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.