But happening concurrently, Johnathon's world was whirling, spiraling out of control. He felt sick to the stomach, partially tuned-in to what was going on. Could it be just coincidence that every single confusing word that came out of everyone's mouth was also a word that he had played at least once in his motley of championships? Paired with the fact that he was unaware of any of the words' definitions, Johnathon's logical attempts to explain away the peculiar situation he found himself in were overall quelled by an inexplicable onset of paranoia and some gut-wrenching feeling. His kidneys twisted into a knot, his toes curled up at the thought, his stomach was queasy- was that even a word?

"Excuse me for a moment, would you?" Johnathon breezily got up from his seat, pushing it back just as quickly as he had the last time, though notably less ferociously. He rushed to the door, having somehow located the exit without even knowing where it was. But before he could rush out of the restaurant and into the streets, he was stopped by a security guard.

"Sir, I can't knowingly rosterize your exit of the restaurant if you do not phear for your food."

Johnathon, having weaved the definitions of the unintelligible bumbling together decently enough through context clues, wittily snapped back, "Oh yeah? Well where were you when I had my foot up all your waiters' asses?"

Johnathon then shoved past the now astounded bouncer, whose exclamation "My, oh my!" was audible even throughout the external sidewalks parked next to the restaurant. Johnathon ran through the crowds of people and passersby, as they all blended together in wicked blurs of smeared paint. He felt his head rotating three-sixty degrees around his neck as he struggled to keep his balance in the world of unknown.

Though most of his senses were thrown off by his state of disorientation, his hearing seemed acute in eavesdropping on the comments of pedestrians and strangers in regards to himself. As expected, it was all jargonic, messy mixtures of mutilated sounds and words, if they could even be recognized as words. It was now to the point of no return- no longer sounding like a foreign language, seemingly lacking in any form of organization at all!

Some instances of comments Johnathon picked up on in public were, best put into writing:

"Does he gyin alrin? I gix he should wase a hoxilogist."

"Xcizqui me? Do you dize heese?"

"Hoal, someone should bage tazet to the correst potch."

And as Johnathon tried fruitlessly to tune out the noise from his ears, the final straw was when he heard someone say, "Xaqfe hoxly quouat nohat." Not a single word in that sentence was a real, certified English word! It was all nonsense that the Scrabble champion had, once upon a time, spewed so violently onto a Scrabble board that he was deemed worthy of a trophy! Johnathon began even to question his own self-proclaimed expertise in his field. Was he even as good as he claimed to be? Or was he merely a fraud, cursed with the blessing of always being right?

Johnathon hastily pulled out his pocket Scrabble dictionary, leafing through it, page by page, sorting by alphabetical letter- and, to his horror, he was able to affirm the existence of every single word that had vomited out of their mouths.

He began to back up in horror. His hand, losing all feeling, dropped the Scrabble booklet on the ground as the world around him began to spin. Smeared blurs of strangers became large, clumped up mega-clusters of human activity that was vaguely happening around him. Everything became dimmer, dimmer, dimmer... until no color but black was to be seen in Johnathon's visual palette.

---

He awoke in a hospital, drenched in cold-pressed sweat. His head jumped off of his pillow at the sight of the doctor, and he found the energy to muster up a question.

"Where- where am I?"

"You, sir, are in the Berkeley Hospital of Psychological Treatment. Please don't worry yourself- you are fine with us, I assure you."

"You... you talk normal."

"Indeed, sir, indeed."

Johnathon plopped his head back into the pillow, exhaling out a long sigh of relief. Perhaps it was all a dream, or, more aptly, a nightmare. None of it had never happened! Johnathon could resume life normally, albeit, never even laying eyes upon another Scrabble board again.

And as the nurse pierced his numb arm with a needle, drawing blood, she hastily told the admitting doctor:

"His blood seems to be a bit exhenic."