't, could not, because I knew it was all upside down.
I felt the sky beneath me. I saw the sun, black and yet bright, shining in a white sky, peeking around baby blue clouds.
"What the holy crap is going on?!" Christopher yelled.
I saw him, like me, seemingly glued to a ground that had become a ceiling. I cringed, knelt, tried to fight the absurd urge to grab onto the ground, to clutch big handfuls of the royal blue grass.
I fought it. Impossible. The ground had to be below me, the sky had to be above. Don't be stupid, Jalil, you're not falling toward the sky. Gravity is still toward the ground, that hasn't changed.
But everything had changed. I was in danger of falling toward straight down into a sky as white as a blank page. I could fall into the black sun.
I saw the others. Each covered in filth, each dragging themselves up or crawling or cringing all looking fearfully at the sky below, all holding or wanting to hold onto the ground itself lest they fly off.
I closed my eyes. That was the way. That was it, the only way to fight the illusion. Blinded, I could keep from throwing up. Blinded I could believe everything was where it should be.
"Close your eyes," I croaked, spitting mud. "It helps. Close your eyes."
"Okay, my eyes are closed," Christopher said. "Now someone tell me what the hell is going on here? What is this, Alice in Wonder-freaking-land? Where's the white rabbit? Where's the caterpillar with the hookah? 'Cause absolutely nothing is going to make this any weirder."
David, his voice shaky, but trying to project whatever stability and sanity he could manage, asked me. "Jalil, man, you get this?"
"No, I don't," I said shortly. "I feel like I'm upside down. Or else like everything else is. I know gravity is holding me to the ground but I can't lose the feeling that the ground is up and the sky is down."
I pried my drying-mud-caked eyes and peeked again. The illusion came back full force. I heard someone puking, but that was the last thing I needed to see: vomit falling down into the sky. Although, no, it would fall to the ground.
"It's a sight thing," I said. "I mean, I feel that down is down. My arms aren't trying to relax toward the sky." I tried a small jump, feeling idiotic. A small jump, just to see whether I fell into the sky. I landed on the ground.
"It's a sight thing," I repeated more confidently, but with my eyes closed for sanity's sake.
"It's a reverse image," April said. She sounded close. "It's not just the upside-down thing. The sky is the color of clouds and the clouds are the color of the sky. The sun is black, not white or yellow. The grass is blue. It's all the reverse, all the opposite."
"White sky is not the reverse of blue sky," I said, sounding pedantic even to myself. "Black is not the opposite of a yellow sun. Blue grass is not --"
"Stop being literal," April interrupted excitedly. "It's not science, it's...it's poetry. Poetic opposites. I mean, whoever came up with this didn't know about the light spectrum. They just thought 'what would the opposite of whatever?'"
"Yeah," David agreed dubiously. "It's the opposite world or whatever."
True enough, I thought. Yes, not a scientist's idea of opposites. A simpler mind. Less concerned with abstract notions of truth and accuracy. Not a modern vision, an older one.
"It's the gods," I said disgustedly. "It's right about their level of thinking: primitive. Irrational. Inconsistent."
I was surprised to hear Senna laugh. "You just don't ever learn, do you Jalil? You really think this is a good time to be insulting the gods?"
"I gotta go with the witch on this," Christopher muttered. "I'm thinking next time someone says 'kill a sheep for the gods' just kill the sheep. Crazy mothers want a dead sheep, let's give them a dead sheep."
"It's a mirror world," Senna mused. "A subtle notion of an afterlife, don't you think? The details are inconsistent, but it was a facinating idea."
"Hey, let's stand around on our heads and admire it all," Christopher said shrilly. "Senna and Jalil and April, you three can lead the discussion. Me, I'm going to grab onto this dirt so I don't fall off the earth and go flying off into space."
"What do we do?" April asked.
"I don't know," David admitted. "This is...new. Can't get back where we want to be, the tunnel or hole or whatever, is all plugged up with mud. No way back through there."
Senna said, "Well, well, finally a situation where Mighty Davideus admits he's lost."
"You have a plan, Senna?" Christopher snapped, coming to David's defense.
"Yes, actually. Let's find a stream and get washed off."
"How are we supposed to walk anywhere?" April demanded.
Senna laughed, a surprisingly happy sound. "It's hard for you, isn't it? The front of you, so normal and conventional underneath it all." She spread her arms wide. "It's magic, boys and girl. Magic! Welcome to my world."
She didn't quite twirl around in girlish delight, but she looked like she wanted to.
"We do have to get this mud off us before we end up baked solid," I said. "There must be water, or something like it."
"Yeah, let's all find a nice bath," Christopher agreed. "And by the way, if anyone sees a sheep, find your Ten Commandments and your Constitution and stick them right up your butt, then kill the damn sheep."