...everybody?

He had to pinch himself. Not really, but in his mind. There, down an alley, he saw it- an elephant's head. An elephant's head attached to an elephant's body; not that he could see the body, it was either in shadow and not visible due to the angle of the alley and the buildings, or something else, maybe. But the profile of an elephant was clearly visible. It was moving, not actually doing anything, but moving in the sense that you understood that it was alive and not dead or some kind of realistic carnival mask. It was looking at him, its one eye staring, wide.

And, at that moment, as he stood there transfixed, his vision did something he never thought possible- it zoomed in on the eye of the elephant, as if his brain became the innards of a high performance camera lens, and his whole conscious focus was upon the eye of the elephant, closing in until it filled his entire visual frame. He saw (thought? experienced? was?) reflections, like the cut sections of a rare gem, and it was moving, writhing like a stone could never do. And the eye flashed brightly, with different colors, violently, in his head!

He yelled and fell back, his shoulders cracking against the tiled floor of the lobby. He coughed, the wind slightly knocked out of him. He had his vision back. Or at least he thought he did. The light had changed, not the lights in the room, but the sunlight from outside, from the windows...it was later in the day. A whisper of the air-conditioning unit was barely audible. There was dust on his hands and jacket. The fluorescents continued their humming.

He slowly picked himself up and nervously looked back towards the alley across the street. Nothing. He glanced around the lobby. No one. Not a sound to distinguish anything.

His breath quickened and his heart began to race; his face became a grimace and he fought to hold his food (breakfast?) down in his stomach where it belonged. This is happening to me. Countless images from countless movies, stories, science fiction scenarios flooded his brain. And here I am. Am I? Really?