Although I was in total darkness, I closed my eyes so I could listen more intently. Maybe something had followed me from the courtyard or picked up my scent along the way. I only heard my rapid pulse banging in my ears with each aching, forceful contraction of my heart. A bell rang faintly in the distance, each ring louder as the sound pursued me in the darkness. The ringing became familiar. It was a school bell, and my initial concern of being late for class was realized. Where is my classroom? Lost and losing consciousness, I had one more lucid thought and question. Maybe the darkness is my classroom; where is my teacher? The bell rang again, and I heard the moaning cry of an animal. An old telephone–one of those ancient black ones with a real bell–jangled insistently in my ear. I was the groaning animal and heard myself say, Damn, what now? as I groped for the phone…

At 25 years of age, I was given a key to a door that few people want to unlock. The door opened a floodgate of experiences and realizations that turned everything I had been taught upside down and backward. The locked door is purportedly to keep insanity in, but after a brief time beyond the threshold, it became apparent that the lock is to keep Reality from getting out.