Silence.

That was the first thing I noticed--absolute silence. I remember reading somewhere that in today's modern world, we never actually experience true silence; there is always, somewhere on the periphery, an electrical hum or a motorized growl. More often it is a constant beep-whir-tick-beep-buzz from a thousand gadgets pressing in on us, calling for our attention, wasting our time.

But not now.

Silence.

It did not last, of course; almost instantly the pounding of my own heart, the rush of air into my lungs, the dull hum of my own thoughts intruded on the silence, but it was there for a moment. I remember.

Then I opened my eyes for the first time and realized that something was wrong. Instead of the television screen I had been watching--Wheel of Fortune? Jeopardy?--I saw a broad expanse of mottled white, interrupted occasionally by convex light fixtures, each with a single bulb staring back at me. I was still in my chair; I squeezed the familiar armrests reassuringly. In my right hand I still held the coffee cup I had been drinking from, or at least the handle. The cup itself was gone but for a jagged, shield-like piece attached to the strangely intact handle. But the view was odd, alien. I looked upwards, over my head, and saw a shining silver cross. Oh, God, was I dead?

Slowly I turned my head right, then left. Behind my chair was a wall of what looked like brown shag carpeting. Pretty ugly carpeting at that. The same ugly brown shag carpeting my ex had insisted we put in the family room. Then it came to me. It was not a wall. It was a floor. I was flat on my back staring up at the ceiling in my own family room. I slowly came to my senses and rolled out of the overturned chair onto the carpet--it really was ugly, even uglier this close up--and looked over toward the television. It was destroyed, a smoking pile of melted, sparking plastic. Had there been some kind of explosion? Lightning maybe? I became aware of the crackling sound the (former) television was making, the smell of acrid smoke in the air, the slow ticking of the mantelpiece clock I had inherited from my grandmother.

I rolled onto my belly and slowly pushed myself up to my knees. I was pretty sore--it felt like someone had beaten me with a stick. Now that I was upright, the silver cross I had seen above my head while flat on my back stood about three feet high directly in front of me, and I could more clearly see what it was. In the middle of my family room, squarely in the center of the room and buried at least two feet into the floor, was a shining sword.

Then I heard the song.

Was it really a song? I could not distinguish separate notes, just a liquid flow of sweet tones, a melody that seemed to have been composed by the universe itself. I listened intently, I tried to hum along with the tuneless tune, but the harder I tried to hear it the more it receded from me. I stopped straining to hear it, and the melody again filled me, and this time I heard words, a voice, but like the song it seemed to come not from any one place but from everywhere at once. The voice was quiet, calm, and filled with light and music.

"I am Excalibur," the voice said, "and I am here for you."