‘Flipped’

Juan Sebastian Restrepo(zeb) is a Florida-based artist known for his paintings and drawings that explore the interplay between memory and storytelling. He holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BFA from Pratt Institute. His recent exhibitions include “intersections” at New World Gallery (2023) and “Hybridity” at the Edwardsville Arts Center (2018). Upcoming solo shows include “No Further Expectations Beyond this Night” at The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood (2024) and “multitasking” at [NAME] Publications in Miami, FL (2024). Restrepo also teaches as an Adjunct Faculty member at Florida International University and Miami Dade College.

Flipped

Meghan's seat belt cut into her stomach as she drove to work. She fiddled with it, trying to get it to sit the right way as she sat at a stoplight. She got it after a second, the light turned green, and she kept driving.

A week later, something jumped onto her bed as she slept in her apartment. It shocked her awake and bounced her up. Her heart pounded as she looked for the intruder. Someone had broken in. She flipped the light on, and it burned her eyes.

No one. Nobody stood on the bed or next to it. The covers twisted around her legs, and she sat at an angle, turned ninety degrees, staring at the wrong wall. She spun on her bed and took in her empty bedroom.

She grabbed a gymnastics trophy off her dresser and spent ten minutes hunting through her apartment, testing the locks on windows and doors and peeking into closets. She held the trophy like a cudgel, upside down. She found nothing. A nightmare. It must have been. No one would break into an apartment on the tenth floor of a fifteen-floor building. She went back to bed, setting the trophy on the nightstand next to her phone.

A few days into the next week, she headed to an account manager's office. She had to talk to him about the new accounts for Q2, and then she had to speak with the marketing director about the Q1 ad campaigns. She hummed "Free Fallin'," which had come on in the car.

Her tan flats left the floor as she turned a corner. Her body shot upward, she pitched forward, and her back slammed into the drop ceiling. She punched through a panel before she fell back down to her stomach, skinning her knees on the brutal, unyielding office carpet. She chomped her tongue hard enough to draw blood.

Voices approached, and co-workers found Meghan sitting on the ground, rubbing her head and looking up, face a twisted mask of surprise and confusion. Dust and broken ceiling pieces littered the ground around her. “I...I flew up and hit the ceiling.”

“What do you mean?” a man said as he helped her to her feet. “You jumped?”

“No, I....” Meghan looked at the gap in the ceiling. “It was like gravity had reversed. And then I fell.”

“Fell? Haven't you learned how to fall after all those years of gymnastics?” A woman said. She looked up as Meghan glared at her. “It looks like a piece of ceiling fell. Did it hit your head?”

A few minutes later, Meghan sat at her desk, ice pack pressed against her head. She spat blood into the wastebasket and glared at the ceiling. Maybe a panel had fallen onto her.

Three days later, on Saturday, Meghan carried a box of old cookware down to the storage of her apartment building. She took an elevator to the parking garage and crossed to the storage area. She balanced the box on her leg while she fished the key out. Key in, pull open door, enter storage space. Once she found her apartment's closet, she had to rearrange things to make space for the cookware and spent the next ten minutes playing Tetris with old Christmas decorations from her mom, clothes she meant to donate, and a surfboard she had never used.

If I move this box of ornaments over here, that means I can put this bag of old jeans on top of it. Ah, dammit, the surfboard fell over again. Have to...prop it up...in the corner. At last--enough space. She stood up, picked up the box of cookware, and fit it into the space she had made. 

She dusted off her hands, closed the door to her closet, fished her phone out to check the time--plenty of afternoon left--and flew up until her body hit the ceiling.

Her head hit first, and then her body crumpled into a fetal curl. Breath blew from her lungs. The shock jolted her hand open, and her phone crashed to the cement floor, nine feet below her as she lay on the ceiling. Her body pressed against the dirty surface, and she let out a painful cry. She rolled her back against the ceiling and looked down at her phone. The screen had a deep, flickering crack.

Her stomach bucked. Her vision spun. White dots flashed. A lump on her skull pushed her hair aside. Her right wrist shouted at her, and her hip stung. Something pulled up onto the ceiling. She ran her hands over her clothes but found no wire, no rope, nothing to lift her. She rolled to her hands and knees on the ceiling. Dust flew down her throat, and her stomach twisted as she coughed. A fluorescent light blared a foot away. She rubbed her eyes and tried to stand.

She collapsed back against the ceiling, eyes shut as the world spun on every axis it had. She groaned and whimpered, pulling her sore body toward the door. She pushed herself to her knees and reached for the doorknob; a full foot separated the handle from her fingers. Hands pressed against the wall, she put one foot flat on the ceiling--her legs shook and failed her. Meghan slumped to her side. She looked over her shoulder, at her phone, on what used to be the ground. Panting, swallowing, Meghan turned around and pulled herself until she laid over it. She got to one knee. 

She fell, striking the cement ground next to her phone. Several minutes went by; her body lay under grimy fluorescent lights, motionless.

The door to the storage area opened, and a black middle-aged woman came in, carrying a box. A moment later, she found Meghan and ran to her side. "Miss? Miss, are you all right?"

One of Meghan's eyes cracked open. She shifted and grabbed the woman's wrist. Everything hurt. "What on earth happened to you?" the woman asked.

Meghan tilted her head back at the ceiling. She picked up her phone, squeezing it tight. "I got stuck to the ceiling," she said. “And then I fell.”

The woman, Cynthia Anderson from the sixth floor, helped Meghan limp back to her apartment. The elevator, as it sped to the tenth floor, sent her into nauseated spirals. Meghan collapsed onto a chair as Cynthia ran around, finding painkillers and something to pack ice in. Meghan's wrist swelled, her knee bled--again--and thoughts bounced inside her head like rubber balls inside a bathroom. Crashing everywhere. "Meghan, I need to get you to a doctor," Cynthia said. Meghan looked at her. She'd been sitting in the chair for an hour. Or a minute. "I'm a nurse, and I think you have a concussion. You said you fell?"

Meghan looked up at the ceiling. A popcorn ceiling, with millions and billions of tiny, jagged stalactites. "No, I...." She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Something happened and I was lying on the ceiling, and then I fell and hit the ground.”

“That concussion must be worse than I thought. Let's get you to my car.”

She had a concussion. The doctor recommended sleep. “No, you don't have to wake up every two hours. Just sleep.” Meghan hung on to Cynthia like a high bar as they went up to her apartment. Cynthia offered to check on her in the morning. Meghan agreed, holding tight to the counter.

Pain rocked Meghan from one side to the other, splashing over her like waves on a ship. Fragmented thoughts and vivid, feverish half-dreams boiled her skin.

She stood in the center of her bedroom. Her bed floated over her.

She stepped over the lintel to get to the hallway.

She looked out the window, up at the distant ground. A friend beckoned to her from far below.

She woke up the next morning in the center of her living room.

"I'm really sorry," Meghan said Monday morning. She sat on the floor under the kitchen counter, one hand squeezing it. "I feel awful. I've...I've been lightheaded for a few days now, and I fell really bad on Saturday. I got a concussion." Her cracked phone flickered in her hand as her boss spoke. "Because of the ceiling tile? Uh...maybe. I feel a little better, but...I don't even think I should be driving, much less working on sales reports." She let a long breath out as her boss went on. "As long as I can get a little extension for the Q3 after-report, I'll have enough time. I hope to feel better by tomorrow."

She said goodbye and hung up, rubbing her forehead. She replaced the ice pack atop her head. The swollen lump had shrunk, and she shivered, but it weighed her down.

Twice more since waking up on Sunday, confused and cold in the middle of her living room. 

The first time as she showered, minutes after Cynthia had called to check on her. She had grabbed for the shower handle, and her wet hand had slipped. She crashed to the ceiling--the popcorn ceiling had sliced hundreds of tiny cuts up and down her left side. She reached out and grabbed the shower curtain rod, counting the seconds. She'd spent her entire childhood grabbing bars, and she focused on her landing. At her best guess, she spent five minutes on the ceiling as the shower ran, gusting steam up onto her. When it ended, she swung on the rod. Her hands slipped off the warm, slick metal, and she crumpled to the hard tile. She gasped as more new pain shot through her. 

The water ran on, crashing onto the floor of the shower. She stretched her body out, bracing herself between the shower stall, the toilet, and the wall, breath coming faster and faster, heart swelling in her throat. Steam stung her eyes. The cold tile dug into the marks on her side. She inched herself across the floor until she curled herself around the toilet, shivering, dripping, hurting, and crying.

The next morning, in the kitchen, she maneuvered to the sink as she held tight to the edge of the counter. She wrapped her arms around the edge of the sink and pried open a cabinet with the tips of her fingers. By tenths of inches, she worked a mug out and turned the water on.

The second time had come at night, before bed. She had called Cynthia again.

"It happened again. In the shower. I was on the ceiling for five minutes, Cynthia, you have to believe me!"

"Oh, hon, you poor thing. Confusion and dizziness are common concussion symptoms--it just felt like you were on the ceiling. My husband is home right now, he could come up and help you out. If you're okay with that, of course."

Meghan's eyes had been on the ceiling. "I guess that's okay."

"Okay, he'll be up in a few minutes. I'll have him bring some oatmeal cookies. They might not help your head, but they'll taste good."

Ten minutes later, a short, middle-aged black man appeared at the door to her apartment, beaming and holding a plate of cookies. "Meghan, right? By God, you look...." His eyes flicked up and down her body. "Uh, Meghan, you live with anyone? Boyfriend?"

"No, no." Meghan turned around and led him in. "I'm here alone."

"But...you have a boyfriend?"

Bruised. Fearful. "Mr. Anderson, I'm single. No one is doing this to me." She sat on the floor, near her coffee table. She reached out and wrapped her arm around its leg. 

"Oh, good. Good. Because, you know, I've seen that kinda stuff a few times. Here." He held out the plate of cookies. "Go on. Cynthia's a dynamite baker."

"Thank you," Meghan whispered, taking one of the cookies and slipping the edge between her teeth.

Mr. Anderson--Boyd--had asked her about possible triggers for dizziness and falling. Slips? Momentary losses of thought? Meghan didn't know. She tried to explain what had been happening. It couldn't be, of course. She had hit her head. She nibbled the cookie down to crumbs as she hung on to the coffee table. Boyd told her to be careful, get some rest, and to call him or Cynthia if she needed help. He left the plate of cookies in the kitchen and said goodbye.

Meghan sat, clinging to the table. She swallowed hard and slipped her eyes shut. Darkness spun around her. She let the table go. She remained on the floor. Staggering into the kitchen, she stood in the center until she grabbed the edge of the counter. Moments later, her feet flipped over her head. She lost her grip and crashed to the ceiling, at least escaping another head wound. A few moments later, the tenant above her stomped on his floor.

Meghan stared down at the plate of oatmeal cookies on the counter until she fell ten minutes later. She ended up on her back on the kitchen floor, crumbs scattered around her, after bouncing off the counter and rolling.

The next morning, the mug she held ran over with water, soaking her hands, and she dropped it into the sink as cold struck her. She slapped the faucet off and sank to her knees in front of the sink.

A jagged crack ran around where she had hit the ceiling the night before. Enough force to almost punch through to the apartment above hers.

She put her hand to her pocket for her phone. It still rested on the counter after she talked with her boss. She shoved it into her pocket. With one arm over her head, she made her way to her bedroom, clinging to the refrigerator, the couch, and her bed. She wrapped herself in a duvet and balanced a pillow on her head. After creeping to her dresser, she took out a belt and began to find a way to strap the pillow down. She got as far as looping the belt around her throat before throwing it into the corner, shaking her head. She took her phone out and sent a message to Cynthia, asking if she had a bike helmet she could borrow.

And then she sat in her bedroom, holding the pillow over her head, sweating under heavy blankets, staring up at the ceiling.

She jolted awake, poison slicing through her veins. She looked around and found herself still on the ground, sleeping on the pillow she'd been holding over her head. She pulled her phone out. Almost noon. She sat back against the edge of her bed, clutching the pillow to her chest. She buried her face in it, and her stomach woke her an hour later. She grabbed a fistful of carpet and took a deep breath.

Crawling across the carpet, pillow and duvet covering her, she returned to the kitchen. From her spot on the floor, she opened the fridge and grabbed the closest item, a tub of yogurt. She pulled open a drawer and grabbed a spoon sight-unseen, and huddled under the open drawer as she ate.

And nothing happened. She emptied the tub of yogurt and tossed it toward the garbage. Soft food in her belly strengthened her. She closed the drawer she hid under. Licking her lips and breathing out, she stood. Everything spun. The ground quivered under her feet. Afternoon light shifted through the window, but she didn't go anywhere. 

Until she bent for her pillow.

Her hands caught the edge of the counter, hanging on this time. The entire length of the countertop cracked and separated from the cabinets underneath it, groaning as it pulled away.

It held, attached at the end against the wall, and for a moment, Meghan hung under the ceiling. It waited a foot below her; she released and landed on her feet. She'd ruined her countertop. At first, it had been a minute. Then five. Then ten. How long this time?

She walked to her bedroom, stepping over the lintel, wincing every time her foot came down on the popcorn ceiling. She stood over her bed. Her gymnastics trophy remained on the nightstand. When she fell, how hard could it be to summon those championship skills back and keep from hurting herself? As she fell onto her bed, of all things? Even softer than a mat!

She knelt and then laid on her stomach--when she fell, she flopped onto her back without pain.

A laugh escaped her. It turned into a roar and a scream. I've been flipping and grabbing bars my whole life! It's not like it's anything new! Laughing until her stomach hurt, she laid on her bed, hair spread out around her head and sheets in disarray.

She sat up and put her feet on the floor, curling her toes into the carpet. A foot away, the golden gal on top of her gymnastics trophy applauded her. She picked up the trophy and held it to her body.

But what next? She could keep herself safe--now she had to figure out why. She'd call Cynthia and Boyd and try to convince them. What about her friend Marie? Marie would back her up. She'd be there to he--

She hit the ceiling hard enough to punch through it, cracking through the plaster and wood and shooting into the next apartment, an empty bedroom. She screamed and clutched the gymnastics trophy as she continued up. Her body turned, and her back hit the next ceiling first, denting it as she came to rest and forcing all the breath from her lungs.

Pain rolled down her spine. She squeezed the trophy to her chest, eyes shut tight. They have to believe me now. How else could I do something like this? As long as they look--

The pressure pulling her up surged; she crashed through the ceiling, shooting upward into the next apartment, smashing apart a bed and the next ceiling, shrieking as she plummeted toward the top of the building. She gained speed, crashing through two more levels until she entered the penthouse. The old woman who lived there jumped out of her skin when Meghan shot through her floor and crashed into the ceiling, crumpling into a ball.

Meghan looked up. She curled around her trophy. Years of taking falls hadn't left her just yet. She spotted the old woman. "Help."

A force yanked on her, and the final barrier between her and endless sky cracked. "Help! Help me!" Meghan shouted. "I need help! Call someone, please! Do something!" The ceiling crackled, crumbling dust to the floor. "Please! Please!"

It gave way, and bright blue sky greeted Meghan.

She fell up with nothing to stop her. Arms and legs spun. Buildings flashed in and out of her sight. The sun carved arcs in her eyes. Her trophy caught the light and turned it to golden spears, attracting attention from anyone near windows.

She glanced off the edge of a cell tower on top of the building, and it knocked the scream out of her mouth. Her thigh struck a dish, and she cried out in pain, still climbing. Her shoulder hit something, and numbness filled it to the fingertips as she twirled into the sky.

You spent your entire childhood grabbing bars!

Her numb fingertips caught part of the tower, and she jolted to a stop. Her toes hung up toward the sky, her hair gusted around her face, and her right arm cradled the gymnastics trophy to her chest. Her left hand squeezed the metal bar with all the strength it had. 

Breath pounded in and out of her. She craned her head up, taking in the immense height of the cell tower and her building. Distant, tiny cars drove through streets far under her head. 

The cell tower creaked. Metal squealed and bent. The bar Meghan clung to twisted, pointing upward. Meghan's fingers dug furrows into it. 

It snapped; the sky grew, and the ground shrank. The cell tower's final segment flashed closer and closer, a red light atop it glowing every few seconds. She reached out her hand as she spun, and her shoulder pulled out of its socket as her fingers wrapped around the final rung on the cell tower's metal skeleton. Pain tore across her back, and she let out a howl. She looked up.

Endless sky waited to swallow her--licking its lips as she hung under it, pointed straight down its throat. Gnashing its teeth, spittle flying, tongue darting out and in.

A circular opening widened past her feet. Crackling red static ringed it, and bloody darkness waited inside. Moans and howls and screams poured out. The opening in the sky grew around her, and her separated shoulder lost strength. Her hand squeezed harder, just like when she swung on the bar in high school. 

Black light surrounded her. A small opening let the cell tower through and showed her world. Alien color dug into her eyes. Flickering figures appeared--stretched and narrow, three fingers on each hand as long as her arm, and they reached out for her. They stood on the sky. The closest one's boiling hand touched her face.

Bellowing, Meghan snapped the base of the gymnastics trophy through its head. It turned to a red smear. Blazing beams of white light shot out from its body, blinding her, and screams drilled into her head.

Whistling air replaced screams. Her eyes cracked open--blue sky replaced red. She hung from the cell tower, toes pointed toward the ground, waves of pain from her shoulder washing over her. Red powder covered the trophy's base.

She turned her head. Pain and flipping perspectives dizzied her. Light reflected off windows, each one containing staring people. Her toes found cold metal. She groaned as her shoulder redoubled its painful argument. She wrapped her other arm around the cell tower, still holding the trophy, and eased herself down.

After a few minutes, she had to work her way around the tower to a small, narrow set of metal rods--the tower's ladder. Her stomach rolled inside her, and every time the cell tower's red light flashed, her head snapped up, looking for a red wound in the blue. 

Her foot touched gritty cement, and she lost her balance, yet her feet kept her upright. Open sky swirled around her. The door to the roof pounded open, and people rushed for her. She cradled her wounded arm. The gymnastic trophy base's sharp, stained corner pressed into her collarbone. They had all seen her.

Daniel Deisinger is alive and he dares you to prove otherwise. His work has appeared in more than thirty publications, including 'Havik,' 'Defenestration Magazine,' and 'Ripples in Space.' His serial “Voices in My Head” is available on Kindle Vella. His X account is @Danny_Deisinger, and his website is saturdaystory-Time.weebly.com.