It started in Jen’s apartment. Four stories of student housing carved into sixteen pieces – another four slices per unit. Her three roommates as unknown to us as shadows.

I was on the bed with Thomas that night, halfway to drunk on beer. Thom was playing his Nintendo handheld. I was lying on my side, running fingertips across his stubble. Jen was sort of drifting boozily around the room. Her blue hair falling on one shoulder, then the other. Her right hand accommodating a can of hard seltzer.

It was a typical Friday night with no silent rave or AASU meeting. We three drinking, nonetheless. Thomas escaping his pre-dental curriculum, Jen her law school research. Me? I was in a five-year program for a master’s in accounting. Futures set in motion when we were hardly born.

I was thinking about this when Jen squeaked, “Almost forgot! Something to show.”

She dove face first onto the bed and wiggled between us.

Jen and I have known each other since kindergarten, endured eight years of after school Mandarin lessons, sharing cigarettes on the walk home. We both got our first period on the same day of sixth grade and celebrated by stealing a bottle of schnapps from the store. Thom didn’t appear ‘til the bus ride to high school, where we instantly recognized him for a closeted degenerate. The pair became a trio. Marching Band practice on Adderall, and Glee Club on molly. Our parents only unchaining us from the study desk for extracurriculars which looked good on college applications. We rode the same car to senior prom and nearly took Jen to the Emergency Room for alcohol poisoning. My heart doing clumsy acrobatics as her eyes became egg whites in the parking lot.

“No hos—” she kept repeating. “No hosss—”

The skin of her chest blooming horrible red splotches.

She was trying to say, “No hospital. My parents will find out. I’d rather die.”

Four years joined at the hip in Orlando’s suburbs, and another four here, at college.

Back on the bed, Jen nuzzled into Thomas’ neck and got her phone screen in front of us. She pulled up YouTube and typed a series of words like alchemy. To my surprise, it came back with scores of results.

🦷🦷🦷

Starts close-in on a workbench. Two metal slabs like hardcover novels stood on end. A mess of wires shot through them. The devices are aimed at an empty dinner plate. At last, a disembodied hand appears, laying down a set of car keys. Seconds later, the start of some low, oscillating thrum which warbles in pitch and tempo.

🦷🦷🦷

“The hell—?” Thomas said, putting aside his game.

🦷🦷🦷

Flashes, like when you put foil in the microwave. The keys have melted like wax. Another flash, and they’ve been vaporized. Black starburst crater hole. Then, a trilling electric buzz and a ghostly, blue reflection.

Someone is ostensibly controlling this.

Coming back now (Flash! Flash!). Keys like gelatin facsimiles. Clack of a thrown switch, and the buzzing disappears. The keys fade back from wherever they’d gone. The hand picks them up, jangles them to showcase their material existence.

One hundred thousand views.

🦷🦷🦷

Thomas said it for me. “The hell even was that?!”

“Isn’t it far out?” Jen chirped dreamily into his neck. “He’s local.”

Her thumb tapped another video, this one done self-interview-style. His name was Simon, and he looked a hard twenty years older than us. A gray horsetail tied at the back of his skull. Gaunt cheeks, spiked eyes, and worn teeth. Looking at him put icicles through my heart. You expected a face like his in a docuseries about cellars and missing children.

Simon explained how he was experimenting with electronic noise when he stumbled onto a way to tunnel to other dimensions. No one could replicate this phenomenon, not even using his equipment.

“The flashes,” Thomas was saying. “That’s where he’s cutting from the first image to the next. It’s basic camera trickery. He only needs After Effects for the fade-in at the end.”

More clickbait labelled as experiments. Jen bounced around them. In one, Simon’s subject was a wedge of cheese. In another, a cockroach held captive under a jar. We didn’t watch long enough to see what became of either. Another self-interview where Simon showed the controls to what he called, “the machine.”

“Why can I do what no one else can?” he asked the ceiling. Then, to camera, “I like to think it’s my staunch religious faith.”

I became aware of Thomas’ hands, which were near his crotch. I’ve hooked up with El and Thomas separately and together. Not too many threesomes, but enough I’ve lost count. They like it better than me. I always find myself drowning.

“This guy, Simon, his apartment’s on the north end of town,” Elaine was saying. “I’m thinking of going there this weekend.”

“Why?!” I forget who said it, Thomas or myself.

“Because the machine gets you fucked up!” she replied, like it was obvious. “You put your head between the blocks and it gets you outta this world stoned!”

El was so close, I couldn’t help but imagine her cerulean hair vanishing and the dome of her skull like a snow globe. The gray brain matter revealing itself, leaking out like television static.

“The machine works differently on people,” El was explaining. “Simon controls it. No physical changes. Just sounds, visuals, and electromagnets. They call it ‘channel surfing.’ It’s all the rage on Sorority Row.”

“Assuming he’s not completely full of shit,” Thomas began in his I’m-a-future-dentist-so-I-know way, “subjecting your brain to powerful magnets does not get you fucked up,”

“Can so!” El rebuked. “They’re using it to treat anxiety and depression.”

Thomas’ right hand had already darted beneath his beltline, but Elaine went to her phone for proof.

“All right,” I said, “maybe it does something, but that doesn’t make it safe. What if– I dunno, what if it vibrates your brain like Jell-O? What if the reason it gets you stoned is because it’s a series of concussions?”

El rolled her eyes, “Gee, thanks, Mom.”

I was talking to a girl who, for the last two years, insisted on taking her molly rectally; claiming she couldn’t “feel it” otherwise.

Thomas was running his tongue along her neck.

“I know a girl who went last week,” El purred. “She said it was like a ten-hour, full-body orgasm.”

I dropped it. Elaine would huff paint fumes if promised a ten-hour orgasm. Anyway, we were at that point of drunkenness that anything might sound fun. I figured she’d forget about it by morning.

I finished my beer, got another off the nightstand, cracked it. Thomas took my hand a few times, tried putting it places, but that night I was content just to watch.

🦷🦷🦷

The next morning found me studying at the campus library, trying to pressure wash my hangover with a giant cup of coffee. At some length, my phone hummed from beside my textbook. It was El.

“Heading over now. Wish me luck.”

“Not at home,” I wrote back absently. “At library. Join me?”

I had only the foggiest recollection of the previous night. I remembered being drunk and close to her but still feeling a numbing cold sensation in my belly.

🦷🦷🦷

It was late afternoon before I went across the street and got in line for a burrito. As I was waiting, Thomas called. He usually texted.

“What’s wrong?” I answered.

He told me not to sound so worried.

“I have my hands full at the dentistry lab.”

I could hear the water running, the thin, silver tools clanging around the sink. As an undergrad, Thom couldn’t perform the highly discounted cleanings, fillings, and tooth-extractions the student clinic was known for. As a pre-dental student, he could only volunteer – handing implements to the attending, sanitizing them when the place was closed on weekends.

“Tell me you went with El today,” he continued.

A bolt arced darkly across my chest.

“What are you talking about? Went where?”

“To the place,” he continued. “In the videos. With the magnets. Remember? She wanted to go there to get her head screwed on backwards.”

“Oh, Jesus, Thom!” The details returned to me like a headrush. “You let her go?”

“Let her?” he said. “You know how she gets, Ting. There’s no stopping her. She kept going on about how channel surfing’s the new candy flipping.”

At least he had the address.

“You’re coming with me,” I said, dropping out of line. “That creep Simon looks like he drinks blood!”

Thom said he was busy another two hours, at least.

“Don’t even! Your bed. Our friend. You can finish the washing up later.”

🦷🦷🦷

The apartments were single-story cinderblock, lacquered in pink paint, the color faded by the Florida sun and blackened by its rain. Thomas behind the wheel and the other residents eyeing us from yard chairs. Crab grass, broken children’s toys, and weeds beneath bare feet.

“She gave me the building number, but not the unit,” Thom said.

His voice was cracking like a chipmunk.

“We’ll knock on every door,” I snapped back.

But there was no need. Around a bend, we spotted her sitting on the curb like a vagrant. Picking at her fingernails. Smiling dreamily.

I jumped out. Thom right behind me.

“Elaine? El?!”

We got her vertical, then into the backseat. I climbed in with her.

“El, baby? Talk to me. El?!”

I held her chin between my fingers, inspecting her face. She was clearly high. Her eyes were glazed.

Thomas got back behind the wheel.

“Where now? The hospital?”

“No!” El suddenly shouted.

We both jumped. I nearly screamed. El looked at Thom, then me.

“Sorry,” she said, the machinery of bewilderment dimming behind her eyes. “I don’t need a hospital.”

For a moment, she didn’t look so sure. Then, laughter unlike any I’d ever heard from her. More like cackling.

“What about some food?” she said.

🦷🦷🦷

Now that my burrito was in front of me, I’d lost my appetite. That was fine. El had enough for both of us.

Sitting at a booth, I watched her devour six hard-shell tacos, plus a paper bag of tortilla chips, slurping from a tall Coke, all while grinning like she was in quiet hysterics. I knew what El looked like stoned off her ass. This was different. She was different. Squirming and putting her hand down her pants like a little kid.

For the tenth time, Thomas asked her what happened.

El giggled—showing teeth.

“I—I did it. You know?”

For a moment, she nearly resembled her old self. Then, gone. She took one hand from the front of her pants and inserted the other. Thom and I exchanged glances.

“Did he hurt you?” I said, speaking clearly.

“No, no,” went Elaine. “No.” Her voice breathy but assured. “It was just what they said. You guys,” touching our forearms, searching our faces. “It was so—decent!”

The hands went right back down her pants.

“So, you had a ten-hour orgasm?” Thom asked, suddenly intrigued.

A small squeak escaped the back of El’s throat, and her cheeks flushed to frank tones. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought she’d had an orgasm right there.

“Come on, El,” I said. “You’re scaring us.”

She looked at me like I’d only just appeared. Accepted it.

“It’s different from when it started,” she tried. “I can feel it wearing off now, but I don’t want it to. I don’t want to go back.”

“Back where?”

Elaine housed half a taco in one bite. Her cheeks bulging. She seemed on the verge of tears.

“All the times Dad yelled at me for bringing home a bad report card. The pressure in my chest before every midterm exam. The feel of my mom whacking the back of my head when I hit a sour note on the piano. All the little deaths and indignities. For a while, inside the machine, I wasn’t myself anymore, and it all went away.”

I felt the tale-tell burning in my sinus. Her truth cutting too close to the cuticle.

“You guys have to do it,” she continued. “You’ll see. It’s the cure we’ve always been searching for.”

Her hair in tatters, her disheveled make-up, and her haunted face. It was an awful sales pitch.

And yet…how to explain it to squares? I’m not El, but I too like opening doors which should, by all rights, remain closed.

A year before this, at EDC, I’d bought a whole baggie of ketamine. I brought it home and kept upping the dose ‘til I drifted too far. Lying in bed when my vision tunneled, and my skin turned to ice water. Classic K-hole. Trying to wrestle back control, knowing I was losing by inches. Panic attack with a lethargic pulse. Some disappointed version of myself floating above the expiring one. Hands at her hips. Watching this irresponsible girl with lips the color of skim milk.

Only I didn’t die.

And about an hour later, when I returned, all I wanted was to go back there.

🦷🦷🦷

We took El home. Put her to bed.

“What now?” Thomas asked.

🦷🦷🦷

Simon answered the first door we knocked on, looking like the greeter at a Halloween attraction. His voice was ossified phlegm.

“Here for the treatment?”

“The machine,” Thom affirmed.

I felt like a naughty child watching late-night television as Thom made the Venmo transfer. My insides slippery. Simon waved us in with a hand covered in liver spots.

The air in his apartment  smelled of dealer, spiced and chemical. Hanging beads in every doorframe.

“Don’t mind him,” Simon said.

He motioned to a white cat sleeping on the filthy patterned rug. Its paws and lips twitched as it dreamed.

“Who’s first?” Simon asked, his dark gaze scanning us.

Lead balls sank into my low guts. There were daggers around every corner here.

“I’ll go first,” Thom said.

Simon bade him follow. They exited into the only room with a door in its frame.

🦷🦷🦷

I sat cross-legged on the living room floor. An antique television set, like a chest of drawers, stared at me from the corner with its huge green eye.

When I felt the touch on my thigh I nearly screamed, but it was only the cat. It looked at me, slow-blinked, then curled into a ball on my lap.

Then, something began. No sound from the other room, yet you felt a change in the silence. The lights dimmed slightly, and the cat began jerking in my lap. I thought it was dreaming again, but soon realized it was having a seizure. The hooked nails flexing. The eyes rolled back. From its tiny mouth came a pitiable sound so human I almost puked.

Before I’d blinked twice, the door opened, and my head jerked up. Where had I gone? Had I fallen asleep? Or did the treatment, the machine, only take a few seconds?

The cat was back. Looking up at me, it hissed and leapt away, leaving track marks on my thighs.

Thomas was holding his head with both hands.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

He seemed unable to respond.

Then, “Yeah. I think.”

I walked the length of the room and put my mouth close to his ear.

“Is it like El said?”

Thom’s face betrayed a deep and terrible sorrow. Then, he was himself again, nodding.

“I think it’s whatever you want it to be.”

“I don’t have all night,” Simon called.

He narrowed his black eyes, and the final hesitation was imagining being behind a locked door with him.

🦷🦷🦷

The cleanest thing in that room was a filthy mattress in the middle of the floor.

“Lay down,” Simon commanded.

On his desk were the machine controls, scores of plastic ashtrays, and more punched-out cigarettes than could be numbered. The wall behind him was stacked high with eviscerated electronics. On the opposite wall was something like an altar to Eastern iconography. Posters and drapery depicting scenes from the Bhagavad Gita. Indian princes and princesses speaking to deities with elephant heads, blue skin, and many arms.

“You know, when you said you were religious, I envisioned you as a Catholic.”

But Simon was already cradling my head, fingertips at the base of my neck, carefully maneuvering me between the two metal slabs with running wires.

The machine, I thought. Channel surfing.

“What is it you want more than anything?” he softly asked.

The machine must’ve already been working—perhaps it had forever altered the chemistry of that room—because his question didn’t strike me as odd.

“I want what my friend Elaine got,” I told him. “I don’t want to be myself anymore.”

Simon nodded grim understanding. He nearly seemed paternal.

“Keep your eyes open,” he instructed. “It won’t work with your eyes closed.”

I didn’t remember lying down on the mattress. But there I was. Smelling stains like old fucking and white hot terror. Simon clamped a pair of noise-cancelling headphones over my ears then clipped a virtual reality visor over my eyes. The mask fit snugly.

Black and alone as I’ve ever been. Like being buried alive.

He didn’t really do that stuff in those videos, I told myself in the dark. Like Thomas said, it’s just special effects.

A woman's voice came through the headset. “Repeat after me: ‘I will keep my eyes open.’ This is your mantra now. ‘I will keep my eyes open.’ ”

A click, and I was instantly, irrationally horrified.

Then, blood!

It gushed, flooding into my mouth and nose. So cloying and thick. Had I been hit in the face? No. It was surging up from my throat! I was retching, but my eyes stayed open, just as the visor’s display blinked on.

🦷🦷🦷

What was it like? I’ve done hallucinogens, and this was not that.

How long did it last? How long does it take to ruin your life?

🦷🦷🦷

A screen one half-inch from the curve of my eyeballs. It flickers, showing unrecognizable shapes. Appearing. Disappearing. Chirping flashes. Fractals like scurrying bedbugs. Black. Now a red nebula in the far-left corner. Somehow, I understand that I’m meant to follow as it moves farther and farther left. It’s outside my field of vision, but I still see it. My gaze has travelled outside my head.

I’m standing in the corner of the room. A different room because the mattress I’m lying on here is not just filthy, it is in tatters. Exposed bedsprings like an exegesis of tetanus, leaking cockroaches. Where I came from, I wouldn’t have gone within ten feet of it. Large and small roaches, crawling freely across my neck, my upper lip. A slick exoskeleton burrowing into one ear.

I contort in revulsion, but my arms and legs are tied here.

Simon’s at his desk, manning the controls like he’s mastering audio. He turns a dial, and I sense the boundaries sliding again.

Now, I’m in two corners of two rooms simultaneously. The Simons swivel in their chairs, acknowledge us with a nod of their heads. The shadows long on their undead faces. Then, the face becomes a window. His floating brain ejects decadent thoughts like puffs of smoke. Floating teeth and eyes looking within at depraved sexual fantasy; looking without at my horror. Winking to me. Wanting to be seen like a flasher in a trench coat.

The same instant, the other aspect of my self is staring into the faces of Hindu deities. Their eyes glow a soft white, glowering down from paper and tapestry. Perhaps they aren’t gods on this channel but demons. Their skin is alive with crawling, the texture like parched desert soil.

Simon pushes an audio fader higher, birthing a high-pitched whine which gnashes my teeth. Now I stare  down a hall of mirrors at selves unfathomable. Blooded sentinels, looking backwards, wondering which of us was stupid enough to do this.

My aura, the halo around my body, becomes shades of pewter. My selves are poisoned, and it’s all my fault.

Another change. I fall into repeated depths. Multitudes locked in echoing chambers. That’s where I see it for the first time:

A vortex as high as a mountain, made of a thousand-trillion shards, each as long as a finger and sharper than surgical tools. Shapes and fractals moving in and out of the black. The only light from spitting orange sparks. It’s in the distance but barreling towards me. Hungry, down here. Existing only to consume.

🦷🦷🦷

I am in the passenger’s seat. Thom drives with one hand, the other still massaging his forehead. The road ahead is dark and coming too fast.

“How—how did we get here?” I ask.

We’re nearly back at campus, but I get the sense we’re very, very far from where we started.

“Do you think it’ll still be there?” Thom replies, at last.

He means the university, or his apartment, or this life.

A mosquito whines in my pocket. For a long time, I don’t understand. Then, I pull it out, my cellphone, turning it over in my hand. What I see there stops my heart. Fractals on that little screen: mysterious shapes and colors propagating, spiraling and breaking apart, chortling as they fall away.

I shriek like it’s transforming into a rat, there, in my hand.

A moment later, Thomas pulls his phone from his own pocket. He puts it on speaker.

“Something’s wrong,” Elaine says. “I need you two.”

🦷🦷🦷

El is seated on the edge of her bed, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. Thomas and I remain standing. I wonder how late it is.

“I can’t stop it,” she tells us. “I thought it was getting better, but it just got worse.”

She takes her hand out from under her armpits, showing us. The nails have been chewed to nubs. Dried blood beneath the last quarter inch of quick like dirt.

“Jesus, El!” I say, going to her.

She pushes me away irritably, then puts a hand down the front of her sweatpants. Seconds later she’s gasping. Her eyes stitched with red, water leaking from the corners.

“Oh, Elaine,” Thom says. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t stop!” she groans miserably. One of her roommates bangs on the wall. “I can’t stop. You had it done, too, right?”

Neither of us answer.

“It was like he was changing stations on an old car stereo. I searched and searched, ‘til I found this whole universe that was nothing but sexual release. That’s all that was there. No up or down. No people. No God.

“When I came back, I didn’t just feel different, I was different. I came back someplace else, as someone else.”

She puts a thumb in her mouth and gnaws at it with her back molars.

“Okay,” Thomas says, breathing heavy. “Okay, we’ll tie your hands down. Then, you get some sleep.”

He goes into her nightstand and comes back with a set of handcuffs she keeps there.

“It’ll be all right,” he promises. “We’ll get through tonight. Tomorrow we’ll be sobered up.”

🦷🦷🦷

Back at my apartment, I try to remember who I was. One thing about this newer self, she apparently doesn’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back on that mattress, in Simon’s apartment, tethered to the machine, my brain sizzling like hard fried eggs.

I close my eyes, and the mantra kicks my ribs. I close my eyes and see the vortex. Pieces spinning so fast it’s impossible to imagine. Every small shard craving all that I am, or was, or ever could be.

I give up and make myself coffee. I ride the ebb and flow, praying the storm will pass. When it’s better, I feel like I’m watching myself on YouTube, or even reading a story, written by someone else. Then, it washes over me again, strong as ever.

I try not to even blink.

🦷🦷🦷

Elaine, my childhood friend, is wrenching her wrists free of the restraints. She immediately puts her fingers in her mouth again, chewing like an animal with its leg caught in a steel trap. She walks to the kitchen to get a cutting board. She removes the largest knife from the block, which belongs to her roommate.

When she’s finished, she wraps what’s left in a dish towel. For a while, she tries to tie a tourniquet at the wrist, but what’s beneath still squirms, soaking through the old rags. 

Not satisfied. She’s thinking about the old blender on top of the fridge, the one we sometimes use to make margaritas on Friday nights with no silent raves or AASU meetings.

She switches it on without the lid. The blades whir as she positions her right hand above, knowing it will hurt. Crying for the pain to come but knowing it’s the only way.

The hand is not hers.

The whirring blades become the vortex. The spitting sparks are scarlet instead of orange.

🦷🦷🦷

“I saw what you’re planning,” I tell Simon. “I saw your thoughts, and not just the ones you wanted me to see.”

He’s still at his desk, manning the controls. He looks at me from over his shoulder. I’m lying on the mattress where I died. He shrugs, then grins in a careless way.

“We’re viewing all iterations of your life,” he says. “It makes sense one of you would see my plan.”

He won’t need the machine much longer. Soon, he’ll be able to upload the videos online and make any promises he wants.

Lose weight. Forget your trauma, anxieties, and sorrows.

We’ll do it to ourselves. Out of boredom or curiosity.

When he has enough of us, when his abilities are God-like, he won’t even need you to turn on your phone anymore. Just glance at a screen and imagine you see it. Snickering fractals. There for a flash. Then, gone.

🦷🦷🦷

I’m at the student dental clinic somehow. Early morning. Thom is there, too. It must be the next day. Sunday. Elaine isn’t here.

I’m on one of those reclining chairs, the kind they have at every dentist’s office, even the practice labs. One after another, so the professor could walk along a row of students, answering questions and checking work.

I’m on my side, smelling the disinfectant and watching Thomas scrutinize himself in the mirror above the sink. He pulls the adjustable lamp from one of the workstations, scattering the contents of several trays. He puts the light inches from his face, clearly not liking what he sees.

I don’t either. He looks like he’s just survived a car wreck.

Thom pulls down one eye to view the bloody patch of skin underneath. He reads the small capillaries there like scripture.

“It’s not right,” he says, though I doubt he remembers I’m in the room. “I thought there was something missing. But, really, there’s too much.”

He does a quick about-face, walks deliberately to the workstation two chairs down from mine. In his carelessness, he knocks over the tethered tools: the suction wand, the tiny drill. The drill falls, switches itself on, and jumps like a tiny snake.

Thom opens another drawer and fishes around. Clang of metal tools. Then back at the mirror, like a preteen obsessing over a zit.

He picks up the extractor in his right hand and pulls his top lip back with the other. I want to shut my eyes, but the mantra won’t let me.

His front tooth gives with a delicate pop. The next one doesn’t come so cleanly, taking a wad of gum tissue with it. Thom drops it into the sink where it clinks against its twin. He makes socket after toothless socket. He has a small pile before starting in on the bottom row. Clear pink spittle, dangling in lines from his bottom lip. The same color as those damned apartments. The color under Thomas’ eye, and El’s nails.

🦷🦷🦷

Going to pieces now. You’ll have to fill in the rest.

Pretty sure I’m missing my important Monday exam. Spending it strapped to a hospital bed instead. The doctors and nurses coming in with cellphone screens for eyes. The inside of their mouths like circular saws, striking sparks.

If you don’t blink, if you really work at keeping your eyes open, then you’ll see what I see. 

I’m in the dentistry lab again, or I was at some point. Did I escape the hospital? Or is this all happening before I went in the first place?

Thomas is gone. Elaine is gone, and my parents know my secret.

Alone, and the tiny, dental drill Thomas knocked over still whirring at my feet. I bend down, entranced by its spinning point ‘til it too becomes the root of all fear. The vortex.

I bring the point of the drill within an inch of my pupil, entranced. Then I press. The soft pop and the world instantly going watery as my bowels. But I haven’t betrayed my mantra. And so, for a moment, peace.

📺⚡️