The silver-glowing red sands stretched endlessly before me, a vast and indifferent sea of dust that shifted under every step. My boots sank into the dunes, leaving crisp imprints. I tried to move silently but those footprints wouldn’t allow such a thing. It wasn’t the sound of my feet as I crossed the sand that caused the commotion…

The footprints left by each step I took began to whisper. Exhaled secrets I had long buried, things I had thought were forgotten by the universe began to emerge:

remember when you called your third-grade teacher ‘mom’ in front of the whole class?

I heard wavering quietly from someplace behind me.

I stopped walking, but the whispering continued…

that time you tripped in front of your high school crush and tried to turn it into a dance move?

do the stumble shuffle!

another footprint whispered, wheezing, barely containing its laughter.

The desert was supposed to be empty–to be quiet–instead, the sands echoed with a chorus of my own humiliations, murmuring them with glee.

I tried stepping lightly, barely letting my feet graze the surface.

It didn’t matter.

Even the faintest impressions found their voices.

what about that weird phase when you tried to convince people you were british for a whole summer? 

I groaned, dragging my hands across the gas mask. “I was twelve. Let it go.”

But the desert would not let it go.

I sank into the sand, forced to endure the relentless murmurs of my own footprints, gleefully resurrecting every long-buried embarrassment. Overhead, the moons continued their quiet conspiracy, still whispering insults about the size of my ass.

That was when the wind, which up until now had been a mere background presence, decided it was time to contribute. It released a long, dramatic sigh, speaking at full volume as it swept past me.

“Oh,” it muttered, dripping with condescension. “We’re stopping now, are we? That’s… a choice.”

I stood, gritting my teeth and kept moving. 

The wind huffed again: “Left? Huh. Okay. If that’s what you think is best.”

I stopped abruptly, looking around as if I could find the source of the commentary. “What is your problem?” I demanded.

The wind swirled lazily, lifting a wave of sand that immediately worked its way into my clothes, my boots, my ears. “Oh, nothing,” it replied innocently. “You just have such interesting decision-making skills. It’s fascinating, really.”

I swore under my breath and turned in the opposite direction just to spite it. 

The wind practically howled with judgment.

“Really? That’s what you’re going with? Wow.”

The footprints, never content to be left out, piped up again.

hey, remember when you confidently waved at someone you thought you knew, but it turned out to be a total stranger? then, instead of playing it off, you doubled down and pretended you meant to wave at literally everyone?

I clenched my fists and picked up the pace. The footprints and the wind followed.

or that time you thought someone was waving at you, so you waved back, but they were actually waving at the person behind you?

oh, that was so painful to watch.

The wind whistled through the dunes, smugly: “You do get yourself into the most interesting situations.”

I ignored both the wind and my own treacherous footprints and pressed on. Ahead, the dunes rippled under the moonlight, their crimson sands shifting like restless waves. The sky loomed vast and cracked above me, the twin moons judging my rear…I knew I would find someplace quiet to sleep ahead---somewhere free from judgmental wind and gossiping ground.

Or at least, I hoped to.

I trudged forward, determined to outpace my own past.

Behind me, the desert whispered,

oh man. he really thinks he’s getting out of this.

The wind snickered. “Bless his heart.”

As I crested the dune, I spotted something that hadn’t been there before: a man---or at least something approximating one---standing beside a desk in the middle of the desert. His suit was crisp, perfectly tailored, but his body inside it was all wrong, as if someone had stuffed a sack of raw meat into business attire and hoped for the best. His skin had the damp, pallid sheen of something recently thawed, stretched too tightly over his face, pulling his lips into an unnatural, greasy grin. His eyes were mismatched---one too large, bulging and watery, the other sunken deep into his skull like it had tried to escape but didn’t quite make it. A faint, wet clicking sound accompanied every blink. He adjusted his tie with fingers that were just a little too long, the knuckles swollen and glossy, and beamed at me with the unsettling confidence of a man who had always been there, waiting.

“Ah! Perfect timing!” he chirped. “I was just about to give up on you. You have got to see these listings.”

“What,”---I managed.---“the actual hell.”

He produced a stack of glowing papers from thin air. “Now, I know what you’re thinking---where does one find a proper home in the red sands? Worry not! I have two incredible options, each uniquely suited to your…” He paused, glancing at me up and down. “…circumstances.”

He snapped his fingers, and behind him, a colossal, battered leather boot materialized, its opening yawning like a cavern.

“Behold! The Giant’s Shoe! Spacious, surprisingly well-ventilated, and---get this---fully furnished! Downside? Once a week, the giant it belongs to comes stomping around, demanding to know who’s been sneaking into his footwear. Minor inconvenience, really.”

I frowned. “What happens if he finds me?”

The agent waved a dismissive hand. “You know giants---grumbles, threats, existential terror. He’s never actually caught a tenant yet.”

I was about to question further when a yurt popped into existence beside the shoe. The fabric rippled as if breathing.

“Now this---this one is art,” the agent sighed. “A Sentient Yurt! Cozy, self-warming, and emotionally aware.”

The yurt shifted, eyeing me suspiciously. “How many other places have you looked at?” it demanded in a gruff, deep voice with a Trans-Atlantic accent.

I hesitated. “Uh, well, I mean, technically, I---”

The yurt gasped. “You looked at the shoe first? And now you expect me to just welcome you? Oh no, no, no. I will not be your second choice.”

“I didn’t---”

The flap slammed and zipped

The agent sighed. “He’s so dramatic. You sure you don’t want the shoe?”

I pinched the mask where it sat on the bridge of my nose. “I’ll find my own place.”

The wind huffed. “Oh, now he’s picky.”

The agent, unfazed, gestured toward the horizon, where a picturesque house stood. “Well, there’s always this option. Classic, charming, reasonable commute,” his slimy words seemed to wiggle in the wind. 

I shook my head, muttering, “Fine. That one will be fine,” and began walking toward it.

I walked toward it for an hour. It never got any closer. The horizon seemed to stretch, elongating itself in a cruel joke at my expense. I picked up my pace. Still, it remained just as distant, a mirage of purpose in this endless, indifferent wasteland. At some point, the second moon shifted in the sky, casting long, unfamiliar shadows across the cracked earth, and I realized I had been walking for far longer than I intended. The air smelled of static and old bones. My feet ached. My hope withered.

I gave up and found a cave instead---rather convenient, actually. A lucky break, or so I thought. Then I heard the skittering. The sound of dozens of little feet, too large to belong to anything comforting. From the darkness emerged creatures that defied reason: cryptid things resembling discarded wigs with human faces, their expressions frozen in manic glee. Each one stood in a pair of oversized clown shoes that squeaked with every movement, a horror show of synthetic hair and squealing rubber. The smell hit me next---burnt rubber and rotting fruit, pungent and cloying, a scent so thick it seeped into my pores and wrapped itself around me like a second skin.

They attacked. I defended myself with the only weapons at my disposal---rocks, frantic kicking, and pure, undiluted exhaustion. The battle raged longer than it had any right to, a ridiculous war waged against creatures that should not exist. Eventually, they scattered into the shadows, leaving behind only their foul odor and the eerie echo of their laughter. I collapsed onto the cave floor, breathless and victorious, and for the first time in what felt like ages, I slept.

When I woke, the world was silent. I sat up, bones protesting, and pulled out my laptop. I opened it without thinking, more out of habit than hope, and let my fingers dance across the keyboard. Hours passed in a haze of typing before realization struck me like a cold slap: my battery had not drained a single percentage. Even stranger, a WiFi signal called HotSpotOrifice blinked strong and steady in the corner of the screen. I froze. My hands hovered over the keys. I had no idea where the signal was coming from. No idea what I might have connected to. And yet, the words kept pouring from me, as though something unseen wanted me to write...while I was at it, I decided to make some much needed changes to the website also.

The teal sky rippled with waves of shifting light and shadow; its surface webbed with cracks as though it were brittle bone china---forever at risk of splintering under the weight of its own fragility. It was somehow both delicate and alive, quivering and rippling like a bowl of turquoise pudding. The fractures spanned the heavens like a shattered dome, their jagged outlines shivering and vibrating. At times, they oscillated wildly, sudden surges of movement jostling through the cracks with a chaotic energy that seemed certain to push the sky past its breaking point.

By all rights, these spasms should have spiderwebbed into ever-expanding veins, splintering the already fractured surface until it crumbled entirely. I half-expected shards of it to rain down in lethal javelins, spearing the sands below where I passed silently. Yet, inexplicably, not a single new rupture appeared. For all its trembling, the sky refused to collapse.

As I walked beneath this precarious canopy, I considered the rules---or lack thereof---governing this strange dimension. The fractures looked like brittle fault lines, ready to crack open with the next untoward movement, a stray gust, or the faintest brush of a celestial hand. Yet they didn’t. The sky, with all its apparent fragility, held fast. It seemed to announce its own paradoxical nature: a permanence built on perpetual instability.

Everything here teetered on the edge of collapse...and yet, it wouldn’t. The reason why was both maddeningly simple and profoundly strange: the sky seemed to remain intact precisely because it was constantly trying to break apart. Its precariousness wasn’t a flaw---it was the single mechanism sustaining it.

That rule seemed to apply to everything I’d encountered so far. No evidence existed to prove otherwise, and my mind found no reason to argue the point.

When the sun set, it didn’t linger on the horizon like a soft farewell.

It fell.

D
 r
  o
  p
  p
  e
   d.

Instantly, it was yanked with adept precision. A precision I knew and shared with whatever unseen hand that had stolen it. I myself have snatched and will continue to enjoy snatching candy. Right from the hands of unsuspecting babies. The exhilaration one gets from the act of pulling sweets from their grubby, sticky fingers and vanishing into the wind, completely unseen by their parents or caretakers is one of my many talents. The sight of this triggered such thoughts and my skin tingled with satisfaction.

It is important to make places in your life for the simple pleasures---for things that amuse you. My therapist calls this “self-care.”

The darkness left behind was immediate and deafening. It wasn’t like the soft descent of Earth’s nightfall, with shadows slowly blanketing the world. No, this was different. The absence felt violent, as if the light had been punched out of the sky and swallowed whole. It was like standing on the edge of everything, only to find the ground beneath you had been obliterated by the fist of nothingness. The void left in the sun’s wake was so profound, it seemed less like an ending and more like the absence of a beginning itself. I twisted my nipples and licked my lips. Something about the ominosity turned me on just a little bit.

When the stars flickered to life, they did so gradually, unevenly---like old fluorescent tubes sputtering to warm up in an abandoned office, forgotten and left to dust and silence. Their light was cold and mechanical, faintly intrusive, and it cast the vast emptiness around me into sharp, unforgiving relief.

The moons arrived as abruptly as the sun had vanished. They slid into view from opposite sides of the sky, moving laterally in a deliberate, uncanny motion that felt oddly conspiratorial. They stopped only when they hung close enough to whisper across the void about me. Perhaps that sounds paranoid, but I could feel their proximity, their unwelcome attention pressing down on me like a weight I couldn’t shake. 

I also heard them whisper about how small my ass was---which is a completely untrue, blatant lie. My ass is voluptuous.

One of them was battered and familiar---our moon. Its silver face, patterned with pocks and craters, had been imprinted in my mind through countless Earthly nights spent stargazing. The second moon, however, was something else entirely: much larger. The surface jagged and ominous---scarred as though by the claws of some cosmic predator. Deep gouges seemed to furrow its face like the hand of someone unhinged had repeatedly dragged a blade across the surface for their own amusement, digging out wounds that never closed. The entire surface seemed to have trenches so profound and shadowed they had the depth required to swallow the light of the stars themselves. 

As I moved across the desolate expanse of red sand, the light from the moons cast everything in unnatural tones of grayscale, bright yet lifeless, the glow from the pair of moons seemed to be nearly as bright as an overcast day and the brightness of their light turned the desert around me into a landscape of sharp contrasts. Every shadow ran deeper. Every detail was laid bare. 

It wasn’t their light but the weight they seemed to radiate that unnerved me most. 

The moons loomed unreasonably low overhead and their gazes felt unflinching. At first, I thought it was my imagination. Then the uneasy sensation of being watched began to gnaw at me. Before I identified the source I could feel the eyes of something sentient, emotionless and hungry tracking my path through the sands that, though red in the daytime, appeared now in silver.. When the sun fell out of the sky, the wind picked up, blowing the sand around me like a shimmering ethereal fog that swirled, moving like something alive.

Despite the soft howl of the wind and the other sights and noises crafted by the slow progress of night here, instinctively I could feel the presence of a watcher in the darkness and I slowed my steps, quieted my breathing and hoped to hear something---some movement or some hint to tell me where this lurking presence spied on me from.

There was nothing.

Nothing moved in the bright dark.

When I looked up, I knew. The feeling of peeling, prying eyes that quietly tore into me and pulled at the loose strings of my layers, leaving me naked and vulnerable in this unfamiliar place wasn’t coming from somewhere near me on the ground, but up above instead. The moons weren’t merely watching---they were judges seated at the bench in the front of the courtroom, weighing my every move with silent scrutiny in the hope that they could render their impartial verdict for any crimes I may have perpetrated unwittingly.

I could feel the cold, craterous focus of their judgmental gazes pressing down on me with an impartial, yet eagerness to render their pronouncements upon me. Their attention was undeniable and entirely indifferent. 

Any verdict reached between them would be absolute.

I kept moving, the sand crunching beneath my feet---the only defence available to me was my refusal to stop.

Now…where were we?

That’s right. I remember now…

I was trying to remember about that thing I forgot.

I knew beneath that velvet veil, there would be a crystal eye. It's just how I keep all my memories. Within that eye would be the vision of the missing moments---a locked memory that I could unlock simply by removing it from its hiding place and bringing it somewhere else inside me. Somewhere more accessible.

Like the place where I keep every pornographic thought I’ve ever had.

That corner of debaucherous musings is impossible to lose---it’s a place I visit without fail, at least once every ten minutes or so. Nothing could be hidden there. It’s too frequently explored, too brazenly exposed.

Yes. That would be the perfect place to put it.

...If I could ever get my hands on it.

I didn’t realize it would be quite that easy. The moment I thought of a specific place to move it---there it was.

I blinked, stunned, and not just because I was now sitting in non-linear space inside my mind in a room full of gay porn. Yes, there’s even weird stuff, guys.

The memory I’d been struggling to collect was suddenly in my lap.

I reached out, pulled away the velvet veil, and stared into the secret it held.

The crystal eye replayed the recollection in a loop across its smooth glass surface, the images crawling with a terrible, vivid clarity. I watched it over and over:

I was fine at first, in the moments after the toilet had heaved me up and expelled me from the cosmically digestive sewers of the universe. Then my body began to shake. My vision blurred and grew dark as convulsions overtook me. The perspective shifted---I was no longer in my own body. I was above myself, hovering near the ceiling, staring down in helpless horror as I seized on the floor for nearly five minutes.

That was the moment.

That was when this room seeped inside me.

I retreated from my thoughts, shaken, and returned to the here-and-now---the bathroom floor beneath me and the wall I leaned against.

I couldn’t help but look at my many reflections. They were everywhere, staring back from every surface…

...Except, at first, they weren’t staring back at all.

Then all at once, they were.

I raised a hand and waved it, watching as the reflections mimicked me---but just slightly too late. The lag was almost imperceptible, but it was there.

I have got to get the fuck out of here.

That was my thought as I scrambled to my feet and began searching for the door.

There was no door.

“What the fuck?” I muttered, spinning around.

I scanned the room again---surely I’d missed it. Surely it was somewhere.

No. There was ACTUALLY no door.

There were windows, though. Through one, I could see the peak of a waterfall as it cascaded down the face of a cliff, distant and surreal. But all the windows were far too high to reach, and even if I could, they were too small to fit through.

That was the sound I’d heard when I first woke up---the waterfall. I could still hear it now, but it was faint, woven into the fabric of other sounds. The persistent drip of water that seemed to---but also---didn’t seem to come from the pristine sinks. The faint hum of the air conditioner, doing next to nothing to counter the slow rise of heat from the red tiles as they reflected the sun blasting through those unreachable windows.

Thermal infrared trapping. I thought. That was definitely mine.

Solar heat gain. Also definitely mine.

I wiped sweat from my brow, only to find more instantly pooling. The heat wasn’t unbearable---not yet---but the claustrophobia crept in waves, its weight pressing against me more with every passing second.

My breathing quickened. The sound of it grew louder, bouncing off the spotless tiles until it began to mingle with the drip-drip-drip and the faint roar of the waterfall. The air conditioner sputtered above me…

Sputtered.

Went quiet.

The sweat came now in earnest---not just from the rising heat, but from the rising panic bubbling inside me.

The light from the windows bore down, unbroken and merciless. It carried no haze, no dust, no imperfection---just an intense, fiery clarity that pressed against my skin and my thoughts alike.

I stared at the walls again, at the reflections---at the empty, gleaming perfection of this place.

No one had ever come in.

And there was no way out.

There was no dust. No fingerprints. No scratches on the tiles. No signs of use or wear.

Because no one had ever been here before.

That thought wasn’t mine.

“That can’t be true,” I said aloud, the sound of my voice snapping against the sterile walls like brittle glass. “Someone built this! Bathrooms don’t just pop into existence. Someone’s been here---look at all the toilets, the sinks. Someone had to put these here.”

Even as I said it, I knew the words weren’t true. This place put itself here. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. That one was mine. One hundred percent.

The room’s perfection wasn’t maintenance---it was absence. No footsteps to stir debris, no bodies to shed skin, no life to decay.

There was no way in. No way out.

The realization slithered in, subtle at first, then suffocating:

There’s no dust because dust is made of skin. Dead skin.

Wait---that one’s not mine. I don’t think that’s even true.

Could I go out the way I’d come in? I wondered, stepping into one of the toilet bowls.

I flushed.

Nothing happened.

I flushed again.

Still, nothing happened.

I flushed and flushed and flushed and flushed.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

It was important NOT TO PANIC!!

Maybe I could trick myself?

Whenever I feel afraid,
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune,
So no one will suspect
I am afraid.

The stupid fucking song from Rodgers & Hammerstein worked---for about five seconds---useless---not nearly long enough.

So I kept going, improvising:

This room has no way out,
There’s also no way in.
No dust nor filth resides within,
This room is lacking skin.
I am afraid

I froze.

I hadn’t thought those words---but I’d heard them come out of me.

I pressed my hand instinctively against the filter of my gas mask.

Oh, that’s right. You forgot I was wearing this, didn’t you? Or maybe you didn’t even know? Well, now you do. Never take it off. Not ever.

It’s a whole thing. Inexplicably linked to my entire persona. My therapist says it’s a metaphor---something about keeping people from seeing my vulnerabilities, from ever really knowing me.

She’s wrong, of course. She’s also a mean bitch I pay to make me feel bad for forty-five minutes so I can pay her to make me feel better in our next session later.

I don’t take the mask off. Ever. But sometimes, I loosen it so I can eat or drink. That’s allowed. That’s all.

Right now, I realized, I could really use a few gulps of water to calm down and figure this whole thing out.

I walked to one of the sinks and turned it on.

The reflection in the tap was already laughing at me.

The liquid that spilled from the faucet wasn’t water. Not at all.

My hand was beneath the tap when I turned the handle, too distracted to notice until it was too late. The liquid light hit my skin, so blindingly bright at first that I had to look away. The sting came a moment later. I pulled my hand back instinctively, but the light didn’t drip off like water.

It seeped into me.

My hand grew unstable---undulating, translucent---impossibly fluid. It wasn’t flesh anymore, but something else. Something made entirely of that liquid light. It rippled faintly, still shaped like a hand but no longer solid.

What if---

Can I turn the faucet back on with my wet hand? I wondered. Is it solid enough to move shit?

I reached out, and the liquid hand moved just as well as the one I’d lost. When I turned the faucet again, the mechanism responded, as if it too were part of this terrible logic.

But then came the next thought---the one I couldn’t ignore. It slithered in, unbidden, leaving a trail of cold dread behind it.

Can I put my hand through the sink strainer?

The restroom screamed in my mind. Every idea it had planted there cried out in agony, like the room itself was afraid of what I might do.

I hesitated, but only briefly. Every reflection of myself in the room turned to stare at me. They didn’t look amused anymore. They looked pissed. Furious, even.

I pressed my finger against the holes in the strainer anyway.

I watched as my fingertip passed through the metal grid as though it wasn’t there. The drain swallowed the light, my finger bending and shimmering as it seeped through. When I pulled it back, it was whole again, both fluid and solid—still my hand, but changed.

I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t care anymore.

This was the way out.

I turned the faucet fully open. The liquid light gushed out, a flood of brightness cascading into the sink and pooling in the basin.

For a moment, I hesitated.

Then courage---or maybe recklessness---rose in me like fire, and I pressed my head beneath the flow of liquid light.

I felt myself fall forward.

And then I fell through.

I awoke on the gleaming floor to the relentlessly quiet sound of movement---a low, thrumming energy that resonated just on the edge of hearing, stretching endlessly, almost footed, almost consonant, but never fully forming.

I blinked away the confusion as I stared at myself in the reflective sheen of the floor. My face, shining back from the countless crimson tiles, felt insectile---fractured, as though seen through the compound eyes of botflies burrowing between flesh to brood the clutches of their eggs, nestling them---burying them---beneath the pooling blood. Each individual version of myself viewed back through that kaleidoscopic vision, individually, a thousand viscerally uncomfortable tiny me’s writhed together in unison. As I stared at them, they stared back at me. 

But they felt---different---somehow. I couldn’t see what that difference was at first, but I knew it was there, lurking beneath their mirrored gazes.

Wait---something was happening in my head---to my thoughts… I could feel it. I would never put that much alliteration right at the beginning of a new chapter. Not ever.

It’s a literary sign---a flashing red light---used to illustrate a character’s descent into madness it’s the same with low, thrumming sounds that never seem to end.

GASP! I gasped! The realization hit me like a brick.

Something else is doing this.

This immaculate restroom really was nefarious! I knew it! Called that right as soon as I got here. Never liked it! Not from the first moment the toilet belched me up. 

It was putting thoughts inside my head---ones I didn’t make.

What’s that one? That creepy one over there? Is that mine?

Oh. Yup. The one about performing surgeries at a school for the blind? See, you start by removing every student’s eyes while they sleep and then you make them eat their own eyeballs back by mixing them into the cafeteria food---that one’s mine for sure. I thought of that one yesterday.

But that other one? The one about being wrapped up and swallowed whole by a spider that unhinges its jaw like a boa constrictor? Nope. Too stupid to be mine.

There were things in my head that didn’t belong there. Things that found cracks, crevices, or pores that led all the way inside.

I am fascinated by dark things. I welcome them. But instinctively, I could feel the smooth pull of this lustrous place, leading me deceptively into corners that looked pristine and bright. I knew better. It was all surface patina---a glamour hiding something much darker beneath.

The room was feeding me opaque thoughts---darker than the ones I usually made myself. Most were shocking simply for the sake of it, so they were easy to spot. A lot of them were stupid, but for every dumb idea I noticed weaseling its way in, there was one that was disturbingly good. Some were so close to something I’d think of on my own that I couldn’t tell whether they belonged to me or not.

It was kind of neat.

But also bad---very, very bad.

Not good.

Already somewhat unhinged, it takes twice the effort to drive me into unrelenting madness. I come and go from places like that at will.

I guarantee I will notice if I’m being manipulated into them.

This is the worst bathroom in the whole fucking world---because I love it just as much as I hate it. 

That’s what I thought rose from the floor. On the surface, it simply appeared too clean, but there was so much more lurking beneath. Most people wouldn’t notice it, but I always dig deeper because I never forget to bring my shovel.

So many of the dark musings that visited me in the moments I sat staring at myself on every surface, everywhere---amusing as they might have been---were seeds implanted in me.

The horizon folded, swallowing the final house. Mine.
The flowers bled when touched too gently. Classic me.
The raven stared. I stared back. We both found it awkward. Boring. Not mine.
A bullet with butterfly wings. This one’s The Smashing Pumpkins’. Come on, Bathroom...not even trying.

Each one struck me with a peculiar clarity, as if the thoughts weren’t being formed but broadcast---fully realized and uninvited. It wasn’t inspiration. It was invasion. A way for the room to give birth to perceptions horrifying and alien to the person forced to endure them.

In a way, I found it delightful. Exciting, even. But I knew better. Letting it feed me these things would lead only to destruction, wrapped in a prettier package. I could feel the room’s potential to consume me, to seduce me willingly into abandoning what was mine. The allure of the strange and the new was potent, dangerous---a parasitic temptation veiled in fascination.

I could feel it already: a preference developing, a taste forming---a taste for the room’s artificial over my organic.

I have to get out of here.

I leaned my back against the wall, and everywhere I looked, I was there. Reflected. Staring back at myself from every surface, every angle. The screws holding the cubicle walls together gleamed with distorted visions of me, fractured and endless, like I was being slowly multiplied into infinity.

What had happened before this? Before I woke up here, sprawled on this flawlessly gleaming surface?

I couldn’t remember.

The question churned in my mind as a compulsion rose within me---stupid, irrational, and irresistible. Without any second thoughts, I reached one of my hands up, underneath and blew my nose into my palm---then smeared it across the gleaming scarlet tiles.

GASP! I gasped again.

Then I gasped again, reflexively dragging the sound back into myself, where I felt it rattle like an insect as it threw itself against my fillings. Mine. No wait–not mine? Can it be both? Is that a thing?

I watched in horror as the sticky smear of boogers and stringy mucus began to dissolve, as if the tiles themselves hungered for my filth. In moments, it was gone, absorbed into the surface like water into dry sand. The burnished sheen returned, somehow brighter---cleaner---than before.

I am unclean.

I must end myself so my filth can, in turn, be absorbed.

Absorb my filth. Swallow my disgustingness.

I must be rinsed away and made to gleam.

STOP THAT.

The command snapped through my mind like a whip, silencing the intruding thoughts. That one---I didn’t like it. That one wasn’t mine.

What the hell was going on? Had it really taken so little time for this place to make a move that bold?

Something was missing. A misremembrance. A sequence of events that had slipped through the cracks. I could feel it, like a black thread dangling just out of reach. Something was lurking at the edge of recollection, precariously perched on the top shelf of a dark, nebulous place inside me where such memories were kept. Forgotten. Filed away for safekeeping, serving no purpose but to weigh me down.

And it wanted out.

I could see the shelf, feel the memory sitting there, a heavy, tangible weight just out of reach. Yet the harder I reached for it, the further it receded, pulling away as if the very act of wanting it drove it deeper into hiding.

The space around it wasn’t linear---it shifted, expanded, stretched like something alive and malicious, taunting me. The shelf flowed through the twisting walls as though it belonged to water rather than solid space. I tried to trap it, to build a room in my mind where it could stay locked in place, but the room always dissolved, the walls crumbling into smoke as the shelf slipped away once more.

I could never glimpse the memory itself. It was cloaked in a velvet veil of black so impenetrable that even its shape eluded me. Its presence was undeniable---a pulsing void with a gravity all its own---but its substance remained unknowable, an enigma wrapped in shadows.

It felt cruel. Deliberate. As though some unseen hand delighted in this game, placing it just close enough to taunt me but always out of reach. Yet every time the shelf withdrew, disappearing into some newly conjured labyrinth of twisting passageways, I found my way back to it. Not by choice, but by the maddening truth that it could be moved but never erased. Hidden, but never gone.

And each time I found it, navigating the maze became easier. Every twist, every false room, every dead end burned itself into my mind, carving a map. My understanding grew sharper with each attempt, the paths more familiar. I was learning the game. And I knew---sooner or later---I would win.

But then, seeking this memory became suffocating. The space around me grew hostile, filling with viscous smoke that stuck to the walls, folding them inward like collapsing lungs. I realized with growing horror that the smoke wasn’t smoke at all---it was alive. A swirling, syrupy obscurity of obsidian honey, writhing and choking with intent. It clung to me like tar, pooling at my feet and rising higher with each step, dragging me down. I stumbled and staggered, my body sticking to every surface as the syrup surged forward, determined to drown me in its depths.

Still, I watched this space---mine, within my mind, belonging to me---as it fought to prevent me. It no longer waited until I reached the memento to retreat. Now it was in constant motion, shifting endlessly, knowing that my determination was unflagging.

It feared me.

It feared what I would do if I reached that shelf....

I had been writing all afternoon, sitting in the same spot so long that my legs were useless numb little meat-sticks. For years, I’d done all my work this way---while occupied with something mundane: taking a shower, walking the dog, or sitting in a waiting room. My best ideas always came out from the dark little corners where they hid when my body was busy, and my mind was loosed upon the page to soar. 

My best shit always came out when my actual shit did.

I was writing on the toilet.

You might find that inappropriate, or strange, or even disgusting---the idea of sitting there, pants pooling at your shins like a snake’s carelessly discarded skin, your imagination spilling out as freely as…well. You have every right to think whatever you like and to go away and write your own boring story I won't read because you're kind of a dick.

Life is about choices.

Writing while I take a deuce is one of mine.

The flush was supposed to be simple---stand up, look down, admire, wave goodbye, and woosh.

That’s all it ever was.

But this time? This time was different.

This time, the flush became something voracious, alive, and determined to change my life forever.

I pressed the handle, and instead of taking everything away, the water swirled into a shrieking, spiraling maw. Both hand and mouth at once, it reached up from the porcelain depths to grasp at me.

I should have run, but I froze. The water twisted into long, translucent fingers, wrapping around my ankles and yanking me off the ground. Then it pulled me down---sucked me into the funnel and swallowed me whole, slurping me into a tube that circled around me. It spun so fast it was impenetrable. I pressed against it, but it was like trying to claw my way through liquid glass.

It yanked me from the filthy Denny’s bathroom where I’d been perched, half-naked, for four and a half hours with my laptop bridging the gap across my nudity. One moment, I was buttoning my pants; the next, I was tumbling headfirst into chaos.

The descent was immediate and relentless. My body twisted unnaturally, bending past the U-bend and down into the sewers. The claustrophobia was suffocating, yet the space stretched endlessly around me---both infinite and crushing all at once. 

Rushing liquid roared in my ears, a cacophony of unholy sounds that ripped through me like countless clawing hands. Colors erupted---hues I couldn’t name---each carrying a tactile weight that stung my skin and peeled the top of my skull away like damp paper. They prodded at my exposed brain, triggering a cascade of sensations: deep, inescapable sadness; a searing, muscle-deep burn; and uncontrollable, manic laughter---all crashing together in the same unbearable instant.

Experiencing so much at once was profoundly unsettling, nauseating in a way that defied explanation. It felt as though my senses had been turned inside out, forced to consume one another---then themselves---while I stood helpless, powerless to stop their complete cannibalistic collapse.

At first, it was overwhelming. Then, it became infuriating.

What else did this disgusting, sludge-colored vortex have to show me? The novelty wore off fast. The endless noise and chaos throbbed in my head until it perfectly mirrored the growing rage boiling within me.

The laptop was in my hands when it all started. I’d been working on it for hours---after breakfast-for-dinner-at-4 a.m.---typing, rewriting, brainstorming branding updates, and mentally cataloging the work I wanted to finish later. I’d been in that stall from the moment my plate was scraped clean until the sun rose and burned its way into the morning sky.

When the portal seized me, I clutched the laptop instinctively. At first, I held it because it was there---because I needed something real to ground me in the chaos---but as the swirling insanity dragged me deeper, the device became more than that. It was a symbol of my work, the hours I’d poured into updates, ideas, and revisions. Losing it would mean losing proof that I’d been doing something meaningful at all.

And yet, as my anger mounted, so did the temptation to throw it at the vortex.

“Alright, you fuckin’ asshole,” I snarled into the swirling maelstrom, holding the laptop in front of me like a shield. “Real cute at first, but repetitive after five minutes. How long are we doing this? Because honestly, I’ve seen more entertaining TikToks.”

The water gurgled mockingly but offered no reply.

“What the fuck are we doing? Let me out of here!”

Nothing answered.

“Listen, wormhole,” I growled, clutching the laptop tighter. “Your whole vibe? One star. Ancient, eldritch, horrific, and incomprehensible at first---but rapidly devolves into boring and derivative. Would not recommend. I wouldn’t even send my grandma here---and she’s a bitch who deserves it.”

Nothing.

“I said, ONCE I’M OUT OF HERE, I’M LEAVING A YOU A SHITTY REVIEW!”

The vortex might have laughed---quietly, subtly---but I couldn’t be sure.

“LET ME OUT OF HERE, DICKHEAD!”

Finally, something answered.

Not in words, but in sound.

A deafening howl tore through me, like groaning pipes dragged across concrete. It reverberated in layers: metal on metal, static interwoven with distant screams, each sound sharper than the last. It felt like sentient shards of glass—dislodging themselves from the void and hurling through time and space---tearing into my skull with malicious, intentful precision.

I clamped my hands over my ears, but the sound burrowed straight into my head. The slick, pulsing walls of the pipe clenched around me, moving like living intestines.

Yellow liquid gushed past me in bursts, carrying the stench of decay, sewage, and something older---something ancient and sentient, leaking into my skin like an infection. The darkness alternated with bursts of light that emanated from nowhere.

Shapes brushed against me. Slimy, slithering things trailed along my legs, their touch leaving behind chemical burns that seared straight through my pants and into my skin.

The air---or maybe it was the water---was vile. Metallic and acrid, like chewing on a disused sponge rotted through with mold. My senses blurred, each one reduced to a grotesque parody of itself.

Time became meaningless, but by my estimate, I had been tumbling for over an hour now. My thoughts fractured, rewrote themselves, splintered again. Was I dead? Hallucinating? Being digested? The idea of existing in the guts of some cosmic stomach became less theory and more probability with each pulse of the walls around me.

They thrummed with a rhythm too deliberate to be random---a heartbeat pounding in my ears.

If this is digestion, I thought, it is offensively slow.

If this---this thing--this being---this whatever---had any decency, it should’ve bitten my head clean off at the start. To be consumed consciously and forced to endure all of this was completely insulting...

When I finally emerged, I fell out of the endless pipes of the cosmic sewer. Mid-yawn and dozing with exhaustion.

I landed in a bathroom stall---spotless and glistening unsettlingly. The sight of it made my stomach churn. It was too clean. Too artificial. 

Sinister sterility.

That thought rooted itself in my mind as I sat in the overwhelming, oppressive presence of this place---a place so pristine, so grotesquely opposed to what I’d just endured, it felt like another fucking insult.

Add it to the list.

Where the fuck was I?

I shuddered violently.

It wasn’t just the disturbingly spacious cleanliness of my surroundings that caused the convulsion---it was the bone-deep wetness. The kind of wet that clings, burrows into your pores, and settles beneath your skin. The kind of wet that nestles into every crevice: between the conduits of your veins, between your joints---deep into your marrow.

It’s the kind of wet that makes you certain your insides will never feel dry again.

Well…

Sometimes, it’s the small mercies handed down by fate that you end up appreciating after enduring something unbearably grotesque. This bathroom floor---gleaming, sterile, emanating its profound disquiet with its dustless corners and mirror-polished surfaces---was one such mercy.

At least it was the kind of floor you didn’t have to think too hard about when you finally regained consciousness.

So, if I had to have my very first seizure on any bathroom floor, at least it was this unsettlingly glossy, spotless one---one that probably didn’t give you ringworm just for lying on it.