Reality or Subconsciousness?

A frail professor paced back and forth across the classroom, waiting for the class to file in and sit in their respective seats. He was excited; an interesting lesson was coming up. 

After a few minutes, every student was inside and sitting at their seats. Twenty eager faces peeked up at the small man donned in trousers and small spectacles.

“Good morning, class. As we discussed yesterday, today we will be watching a television interview, or segment if you must call it, about the tomato tragedy. We will be analyzing the events in great depth, so please pay attention. Closely. I shall set up the projector, just give me a few moments.”

The projector was set up and ready to perform. A woman’s voice filtered through the soundbox, and a rickety old television clip started playing.

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“Thanks for the weather, Todd. Coming up next, we’re coming here to live with a man who has apparently fallen into a vat of tomato soup, yes, tomato, and has fallen into a magical realm! But first, we will take a short commercial break.”

“Excuse the ads, class,” the professor muttered, fastforwarding to the interview.

A young man sat on a couch, looking a bit uncomfortable. The same woman was sitting across from him, on an identical seat.

“Your name is Sean, am I correct?” the newswoman asked.

“That is correct, ma’am.”

“How are you today, Sean? Are you ready to get into your story?”

“Yes, I’m fine, ma’am.”

The boy named Sean took a deep breath, and words started erupting from him, like a volcano that had been bottled up too long, finally ready to blow.

The students sitting in the classroom craned their heads to listen better. They shuffled in their seats. The professor took in their expressions- a mixture of skepticism and fascination.

“This all started with my grandfather. He was a great grandfather- always telling me stories about different dimensions where there were talking beets and mushroom clouds. He died about a year ago,” the boy paused, “But I remember my favourite story he told me. It was about a girl getting sucked into a book and ending up in the book’s world. She was able to talk with her favourite characters; I even remember their names. Vérité and Droit, I think.”

The woman leaned forward. “That sounds awfully familiar to your story, don’t you think?”

The boy exclaimed, “Right? It was almost as if it was an omen. Anyway, I’ll continue. So one day, I was fooling around in my father’s factory. He manages a separate Campbells factory. He manufactures different soups, such as chicken noodle soup and cream of mushroom soup. It was summer, so I was fooling around in the factory, waiting to go home.”

The woman interrupted him. “So, I’m guessing you fell into the vat of tomato soup?”

“Yep! I took no notice of the lack of a fence behind me. Fell headfirst into the tomatoes, screaming my way down. I was being a huge idiot that day. There was a ladder, however, and I knew that. The maintenance workers used it whenever they were inspecting the cleanliness of the place.” 

The boy continued, pausing to take a sip of water. “When I hit the tomatoes, all I could think was wow, my father’s going to kill me. I swam to the ladder, and mind you, swimming in a tub full of tomatoes isn’t easy. Could’ve been my lack of sleep or something, but it seemed as if my feet swirled, and then my body went weightless, and then-”

“You got transported to a magical land?” the newswoman interrupted again.

The boy sighed and gave the ground a dirty look. “Guilty as charged. I thought that it was a headache of some sort, so I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was standing on a green field out in the middle of nowhere, dripping tomato soup. The funny thing is, I wasn’t alone. Even funnier, all the characters there were the exact same people from my grandfather’s stories.”

The boy paused and took another sip of water. “I saw two talking beetroots chat about the dirt quality, and I was so stunned that I took a step towards them. They looked up at me and I swear that they were judging me, even if they didn’t have eyes. I reached out to touch one, to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming. The beetroot slapped my hand out the way. I seemed so solid, so weird. Then it yelled at me, “Don’t touch me, mashed tomato! My cousin met the same fate, so don’t you dare mock me!” The beet must’ve thought that I was a tomato, so I asked them, “How do I get out of here?” The beets stared at me, then turned to one another. After they turned back towards me, the beetroot on the right, the one that yelled at me, pointed at a cloud.”

The newswoman found a pause in between Sean’s words and cut in, “So, how did you get out?”

“I’m getting to that part. The cloud wasn’t a real cloud, it was a mushroom cloud, just like the ones from my grandfather’s stories. I followed the way to the mushroom cloud, and I was walking and walking and walking. I finally reached the darn mushroom cloud, and found out that it was actually an umbrella. The stem of the mushroom was a handle, which was big enough to grab onto. So I grabbed the mushroom umbrella and held the cloud. Suddenly, the wind caught the mushroom and I started floating. I was hovering over the plains, which lay beneath like a fuzzy green blanket. Now and then, I saw spots of blue, which were probably lakes or ponds. It was like staring at a painting. 

The newswoman tried to cut in again. “That’s great, but how did you get-”

Sean continued. “I could feel my hand slipping from the handle of the mushroom. I tried to grab on with my other hand, but it didn't work and I started falling. Midair, I felt like throwing up, but I managed to hold it in. Before I knew it, I was back. My father was next to me, muttering words underneath his breath, a towel draped over my shoulders, a tomato chunk sliding down my back.”

And with those words, the man sat down and took a deep breath. 

The newswoman looked concerned.

“Tell me, son, do you have a history with mental illness that could have caused you to hallucinate? I guess that falling into a vat of tomato soup could be,” the woman coughed, “quite traumatizing.”

The boy opened his mouth to answer. “Well, I don’t think-”

The video ended, the screen flashing black. The students in the classroom groaned collectively.

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The professor turned off the projector, ignoring the complaints of the crowd. 

“So, class, any thoughts? Reality or subconsciousness?” 

A student scoffed at the back of the class. “What poppycock.”

The rest of the class joined in with various calls of agreement. Then another student spoke up, “I think it’s real! The boy looked like he was telling the truth!”

The professor sat at his desk, his hands folded. He watched the argument play out. Students were arguing back and forth. 

The students started standing up, using their hands to prove their point, until a weathery old voice coming from the front of the room shut them up.

“No, class, that was all real. That boy was me,” the professor’s voice rang out.