“Notions of Naivety”

By: Ufokiban Molly Edu

Imagine finding the most beautiful rainbow. It starts as a halo around the sun and all of its radiance creates an umbrella of color that you can slide down. You hop on any side because they all shine the same colors and you were always told as a child that there is a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. 

You are riding down like a slide at a water park for the first time. The colors comes so fast and feel so good. You are feeling and living every color and the euphoria makes the time feel slower. 

The brightest and darkest reds, oranges, yellows, greens, and then you hit blue. 

You start feeling like you should be swimming but it is just a ride so you are confident if you just remain still you will reach the gold. Then you hit the purple and you can no longer see. It gets darker and darker and now you are in complete darkness. You slip off the edge and are now free falling through an abyss. 

The panic kicks in and begin to flail about hoping there will be something to grab onto. The air is changing and you can’t quite catch your breath. Right when you try to scream, the ground violently hits you. The wind has been knocked out every aveolus in your lungs and you black out for a time that cannot be registered. 

A persistent ringing sound in your ear allows is what you regain your consciousness to. You know you are alive because you feel a heavy weight on your chest from your labored breathing. You open your eyes to see darkness. Everything is a foggy mental blur as you try to begin to recall what happened. You are not sure if you fell off the ride. Or if there was a malfunction. But you are scared. 

You crawl around looking for the pot. Maybe you just fell to the side of it.  Reaching out you cannot feel anything and now the rest of your senses are kicking in. All you feel is cold, damp, and the ground feels like you are crawling on a solid surface like concrete, metal, or something familiar yet not. 

You take a breath to calm down and stand to your feet. Your eyes have adjusted and you can barely see anything. You look up and can see light, but it is so far away. It looks like the first star in the pitch of night. You notice a difference in the shade of black around you. You start to walk to find something. Anything. You are yelling, “hello!!!” and the cliches, “Can anyone hear me,” “is anyone out there?”

Your clammy hands are out in front of you reaching for anything. You manage to make baby steps with a limp generated from the fall. You try to pick up the pace thinking resolve will allow for some solution sooner. Nails jam into a surface and it feels that you have reached an end. You touch it. Lean against it and start to touch all around. It feels like the ground you were once crawling on. You start to work your way down the surface towards the floor and there is a slight curvature as the wall turns into the ground.

You keep your hand on the wall and you begin to walk with the wall. The prospect that this wall will lead you somewhere is helping to restore your hope. You even think about the gold again. So you walk. And walk. Jog for a second and realize it is not worth the pain to jog-limp.

You walk until you begin to tire. The surface of your nails have been chipped away by the texture of the wall. Your feet are throbbing in your shoes. You start calling out again. The screams are so loud they echo. All you can think is “what the hell is happening to me? Where is the pot of gold? Why is no one helping me?”

You take your shoes off and decide to walk barefooted. The coolness of the ground is the only thing close to pleasure that you have felt since the first half of this rainbow ride you decided to take. You keep walking and pondering on what got you here. “Where is the gold?” “Did I sign a waiver for this shit?” “Is someone going to come looking for me?” “What the fuck is a rainbow ride in the first place?” “Why the hell did I hop on this rainbow slide without seeing a tutorial or watching someone else do it first?” 

Then you trip. You land face first barely breaking your fall with your free hand. Looking behind you, you see the shoes you had taken off 10 minutes prior. You just lay there rubbing one hand against the curvature from where the wall turns to ground. 

Then it hits you. 

You are in the pot. You are the gold.