Short Fiction

August 2022 through May 2023

Madeline and Sally check in to the Hotel Benjamin on Tuesday afternoon. Madeline (or “Maddy,” as her parents called her) has never stayed in such a nice hotel before, so she’s excited. She walks into the big lobby with Sally, who has a suitcase on wheels and a purse across her shoulder. Maddy’s clothes are all in Sally’s bag, but Maddy carries her backback with her blanket curled up in the bottom, and her bear’s head poking out of the top of the bag watches behind Maddy as she walks. Sally and Maddy go up to the big desk where the man waits for them. Sally talks to the man over the desk, but Maddy can hardly see: the rim of the marble counter meets her right in the forehead. The man (Sally calls him the “receptionist,” which Maddy finds difficult to say: “recepyoniss”; Sally laughs) hands Sally a key and points across the lobby to the elevators. Sally and Maddy cross a sea of carpet to reach the golden doors. Maddy makes faces at her reflection.

Sally and Maddy’s room is enormous: Maddy jumps on the bed (“get down from there!” cries Sally, but she remembers her youth and lets Maddy enjoy herself a little longer), opens the minibar (“now don’t drink any of that…”), looks in the bathroom and every cupboard (“what’d you find?”, and Maddy shows Sally the iron and ironing board, the safe in the closet, and the soaps and towels and shower caps), and falls into bed, exhausted. The sun is just beginning to set, and the windows are turning gold.

Sally says, “what do you want for dinner?” and Maddy asks for a ceasar salad. Sally talks into a telephone on the nightstand, and soon a man arrives with a cart on wheels. He rolls the whole cart into the room and parks it in front of Maddy. There’s a white table cloth and silver utensils, and the silver dome in the middle makes Maddy’s reflection look tiny and distant. The man whisks the dome out from under Maddy’s nose and swirls it behind him with a flourish of the wrist. “Your dinner, madam,” and he bows slightly. Madeline nods her head in thanks. The man straightens, winks at Maddy, nods to Sally, and flies out of the room; his jacket tails flutter behind him as he leaves. Maddy eats dinner.

“How was it?” Sally asks.

“Very good, thank you,” Maddy replies.

The sun is red and the light in the room is dimming. Sally says it’s time for bed and she and Maddy begin to unpack. Maddy opens her backpack: Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubble seem to breathe easier once released from their confinement. Maddy and her blanket and her stuffed bear snuggle into the big bed and sink among the stacked cushions. Sally turns off the light next to Maddy’s bed and reads until Maddy’s breathing is deep and slow.

The next day, Sally and Maddy go to a museum. Maddy leaves Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles in bed when she gets up and doesn’t think anything more about it. Maddy loves going to the museum: the people in the paintings are funny-shaped, like her face in the silver dome over the salad last night. She remembers going to museums with her parents, who took her through and pointed out their favorites: her mom always loved still lifes of flowers; her father, landscapes. Remembering their advice, Maddy takes our her notebook and copies down the names of her favorite paintings from the museum; Sally promises to help Maddy look the artists up when they get back to the hotel for dinner. Before going to the dining room, they stop by their room, which has been cleaned and the beds made. Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles aren’t there. Maddy pulls back the bed covers to look for them. They aren’t there.

“Maybe they’ve fallen under the bed?” Sally offers, and Maddy gets down on her hands and knees to look. They aren’t there.

“Maybe in my bed?” and Sally pulls back the covers, but they aren’t there either.

“I don’t know what happened to them!” Sally says at last, after Maddy has looked under both beds, in all the cupboards, in the bathroom, in the safe, under the ironing board, and in the minibar. “They’re just gone!”

Maddy supresses panic: they can’t be gone!, she thinks, there must be some mistake. Maddy remembers when she left Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles at the hotel by her grandparents’, and how her parents convinced the staff to look for them and send them back to her express with a note saying “please take care of this bear and blanket.”

“Why don’t we go down to the front desk and ask?” Sally suggests. She takes Maddy by the hand and steers her into the hallway. The door to their room is heavy and closes slowly behind them. It glides across the carpet, and Maddy’s view back into the room narrows to a tiny slit that shuts — click. The sound echos up Maddy’s spine. Something in her life has permanently changed. Her eyes are heavy and full; her chest is weirdly empty; her heartbeat echoes in her ribcage.

Maddy and Sally step out of the elevator on the main floor and walk over to the big front desk. The same man who was behind the desk the day before is there. Maddy stands back from the counter, so that he can see her as she speaks.

“Why don’t you tell the man what happened?” Sally prompts Maddy.

“I left my stuffed bear and blanket in our room, and now they’re gone.”

“I see. And what is your room number?” the man asks, and Maddy doesn’t know. She looks silently up at Sally, who says,

“Four thirty-five.”

“Very good. And could you describe the lost object in more detail?”

Sally looks down at Maddy, who blushes. “Go ahead and tell the man about Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles,” Sally says to Maddy. Hearing their names spoken in the big lobby embarasses Maddy. She has never felt so young, so much like a child.

“There’s two of them. One is a bear, fuzzy, brown, and handsome; the other is a blanket, quilted, red, blue, and green, with animals on it.” Maddy falls quiet: she feels that she should not tell the man too much about her bear and blanket, even though his face remains still and calm.

“I see. When did you see them last?”

“I left them in the bed this morning, and when we came back just a few minutes ago, they were gone.”

“Ah, let me see here…” The man clacks at the computer terminal on the desk in front of him and peers at the results. “I don’t see any reports of a lost item fitting the description you gave, but I’ll let you know if anything pops up. I’m sorry for the loss; we’ll do everything we can to help.”

“Thank you very much,” Sally says (Maddy looks down at her feet in silence) and leads Maddy by the hand across the lobby to the hotel’s restaurant. “Do you want to eat down here tonight, Maddy?” Sally asks. Maddy peers into the large room, with golden ceiling and crystal chandeliers. It is still too early for the main dinner crowd, but a few tables have people Maddy’s age with their parents.

A woman in a black dress and white sneakers, about Sally’s age, approaches them and asks, “how can I help you?” Sally asks for a table for two, and the woman walks them over to a table with menus under her arm.

“Here you go, my dears,” she says, delivering them to a table with glasses and silverware all laid out on white cloth. Maddy and Sally sit, and Maddy makes faces at herself in the shiny silver spoon: she looks at herself, distant and upside down, in the concave side; she flips the spoon and sees herself, still distant, but right side up. She twirls the spoon around and imagines she’s tumbling head over heels.

After dinner, Sally tucks Maddy into bed, and Maddy reaches out to hug Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles. But they aren’t there. Maddy’s arms are empty. They rest against her chest, awkwardly bony, deflated: Mr. Poppins should be there, with Ms. Bubbles around him. Maddy should bury her face in Mr. Poppins’ fuzz and rub Ms. Bubbles edges between her fingers. She should be able to smell them, but all she can smell is the clean sheets. Her chest is hollow, and her throat dry. Maddy stays awake a long time, long after Sally goes to bed and her breathing becomes smooth and regular.

The sun shines on Maddy’s face and wakes her. Sally is already up and dressed: “you seemed tired, so I decided to let you sleep in some. Want to go to the zoo today?” Today is Thursday, and Maddy and Sally are staying in the hotel until Friday. Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles are still missing, and Maddy doesn’t know what to do about it. As she and Sally walk through the hotel’s lobby, Maddy looks at the counter: nobody there. She and Sally cross the lobby and leave through the big revolving door. Maddy watches her reflection in the glass: she’s almost transparent, like a ghost floating over the world beyond the window. Then they’re out of the door and on the bright street with the noises.

As she and Sally return from the Zoo, Maddy’s head feels clearer. She and Sally ate lunch at a restaurant Maddy often went to with her parents, near the zoo overlooking the wide lawn sloping down to the pond. Maddy’s mother loved to order a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert (“just one scoop!”), and her father always had the ceasar salad (“best in town!”). Sally bought Maddy a cone of mint chip ice cream on the way back from the hotel, and Maddy’s breath is still cool when she enters the lobby again. Seeing the receptionist back at his post, Maddy steps over to the front desk. The receptionist is the same man from before, but he doesn’t show any sign that he recognizes Maddy.

“Excuse me sir, have you located my comfort objects?” Maddy asks the man.

“Have I located your what?” The man seems confused.

“My comfort objects: the bear and blanket!” The man squints down at Maddy for a moment, then his face clears.

“Ah yes, now I remember. No, I’m sorry madam: we haven’t found anything yet. I will let you know the moment anything appears.” He speaks gently, but without any great emotion. Maddy sees nothing in the man’s face to suggest that the man is terribly upset. Maddy can tell that he intends her no harm by the openness of his expression, but by its mildness she knows that he is not deeply invested in helping her. Maddy takes the initiative:

“Is there anyone else who might know anything?”

“Well,” the man thinks for a moment, “the cleaners might have seen something. You said that you left them in the bed in the morning and they were gone in the afternoon? Normally, the cleaners come by in that time.”

“Where can I find the cleaners?” Maddy asks.

The man checks his wristwatch. “They’re cleaning the rooms as we speak. If you go through the hallways, you’ll be able to find them. They move with a cart of cleaning supplies; if you see the cart, you know the cleaners can’t be far off.” Maddy thanks the man and runs to meet Sally at the elevators.

As they step off on their floor, Maddy sees the cleaner’s cart parked by the side of the hallway outside the open door to a room. It has a big basket filled with dirty sheets from the rooms, and bottles of all shapes and descriptions. Through the open door, Maddy can hear a vacuum cleaner running. As Sally continues to their room, Maddy strays behind to talk to the cleaners. She looks in the open door and sees the same woman from the restaurant last night vacuuming. Maddy waits for her to turn the loud machine off, and Sally waits in front of the door down the hall. The woman switches off the vacuum and wheels it towards the door, when she sees Maddy.

“Hello!”, her face is bright.

“Hello,” says Maddy, “I lost something, and…”, she hesitates, unsure, “I wanted to know whether you’ve seen anything.”

“What did you lose?”

Maddy thinks about how to answer this question. This woman seems warm enough, but Maddy remembers the way the man at the desk responed: polite yet unmoved. Maddy decides to say, “my stuffed animals. I left them in bed yesterday morning, and by the afternoon they were gone.”

“What’s your room number?” The woman’s brows drift closer together, her lips purse slightly, and her eyes focus closer on Maddy’s face.

“Four thirty-five.” Maddy looks down the hallway towards Sally, who still stands in the doorway. The woman looks down the hall, then back at Maddy.

“No, I haven’t seen anything. I’ll ask the rest of the staff if anything’s turned up. I’m in the restaurant again tonight — come down and see me. My name’s Meg. If you ask for me, they’ll know who to bring you.”

“I’m Maddy.” The younger girl holds out her hand, and the older girl shakes it. “Thank you for your help.”

“Not at all. Oh! and one more thing: do the stuffed animals have names?”

“Their names are Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles. Mr. Poppins in a fuzzy brown bear, and Ms. Bubbles is a red, blue, and green quilt.”

“Alright,” says Meg, looking straight into Maddy’s eyes, “I’ll see what I can do.” Even though Meg is much taller than Maddy and doesn’t stoop down, Madde feels as though she and Meg are looking at one another from the same height. Maddy nods, thanks Meg again for her help, and continues down the hallway to her and Sally’s room.

Sally is holding the door open when Maddy reaches her. “Learn anything?” she asks. Her face is still.

“No, but Meg promised to look around. She says she hasn’t seen anything, though.”

“Too bad!” Sally’s response is honest, but her mood isn’t dampened. The two of them go into the hotel room, and Sally drops on her back into her newly-made bed. “It’s so hot! I may just take a nap for a while. If you promise not to leave the hotel, you can run around for a bit and do whatever you want. I’m beat.” Sallly kicks her shoes off and stretches her arms above her head. She rolls on to her side and is instantly asleep.

As Maddy opens the room door to leave, she turns to look back into the room. For an instant she sees Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles in her bed, propped up politely on her pillow. But even as the tears come to her eyes the vision fades, and Maddy can only see a blur of color where the stuffed animals usually live, like an after-image from a bright light. She holds her ragged breath and crosses the threshold into the hallway.

Looking to her right, Maddy can see Meg’s cart, now a room further along, and the elevators at the end of the hallway. Now is the time to take stock: what do I know of the situation?

Missing: One stuffed bear and one quilted blanket.

Description: The bear is fuzzy and brown, and the hair around his eyes is ragged. (Maddy remembers her mother cutting her hair. “Mr. Poppins needs a haircut, too!” Her mother trimmed the hair around his eyes. “Now hold still…”) The blanket is quilted in red, blue, and green, with patterns of animals: a lion, a walrus, a monkey. (Maddy sat with her father looking at the blanket and pointing: “What’s this one?” “That’s a zebra. They make a honk noise.” “No they don’t, daddy, that’s silly!”)

Last seen: On the window-side bed of room 435 in the Hotel Benjamin, at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday. By 2 p.m., they had disappeared.

As far as Maddy knows, only a few people have access to the room: Sally, whom she can’t suspect on principle; Meg, whom she doesn’t want to distrust; and potentially other employees of the hotel, whom Maddy hasn’t yet met. Of their own accord, Maddy’s suspicions land on the last group; at their head in her imagination is the receptionist.

Maddy knows that she must do something, and that time is running out: she and Sally leave on Friday, and today’s already Thursday. Maddy decides to speak to the receptionist again. She heads for the elevator, passing Meg and her cart along the way.

As the elevator bumps down to the first floor, Maddy looks at herself in the mirrored wall. The mirrors cover the upper half of the inside of the elevator and are about waist height to an adult. Maddy, though, can just see her face perched above the rim at the bottom of the mirror. She looks at her reflection and tries to look fierce, but she can’t conceal from herself how frightened she is. Hopefully nobody else will see the fear in her eyes.

There is no one behind the counter when Maddy reaches it. She has to stand back from the surface a little ways to peer over it, but as far as she can tell, nobody’s there. There is, however, a golden bell with flowers engraved on it; a little button on top swings a hammer to tap the side of the bell and call the receptionist. Maddy doesn’t want to draw any attention to herself, but after waiting a few minutes, she doesn’t see any way around it: she rings the bell, and its ding fills the lobby and lingers than Maddy would have thought possible before finally melting into the plush. The receptionist appears through a door behind the counter.

It’s not the same person she spoke to last time: this is a younger man, and Maddy recognizes him from the room service the first night she arrived at the hotel (how long ago that seems now!). He looks down at her kindly but without urgency. “How can I help you, madam?”

“Yes. I, uhh, I lost something in my room.”

“What did you lose?” Maddy hesitates — how should she describe Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles? She decides that less is more:

“My stuffed animals.”

The man looks at her soberly.

“And when did you see them last?”

“Yesterday morning. I spoke to the other…”, here comes that big word again, and Maddy, with a tightened throat, chokes out “person at the desk, and he said he’d let me know if they’re found.”

“I see. Let me take a look for you.” The man stabs some buttons at his computer termial and examines the screen. “No, I don’t see a report here that it was turned in. It’s possible, though, that it got found today and hasn’t yet been filed in the system. If you wait here a minute, I’ll run back into the office and take a look.”

“Thank you very much,” says Maddy in her most dignified voice. The man nods slightly and steps back through the door behind the counter. While she waits, Maddy turns to survey the lobby. Its ceiling is high, and she tilts her head back to look at it. A giant chandelier is suspended in the air above her. Its crystals’ facets reflect the lights nestled among them on golden branches and cast shards of color across the ceiling.

The last time Maddy stayed in a hotel was when she went with her parents to visit her mother’s family. Maddy’s father said that they stayed in the hotel to give Grandma and Grandpa their privacy and winked at Maddy; Maddy’s mother rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth twitched upwards despite themselves. Maddy and her parents had rooms next to one another with a door between them. When Maddy’s parents thought she was asleep, they gently shut the door; Maddy heard the door close, but didn’t mind giving her parents their privacy. She knew that they would be there in the morning when she woke, and that she could run into their room with Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles in her arms and jump in bed between them. She held her stuffed animals closer to her chest and felt Mr. Poppins’ fuzz against her cheek and worried Ms. Bubbles’ patches with her thumb till she fell asleep.

The receptionist’s footsteps behind her bring Maddy back to the present. The edges of the receptionist’s eyes are turned down, and his voice is soft when he says, “I’m afraid they aren’t there. I suggest that you check again tomorrow: the night porter might find them and turn them in tonight.” He pauses for an instant, as if not sure whether to continue speaking. Then he says, “I’m sorry for your loss,” looking straight into Maddy’s eyes over the gleaming stone counter and its wooden trim. She holds his eyes for a moment, and her chest begins to ache. Her eyes drop to the floor and she mutters, “thank you,” to her shoes. She walks back across the lobby to the elevator.

Maddy steps into the elevator and the doors close behind her, but she doesn’t press any buttons. Here she is, in this room of mirrors: three of the walls are mirrors, reflecting one another and creating the appearance of infinity in this tiny box. Maddy looks at herself in the mirrored wall and sees an endless hallway fading into the distance. She tilts her head this way and that, she whirls around to catch a glimpse of the end of forever, more and more frantically she tries to out-run her reflection. But she can never look past herself in the mirror: as the reflected hallway drifts off to infinity ahead and behind, her face is stuck to the mirror before her. She looks at her red eyes and swollen eyelids and smiling-grimace mouth.

Her mother wiped Maddy’s tears with a tissue from her purse, and her father pulled out a handkerchief to help. Whenever she skinned her knee, or the other kids made fun of her, or she broke something by mistake, her parents were there to help. There was nothing they couldn’t find, or fix, or bring back. And now they’re gone: I’ll never see Mr. Poppins or Ms. Bubbles again. Maddy doesn’t want to despair, but the situation is beginning to seem hopeless. She’ll see what Meg has to say — she almost forgot! A sudden hope springs in her, and she holds it close and shields it against the chaos around her. She presses the button; the door slides open; Maddy tears out of the elevator across the lobby to the restaurant.

Meg is just coming to the hostess’ stand when Maddy stops at her feet, breathless. “Hi Meg, any news?”

Meg smiles with her mouth, but her eyes don’t move. “I’m sorry dear, but I’ve asked everyone: nobody’s seen your stuffed animals anywhere. I’ll ask again before I leave tonight, but it seems like they’re gone. I’m…” and here Meg has to swallow once, twice, before continuing, “sorry.” Her voice breaks and she turns away from Maddy.

“That’s alright. Thank you for your help.” Maddy’s voice is soft, and she speaks without any change in pitch or quality, as though she didn’t understand the meaning of the words she was saying. Maddy turns and walks back to the elevator. Meg watches her go, and the receptionist; the color of the sunlight in the windows is going to gold and crimson. When Maddy gets to the elevator, she steps in and raises her hand to press the button for the fourth floor, but before finding home her finger stops and floats in space. Everything seems very close to her now, very present. She closes her eyes to block it all out; she bites her lip, harder, harder, to hold back the screams rising in her chest; she puts all her weight behind the tip of her right index finger and stabs the button.

The elevator arrives on the fourth floor, and Maddy walks down the hallway to her room and lets herself in. Sally is still asleep. Maddy’s bed is plain white, and empty of stuffed animals. The patch of color where she thought she saw them is gone. Mr. Poppins and Ms. Bubbles are gone. She won’t have time to look for them tomorrow: she and Sally have to get up early to get dressed and go down to the cemetery to say goodbye to their parents for the last time.

October 2022

The fountain pours into you. Your eyes and ears are filled with its blessings: the sweet relief of stimulus. Never a video too long, a song too loud, a word too harsh; everything is exactly as you want it to be. Enjoy! Everyone else is, the fountain tells you so. You watch the people dance and sing and run off into the sunset, but never more than you can stand: a count of eight, a couple of lines, a few strides, then the next. You twitch your finger and another thing comes into view. You raise your eyes: who can help you? Only the fountain, and it opens itself to you as it opens itself to everyone, just for them, for you are unique and special, UUID 3CA23F5E-DEE6-47B2-A4B9-B4A730D81546. There’s no one like you, and no one understands you the way the fountain does. You raise your arms to touch it, but it’s so difficult. They’re so heavy, your arms. When did you need them last? They drop to your side and splash in the water.

You want to dance, you want to sing, you want to feel the sun on your face. The fountain obliges: more dancing, more singing, more joyous sunsets. Did you know that the earth orbits the sun? that the moon orbits the earth? that the earth revolves around you? The fountain reveals all these things to you. You raise your arms to join the dance, a little higher this time, a litle closer to the receding fountain. Did you know that moving in the immersion tank can cause injury to you and harm to the environment? It’s better to lie still and let the fountain move for you: the fountain says so and all your friends nod in agreement. Your hands splash down into the heavy water and float next to your body. The fountain closes back over you. Look at the people having fun! Enjoy! Your toes squirm with the fountain’s pleasure; it sees your pleasure and heightens your enjoyment. Look at them fight! Look at them scream! Aren’t you glad you aren’t them? Tell your friends how happy you are! Your ankles begin to drift towards you. Your knees float up out of the water. What agony! What joy!

Bump. Hard. Splash. Dark. Bright. Scoop. Carry. Deposit.

There’s a face over yours, but it’s not like the dancing faces. It’s a flat circle with a drawn-on expression, and concern for you plays across it. You’re on a rough dry surface that presses into your flesh and iritates your skin. You’ve been very naughty. You shouldn’t move towards the fountain, or it won’t move towards you. But you want to dance! You want to see the sunset! You want to touch the grass! The fountain does all that for you with no strain, no burning, and no yucky dirt. It’s much easier this way. Let it take away your pain and leave only joy. The face flies away to the right and your head rolls over to follow. It returns to its stand on the wall and the arms that held you stand at attention next to it. Everything is still, and the terrible silence lasts a very long time.

Your left knee floats up and over and pulls after it your hip, then your buttock off the rough surface. You swing your ankle out into the air over the side of the platform you’re on. Where’s the fountain? Why did it leave you? Where’s the pleasure? Where’re the friends? Your left hip teeters up over your right, and you’re falling down towards the floor. For an instant you’re flying, then your knees ring with the impact and your nose is burning. You drop your cheek to the ground and your eye shuts against the cold and hard. You strain your other eye all the way to the left and see the unreacting arms and their blank face on the wall above you. There is no fountain. There is no longer any joy.

You try to lift yourself. You drag your hands up towards your shoulders to press the floor away. Your body is so heavy and so weak. The floor pushes into you and you into it; there is no uplifting, only sinking down. Your elbows drop. After a while a puddle spreads on the floor under your crotch. You lie in it until it chills you. You shiver. Time passes. The arms lift you and carry you back to the tank. They lower you into the heavy water and close the lid over you. The fountain springs into being before your face and pours its blessings into your eyes and ears. How you missed it! How lonely you were! How joyful the singing and the dancing and the playing! How free the sunshine and the wind in the leaves!

April 2022

When I enter the Ego Death bar, the bouncer shows me how to connect my personal machine to their local network. “Here ya go!” She waves at a sign next to her as I step through the door. “The party starts after midnight. Till then, grab a drink upstairs and take a look around.” I look back to ask her if I have to, but she’s already waving her metal detector over the person in line behind me.

These European places always have some sort of newfangled apparatus to “enhance the experience.” I connect my machine as asked and an overlay on my contact lenses swings into my visual field. I ignore it for the moment. The gimmicks on the lenses are usually advertising junk, but every so often you can get a discount out of it. I can always take the lenses out if it gets too annoying: these lenses are expensive, but essentially disposable; I have a pack of them waiting to be opened at home.

The ground floor of the Ego Death is a hastily converted restaurant: the retrospectively added pseudo-wood bar with brass-like trim awkwardly sprawls across the space past its original restraints; it cuts the room into weird corners and pockets, each nested in by someone looking to lose themselves in the stale wheat smell of too much spilled beer and the sticky sweet remnants of cola.

I elbow my way to the bar; the crowd is already beginning to press in warm and close. I order a vodka and something. I get a fizzy drink in a plastic cup for 8 euro. God I hope this gets me drunk—I need it. I clear out of the onslaught at the bar, sipping off the top of my drink to keep too much of it from getting on my shoes. I hold the drink above my head as I work my way around the bar to the row of high top tables packed in between the bar and the booths on the far wall.

I sit at the end of a six-top whose other end is occupied by an English pair. As I sit, I make brief eye contact with the girl; she doesn’t quite cringe, but she makes her displeasure at being interupted felt. I none too gracefully swing off the high chair with a creak of platicized leather and step away from their territory. I glance around and make brief eye contact with her; she smiles subtly: SYN — ACK. Message received.

I wander in search of a defendable position, preferably a corner or some other high ground. There is a tiny dance floor squeezed between the bar and a preposterously large DJ booth; a few dancers desultorily bounce to the beat. The back portion of the ground floor, tables and chairs, is even more hostile: I can smell the intolerable intimacy and avoid it. I circle back to an unoccupied corner of the bar next to the bussing station and plant my elbow in something sticky; this is my territory now.

I look around the crowding room, thinking how rediculous and animal we are; I know she agrees with me, her eye contact says so. Shocked, we look away. I wander my eyes around the room, tracing the darkened wood-like plastic trim up to the ceiling and around the plaster-like foam molding and down into her face opened directly at me, seeing me. Who sees me in a place like this? My face softens into a tiny smile that I intend to say “I see you too”. Her gaze shoots away from mine like a magnet turned the wrong way around.

The overlay swings back in to view. Did you like? Nod! I squint, confused. What’s this? If you didn’t, shake your head! Huh. I guess it’s some kind of opinion survey. Goddamn they’ll get anything to run on your machine nowadays. But if it makes the experience better, why not? When in Rome, do as the Romans’ programs want you to do. I nod; the overlay blinks to confirm and drops out of view. I just catch the girl nodding to herself, too.

Elsie and I used to go out together sometimes, but it’d get sloppy. I always wanted to go home early; she always wanted to keep dancing. I never got along with her friends, anyway: bunch of vapid twits. I guess we are the company we keep. But she got sick of me, as well she might get sick of someone who more than once voiced his unwelcome opinions of her friends outloud. At least once, he voiced it in front of her friends. It may have been this that caused them to dislike me, though at the time it seemed worth it to speak my truth. Was it worth the relationship? I suppose it must have been.

The bar is right crowded now; my strategic position on the counter is beginning to be challenged. A crowd of Americans close in on me, speaking loudly:

“And I said that, like, she’d have to, like, try wayyy harder than that to, like, keep up with me.”

“Totally bro!”

“Yeah, I mean, you know, she never, like, got on my level, man.”

“Yeah!”

These boys are each a solid eighty kilograms of meat, built like steer. Their tee shirts are monochrome and tight, their skin rippling and tattooed. The most ostentatios tattoos are animated: the rising sun on this one’s upper arm has rays that gently swirl against his warm skin. They’re clearly delighted to be in far-away Europe having a terrific time; I hope they all get laid tonight. Interested? No.

I abandon my position, my cup empty. In the meantime, the crowd has built up around the bar; people crowd and shove, none giving any ground in the struggle to drink from the frosted glass bottles stacked behind the bar. I swirl the watery ice around the bottom of my cup and drink the dregs of it; the ice rests on my teeth and chills them. I release the cup, sucked dry, from my lips. Invigorated, I try to elbow my way through the crowd; a matched set of girls speaking German growl as I try to push past, so I retreat. I’m not sure how badly I need a drink, anyway.

I drank more with Elsie: that’s how we got together. We met volunteering one summer, but our relationship was always impeccably professional. We were packing medical supplies to be shipped off to Bolivia to save the children dying of blood cancer or some such good deed. I don’t know that it was real—for all I know, the whole thing was a sham to look good on a CV.

Anyhow, the first day I arrived at the charity’s office, I knocked on the door and she opened it, pushing it out toward me. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She had soft brown hair and soft brown skin and soft maroon lips. She was wearing a too-big sweater that suggested the curve of her waist between her ribs and her hip; the sweater had fallen off her shoulder on one side, and her hair was loosely tied up.

“Here to volunteer?” I could feel my face flush as though bruised.

“Yes…?”

“Good, c’mon in.” She stepped back, holding the door open with her arm extended as I stepped in past her. For a moment, we faced one another, standing close enough that I could have leaned forward and fallen into her wide brown eyes, but my feet carried me past her into the office.

“Terrific,” she closed the door and followed me, “let’s see what you can do for us.”

The music is building in here as it approaches midnight. The popups in the overlay are becoming more insistent: interested? Sure, I guess; I don’t care. How about her? Yeah, why not. I’m not sure what it means, anyway. Certainly some sort of cross-promotion: it must be assessing my opinion of people’s hair styles or clothes or the way they’re standing or something. Do you like this one? Absolutely.

“Alright y’all, time to get the party started!” The door to the basement opens, revealing a narrow stone staircase winding down under the rediculous DJ booth into the bowels of the building. “The dance floor’s open, and there’s no line at the bar!” People begin to filter downstairs. I’m in no rush to dance; that was Elsie’s thing.

At the end of our summer together, the charity had a night out to thank the volunteers for their service. She wore a tight black skirt and a white tee shirt. Her nipples peeked through the taut cotton. Elsie, as always, was the life of the party. She led us in the dancing, a little circle of unsure colleages in a big, generic night club somewhere in the city. I stood obliquely to the rest of them, swaying slightly with the music. She stepped over to me and danced at me; I could feel the music through her body and my body began to swing with it.

Elsie danced completely freely. She knew, unselfconsciously, unarrogantly, that she was beautiful. She moved her body like an instrument; the speakers reacted to her body’s every twist and turn. Her hips bounced and the tweeters wailed; her shoulders rolled and the woofers groaned. My body rolled in with hers, closer and closer. Her hair, her skin, her lips were close enough to smell in the sweet sweat smell of exertion and attraction. Her hips closed on mine and my hands found her back.

The bar up here has pretty much emptied out, so I order another vodka and whatever from the bartender, who’s closing up shop. I taste my drink in the plastic cup—it’s heavy on the whatever. The overlay swings around again: head downstairs! I comply—that’s what I came here for, isn’t it? I duck down the stairs, descending into a dungeon; the pounding noise wells up toward me as I go down.

Delirous lights cut and splice human bodies: a cheek, a wrist, a thigh. Someone coming down the stairs behind me presses me forward, and we are forced ever closer together as our bodies gather in the too-warm cellar of the once-and-future restaurant. Ego death. That’s what it is: the bodies jump and the music pounds to their jumping; the speakers respond to the music of their moving together, echoing electric amplification of exertion and abandon.

The faces are blurred, distorted. I can see none of them clearly, except for the vague sense that there’s someone there. Her face is clear, though—the girl whom I saw earlier. We make eye contact once again; this time it holds. She’s illuminated by a light whose source I can’t see but which follows her, highlighting her cheeks, the tip of her nose; her lower lip casts a soft shadow and quivers. She smiles delicately, and I know that she sees me the way I see her: SYN — ACK.

We begin to dance together, and her queerly highlighted face, bright in the confused haze, approaches mine. Her hips and mine lean on one another, and my hand finds the small of her back. She rests her forearms on my shoulders and lets her head drop forward, swinging back and forth on her limp neck; the top of her head brushes my lips, and I can’t help but begin to kiss, breathing in the warm human-animal smell of her. It’s as though we’re alone in the room; everyone else has faded away to dull oblivion as the red-blue-green lights shatter and spin on her neck and shoulders and wrists.

“HEY!” I scream, “HOW COME YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL?”

She giggles. “YOU’RE CUTE TOO!”

“NO, I MEAN, THE LIGHT?” She leans against me and her head is warm on my chest—an intimate moment.

“IT’S THE SERVICE!”

“THE WHAT?”

“THE SERVICE!”

The damn thing in the damn contact lenses in the damn local network in the fucking…

I step back from her and reach for my eyes to pop the lenses out. She scowls and looks around: I get the sense I’m not the only one who looks angelic to her tonight. I finally get the damn things out; they scatter on the floor and are lost underfoot. The people slide into focus around me, green and blue and brown and silver and all the colors of every ranbow broken up and shaken together; and this girl is just one of them, already off looking for another match. And behind where she stood is Elsie, dancing with her own personal angel, his tattooed sunbeams rolling in the dizzy lights of Ego Death. And to me, she looks just like anybody else. Synchronize? — Acknowledge.

May 2021

The car slithered into the parking lot like a particularly aggressive species of beetle: all angles and sharp corners, its hooded headlights gazing angrily forward, daring anybody to tell the car’s owner that the car wasn’t worth the obscene amount of money that its owner had payed for it. The concrete was a dismal gray and reflected the dismal gray sky, which occasionally sent down a desultory rain drop to keep the concrete unpleasantly damp. The car parked. Its driver’s side door opened, and out stepped a man who, if possible, looked even more like an aggressive beetle than the car he stepped out of.

He looked up at the gray office building that rose out of the parking lot and embedded itself in the gray concrete sky. Its windows reflected the clouds. He walked towards the building like a man heading to his own execution: he always dreaded these appointments with the psychiatrist. The man’s clothes were gray, as were his eyes, face, and hair. Except for the red lights on the backs of the cars rushing past on their way from nowhere to nowhere, everything in sight was gray.

He reached the front door, which stubbornly refused to open automatically for him. He was reduced to pushing the “open” button, like a savage. The glass doors slid apart, and he entered into the gray lobby of the gray building. A gray receptionist asked him whom he had come to see; the man told them the name of his doctor. They (the receptionist) pointed him towards a bank of elevators on the left side of the lobby and told him which floor to go to. He walked over to the elevators and pushed the call button.

The elevator deposited him on the 27th floor with a smart ding. For a change of pace, this floor was a putrid shade of brown. He stepped out into the hallway and hesitated before picking a direction at random. He reached the end of the hallway without finding the door he was looking for, so he leisurely strolled back down the other way: he was in no rush and didn’t mind being late. Finally, he reached the door he was looking for; he took a deep breath in and out before opening it. He stepped in.

The waiting room had a few chairs, and a capsule coffee machine and water dispenser stood in the corner. A side table hold out-of-date gossip magazines. Yet another receptionist peered out at him through a window in the wall.

“I have an appointment for this afternoon,” he told her, “my name’s Stewart.” She smiled.

“The doctor will see you shortly,” she informed him. “Please have a seat while you wait.” He sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs and simmered for a moment. He stood up to make himself a coffee from the machine, but thought better of it. He poured himself a cup of water from the dispenser instead.

“Stewart?” He turned to see the psychiatrist waiting for him. “Come on back,” the little doctor said. Stewart followed the doctor back through a maze of hallways until they reached the doctor’s consultation room. The room was decorated, if you could call it that, with a jumble of not-quite-completely-tasteless fabrics: the couch was large diamonds, and the throw pillows boasted interlocking circles. Squares and crosses chased each other through the pictures hanging on the walls. The psychiatrist sat at the desk and opened his laptop; he gestured to the couch, on which Stewart obligingly sat.

“Just a second, let me pull up your file.” Stewart wondered whether this was the same psychiatrist he had seen last time. The face looked familiar, but you could never tell these days: it was even odds that the face had been ordered from a catalog rather than produced the old-fashioned way. Perhaps it was convenient for all psychiatrists to have matching faces: it certainly made Stewart feel crazy, which was all the better for the psychiatrists.

“So I see you’re taking 40 mgs of Exonall,” began the doctor. “Is that right?”

“No, I take 60 mgs of Tyroxol,” replied Stewart.

“Of course you do,” said the doctor, “and how is that?” Stewart never knew how to answer this question. The medicine had stopped the aching panic that gnawed at his solar plexus and sucked his lungs out of his anus, but it had stopped everything else, too.

“I can’t complain,” he finally replied.

“Hmm, very good,” said the doctor, who then spent several minutes typing notes into the computer. “And your sleep?” Stewart thought. He supposed that his did lie down at night, close his eyes, and open them again when it was morning. Did that count?

“I guess that’s alright, too,” he said.

“Terrific!” said the doctor, after several more minutes of note taking. “Is there anything in particular I can help you with today?” the doctor finally asked. The gears of Stewart’s mind turned. He longed to say…what, exactly? There was something he had to tell someone, and he didn’t know what it was. His chest ached.

“Umm…” was all he could manage. The doctor raised an eyebrow; nothing else in the room moved. Stewart was certain that he could hear the hair on his head growing as the silence lengthened between them. A lesser psychiatrist might have filled the painful silence with empty words, but the University of St John faculty of medicine had taught this psychiatrist better than that, as the diploma on the wall proclaimed. Stewart dragged his eyes down from the diploma to his psychiatrist, who hadn’t stopped staring at him. “I guess…” Stewart began. No, he thought, that’s not right; try again: “I feel…”

“You feel…” prompted the psychiatrist. Stewart longed to say “I feel nothing at all and everything at once,” but he was worried about looking crazy in front of the doctor. He settled for “I feel fine.” Technically, he did feel fine, as evidenced by how finely his life was going. He was a competent, though not outrageously terrific, employee/colleague/spouse/whatever. He couldn’t remember much about his life outside this building, but he was sure that he had no problems doing it acceptably well.

“That’s good to hear,” said the psychiatrist (type type type), “it sounds like your mood’s improved since we last spoke.” What mood? thought Stewart.

Out loud, he said, “feels that way.” The psychiatrist beamed.

“Then I’m happy to continue your treatment plan unchanged,” said the doctor. “That sound good to you?” Stewart said it sounded fine. “Is there anything else?” the doctor asked. Distantly, in the dim recesses of Stewart’s brain, a hundred thousand hominids were screaming and beating themselves as if they were on fire, though the fire was in their nerves and bodies and not where anyone else could see. Stewart’s face smiled placidly as his heart began to assault his rib cage.

“No, that’s everything,” he said through the smile that had taken up residence on his face. The hominids screamed and wailed their inhuman cries of agony within him. “Thank you, doctor.” He stood and began to leave. The doctor finished his last burst of note taking and smiled at him as he left.

“You can find your own way out?” the doctor said.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” replied Stewart. The doctor’s door closed behind him, and he was alone in the hallway. He picked a direction at random and began to walk. The hallway continued on a ways, then it turned to the right. Stewart turned with it. The hallway around the corner looked exactly like the hallway he had come down: putrid brown carpet, stale cream walls, and regularly spaced frosted-glass doors. He walked on. Behind one of the doors he passed, he heard sobbing.

“There, there,” came an awkward voice, “remember your skills.” The sobbing climbed several decibels and was joined by furious typing. Stewart cringed and moved on. After a seemingly infinite length, he reached another turn in the hallway, this time to the left. He hesitated. He felt as if the waiting room wasn’t this far from the doctor’s office, but he wasn’t sure. Behind him he heard the pattering of tiny feet, and then they were next to him and careening around the corner as the child they carried sprinted by him. He stepped around the corner to see where the child was going, but the child was gone. Must have gone into an office, Stewart thought. He shrugged to himself and decided to continue the way he was going. You’ve got to stick to something in life, even if that something is a random direction down a hallway. Stewart wasn’t sure he could think of anything else he had stuck to in his life. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he could remember anything about his life before he entered this building. The psychiatrist seemed to think he was doing fine, though, so he decided not to worry about it. The hundred thousand hominids in his head did his worrying for him.

This hallway carried straight on for what seemed like an impossible distance: looking behind him, Steward could no longer see the corner around which he had come. The hallway stretched on endlessly in brown, cream, and frosted glass. The building must come to an end somewhere, he reasoned to himself. If I keep going in a straight line, I’m bound to hit the end of it sooner or later. He peered down the hallway ahead of him, which seemed to extend endlessly into the distance. He decided that it must be his eyes playing tricks on him. Maybe this was another of the psychiatrist’s nasty pranks to make him feel crazier than he already felt.

He wanted to stop and ask for directions but didn’t know which of the infinitely many doors to knock on. He picked one and leaned against it to listen: “this office has 8 light bulbs in it, and the waiting room has 16,” he heard. No good: it wouldn’t do to interrupt a session in progress. He wandered on for a while before stopping at another door. “That’s alright, too,” he heard in a voice that was very familiar. He backed away from the door slowly: apparently his struggles weren’t so unique.

After an indeterminate amount of walking, he picked another door at random to listen to. He leaned against it and heard nothing, Timidly, he knocked. Still nothing. He eased the door open. Sunlight streamed out into the hallway, and Stewart was looking at rolling green hills, delicately filigreed with the gold of afternoon sun. He slammed the door in shock. When he finally worked up the courage to open it again, he found himself looking into an empty office decorated exactly like the one he had been in with the doctor. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head; the hominids screamed within him.

He carefully closed the door to the empty office and stood in the middle of the hallway. It extended endlessly off in both directions, an infinite series of identical doors. He began to feel the grip of anxiety tightening around his throat. He took a deep breath in…and out. Ah, that’s better. With a firm grip on himself and a deaf ear to the screaming hominids, he strode on down the hallway. A child sprinted past him.

“Wait!” he shouted, “where are you…” but the child was already out of sight. Some trick of perspective, he rationalized; these doctor’s offices seem as if they’re purpose built to drive you crazy. Given the exorbitant fees the psychiatrists charged for going crazy, he reflected that it was quite possibly true that they wanted him to feel a bit loopy. Another deep breath and he was off again. He chose to ignore his shaking hands.

As he continued down the hallway, which showed no signs of coming to an end, he began to think about his meeting with the doctor. Why had he said nothing, when he should have said something? Or perhaps: why did he say what he said, when he should have said what was inside him? He thought back to the last time he had told the truth to a psychiatrist (he wasn’t sure whether it was the same one): “doctor, I feel like my guts are trying to strangle me and my heart is playing xylophone on my rib cage.”

“Hmm,” said the doctor, who began to type furiously. Minutes later, he said, “I think we should increase your dose by 20 mgs.” Stewart tried to remember how long ago that was, but time was all jumbled up in his head. The increased dose had reduced his guts’ homicidal tendencies but did nothing to soothe the hominids he kept locked away in his brain. Them, he could live with. He always had.

Another child sprinted past, almost knocking Stewart over. “Hey!” Stewart yelled. The child ran on; Stewart ran after them. “Hey you, wait!” The child showed no sign of acknowledgment, except perhaps to run faster. Stewart clenched his jaw and picked up the pace. Their feet pounded the carpet: the child’s light, Stewart’s heavy. “Come back!” gasped Stewart, out of breath. The child ran on easily into the distance and was gone. Stewart stumbled to a halt and leaned against the wall, panting. He hadn’t run since…in fact, Stewart couldn’t remember the last time he had really run. He never seemed to need to in the life he couldn’t quite remember but which the psychiatrist assured him was going fine.

When his heart rate had returned to resting, Stewart tried another door at random and found himself looking into a movie theater. From the back of the house, he could see that all the seats were full. He stepped down the aisle, hopeful that one of these people would be able to give him directions.

“Oh, darling!” said one of the giant faces on screen.

“On my dear one!” replied the other. Their enormous lips collided with one another, and Stewart’s bowels quaked as the score rose to a booming climax. He peered down into the face of one of the audience members and was astonished to see a face that looked a lot like his psychiatrist’s; this face’s eyes were fixed on the movie.

“Excuse me,” whispered Stewart. No reply. He coughed awkwardly. “Excuse me,” he tried again, a little louder. Still nothing. He reached out to tap the person who might have been his psychiatrist on the shoulder.

“Stewart!” He started. The faces on screen were looking directly at him. “Please don’t disturb the audience,” they said in unison.

“Sorry,” he muttered and retreated back up the aisle. The on-screen couple resumed their kiss, each wet smack delivered in throbbing surround sound. He stepped back into the hallway and was almost crushed by a stampede of children.

He ran with them: wherever they were going, he wanted to go there too. And under his feet the brown carpet dissolved into brown dirt, and the hallway dissolved into the school yard, and the gray man and the gray building and the gray life that the psychiatrists assured him was going fine were gone, and he was 12—no, 10!—again and running a race with his friends in the delicate afternoon sunlight that crowned the green hills behind the school yard with gold. And there was no more life he couldn’t quite remember, and he ran and ran and ran as the cries and shouts of a hundred thousand children coursed through him as they rejoiced in freedom and in their lives as fresh and new as the green leaves that bud in spring.

June 2021

It happened again last night: I was doomscrolling¹ through the endless feed of trash videos the algorithm serves to me, and I scrolled right by it. The video: this time, it was called “do you want to be free?” No thumbnail, no channel, no view count: just a black rectangle, and the title: “do you want to be free?” Before I could react, my thumb had already scrolled past it; I scrolled up to look for it, but it was gone.

If you look up “do you want to be free?” on youtube (or for those following along at home, try: “how to be free”), lots of random junk shows up, among it gurus and sages, ready to dispense the wisdom of ages. All the world’s philosophies are recommended and available; you can learn how to break free of debt, the past, attachment, and all manner of things: an endless stream of content to watch that’ll, hopefully, liberate you. None of it was what I was looking for.

This video—If I can call it that—wasn’t like any of these. It wasn’t an answer to anything; it wouldn’t teach me anything. It had no transcendent wisdom to offer, none of the distilled teachings of eons digested into bite-sized videographic chunks. But as I scrolled past it, I knew that it was what I was looking for—something I didn’t even know I was missing until it’s too late.

This keeps happening: an article in a periodical will flash by and disappear, a book will be on a shelf as I skim by and gone when I go back to pull it out, or I’ll over hear snatches of a conversation whose participants I can’t find. Each time, I know immediately that this, whatever it is, is what I’m looking for; but by the time I realize it and go back to look, it’s already gone. It’s like something out of a weird story: I spend my time agonizing about what I’m going to do next, what I’m doing now, and what I already did and didn’t do. I’m so caught up in my own garbage that, when an answer appears, I don’t notice it. And when I do notice it, when it seeps into my thick mushy brain that this—​this!​—is what I was looking for, whatever it was is already gone.

But as I say, it happened again last night on the phone, while I was doomscrolling, burning out my retinas with 1080 by 2300 LCDs programmed by a distant algorithm that knows me better than I know myself. It was at this point that I gave up and went to sleep; the sun was long gone, and I had work in the morning. Still, my thumb seems to scroll of its own accord whenever I pick up the phone: it takes an active effort to put it down.

I dreamed that I was young again—a common recurring dream. I dreamed that I visited my childhood and walked through the halls of my old school just as they were when I walked through them for the first time. And I knew that I was an interloper, but my friends and teachers were there and welcomed me back, as if I had been away on a long trip. In some sense, I was coming back from a long trip: across the years, I reached back and touched the memories and the places in my heart where the memories are lodged.

I awoke to the sun: morning. Zhuangzi dreamed that he was a butterfly, and when he awoke, he asked whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man. I dreamed that I was a child, and when I awoke, I asked whether I was a child dreaming I was an adult. Still, my body is no longer a child’s, and I have seen too much of the world to retain a child’s innocent hope.

Like an adult, I went to work: I tagged clothes, took payments, and counted people coming in and out of the thrift store. I moved lazily, floating through the day. My thoughts ran in one course: “do you want to be free?” Free from what? Free from this? The tedium and the condescending managers and the obnoxious customers? What would I do instead?

“Joseph!” I came to, staring into space while I was standing at the cash register, “we’re closing.” I smiled and nodded: another day gone. I went home and stared into space until it was time to make myself dinner. I can’t say that I thought anything at all.

Sometimes, I try to read; but the more I read, the more my reading list piles up: every book, every story, every poem, carries with it hundred other books I should read but I haven’t. I’ve never even read the classical Chinese text that Zhuangzi’s butterfly parable comes from: I just know the anecdote from other sources. Another one for the list.

It’s easier just to doomscroll—there it was! Damn: too slow. Another video, asking: “who are you?” Again, no thumbnail, no channel, no view count or likes: just a black rectangle and the agonizing question: “who are you?” But it was gone off the top of the screen, and when I scrolled up, it was nowhere; I reached the top of my feed without finding anything besides cooking videos, video game let’s plays, and make-up community drama. An underwear model is starting his own CBD company. I put the device down and slept. “Who am I?” I ate my dinner and went to bed without coming up with anything in the way of an answer.

I dreamed that I was in a beautiful old city. Cobblestone streets wound around the bases of megaliths erected in a by-gone era to the glory and hubris of humanity. I walked along the twisting ways; around each corner, I found a vista more spectacular than the last. It seemed to me that these dizzying towers and cathedrals whispered to my heart: “be like us,” they said, “the patience of centuries is settled in our chinks and crannies. What nameless masons toiled to carve our stones, each one of which is a sculpture? What master plan arranged our design and construction? What hands and backs pulled and strained to put each stone neatly in its place?” The scent of the ages was unbearable: centuries, millennia wafted through the streets on the soft evening breeze.

I awoke with my face in my pillow and the sun in the window; its rays were just beginning to hazard their way into my room. I went to work again, where I thought of nothing except that ancient city and those ageless monuments. The sun marched inexorably across the shop floor, making of the mannequins and the clothes racks a sundial that testified to the passing day. When the sun shone across the shop at a steep angle, the manager emerged to close the door that I had been guarding.

“Stand here, Joseph, and let the last customers out.” Very well. After I saw them leave with their used fast fashion and garish plastic fascinators perched on top of their piggish heads, I left, too.

As I walked home, I passed a book shop—closed. In the window, nestled among the cast-off best sellers and the computer-generated romance novels, there was a void that opened onto an endless expanse of spirit and dreams. I almost didn’t notice it as I rushed by. As I passed it, I stopped and my eyes were pulled to it: before I knew what I was looking at, I was watching my dreams of cities, of my child-hood, of everything I didn’t know I lacked until that very moment, as they called to me from the abyss balanced delicately on the cheap shelf; we were separated only by a pane of glass. My heart rose within me.

I heard footsteps approaching, and I turned to watch a passer-by. When I looked back at the window, the void was gone: no more hope for me, just the mass-market fantasies they sell to palliate our aching and lonely hearts. Needles began to prick the back of my eyelids; I blinked the tears away as I walked home.

There were no interesting videos that night: I scrolled slowly and carefully, just in case. No dreams, either. Wake, work, repeat. So my days pass. I try to read, but I can’t focus; I try to write, but the words come out all wrong. What am I looking for? I don’t know—and when I realize I’ve found it, it’s too late: it’s already gone.

“Joseph!”

“Huh”—I’m at work, apparently. I can no longer tell waking from dreaming, not that there’s much to tell about either: I glide through both as a passive observer.

“Can you cover the register for a second?”

“Yeah, sure.” I assume the position behind the counter. Cash flows back and forth; I take clothes off of hangers and fold them into bags; “will that be cash or card?”—“would you like a receipt?”

“Joseph, I’ve come for you.” A voice, like trumpets and timpani, cuts to my innermost parts and wakes me from my stupor.

“Excuse me?”

“I said: are you taking donations?” A perfectly ordinary little woman with a perfectly plain voice peers up at me and holds out her black garbage bags of cast-off junk.

“Oh…uh, yeah. Just dump ‘em back there.” I point to the overflowing bin of random bags, piled up absurdly high: people donate anything that they want to get rid of but which they feel guilty about throwing away. We throw most of it away, anyhow. She thanks me and totters off with her gifts of precious junk.

That voice echos in my dull head: it knocks against the cotton candy stuffing between my ears. Where did it come from? Where was it going to take me? A customer steps up with their proud haul of last year’s fast fashion trends. I don’t think anymore while I check them out.

The store closes, and I walk home in the early evening breeze. The sun casts gold on the street from its comfortable perch on the western horizon. The bars and restaurants turn on their strings of electric lights that ornament the tables and awnings, all of them glowing gently like so many voltaic fireflies. At one of the sidewalk tables sits an angel, their wings folded behind them and their countenance outshining the afternoon sun and the electric lights, all of which dim in deference to this holy one who stepped down from heaven for a quick apéritif. They calmly sip white wine in the hazy warmth of the summer evening. I can’t help but stare, but nobody else seems to notice the messenger seated among them: the other tables are full of laughing, noisy people, all of them focused on what a great time they’re having.

The angel looks at me and smiles; they wave to me and gesture to indicate that I should come and join them. In a daze, I walk over to the host and say,

“Excuse me, I’m just going to join my friend. They’re sitting…” I point at the table at which the angel calmly sits calmly sipping wine but which I now see is empty, “there,” I finish lamely; I chuckle nervously as the host gives me a look. “You know, I must have been mistaken: I’ll go check next door.” I scurry away, leaving the host to deal with the sunburned and wrinkled good-time retirees who stumbled up to the entrance behind me.

I ponder these things as I walk home—was it the angel whose voice I heard? Or was it the one who sent them who spoke to me? I enter my little apartment. I put peanut butter on bread: my hands feel too swollen to cook—not an actual swelling, but they feel huge and numb like oven mitts.

In my dream that night, the angel and I are walking through the halls of my old school; the trees are green and the light filters softly through into the old building through the windows. I say, “isn’t it the wrong time of year to be playing the ghost of Christmas past?” They smile. We sit down in the dining hall, which my memory has embellished with chandeliers. Teachers and students gather for lunch. Nobody seems to notice my companion, but they’re happy to see me, as always in these dreams.

Together, the angel and I leave the school building and walk out into the streets of the ancient city, which I know to be the angel’s home. They seem as much part of the city as the cobblestones and the megaliths. I long to be here with them, but I know that I am only visiting from a long way off.

I awake feeling satiated: with the sun streaming into my room, the dream of another day begins again. Work is slow and uneventful. I go to the bathroom and doomscroll absent-mindedly as I’m on the toilet. There it is! “What do you want?” The video’s there, and I stop my thumb from scrolling past. It sits still on the screen, waiting for me. I hesitate: do I want to open it here, now? If I don’t open it now (toilet or no), then I might not find it again. I tap it with my thumb. It loads, slowly. Damn the shoddy signal in this pit! Finally, it begins to play:

“What do you want?” Yes—there’s the voice! It’s not the same coming out of the tiny phone speaker as it was when it pierced my heart out of the ether, but it’s the same heavenly voice nevertheless. The screen’s still black. “Do you want to be free?” Oh yes, voice, I want to be free to join you in the eternal city of my childhood. “Is your life a dream, and your dreams only memories?” How does this voice know me and my innermost self? There on the screen is the angel—its is the voice that speaks. It says: “come to the Holy Mountain Retreat Center; we’ll take care of everything.” Plinky piano music starts up as a mock version of the stone city from my dreams fades into view. “We offer many services, including…” I close the video in disgust. Damn advertisers—they always know just how to get to you.