“I..I’m not sure I can do this.” My voice sounds whiny.
The tube around my arms is constricting nicely and even in my reluctance my fist unconsciously flexes, releases, flexes. My veins fattening in response. His voice is a constant drone, now, as he mumbles his mantra. The drone comes forward.
I feel his skin on my arm, taping the vein. Oh God, not yet. I’ve not started yet. I begin my mantra. Word as desire reduced to noise, to a meaningless jumble. I open my eyes and stare into his face, ravaged by too much, too soon and in too short a time.
His eyes are unfocused. All his movements are being done on autopilot. His body starts to rock, to heave. He turns away to the bowl behind him and vomits. I hear it. That is I would hear it as vomiting if that sounded lyrical, musical. I know what he’s producing.
The first time I saw it I almost shat. Silver the way that you imagine it as a child. Fluid like you want mirrors to be. I recall the Matrix and feel ashamed at the shallowness of my references.
“It’s Morrison. What’s more shallow, movies or comics?”
His voice at the side of my head, the heaving from in front of me. “Do your mantras.” I breathe deeply and feel myself relax. The mantras form on my lips.
I wonder briefly how he sounded so close bef-
“Non localised Space Time. It breaks down in the presence of the stuff. You know this. I told you it would happen.”
He did, but I didn’t listen. I don’t want it explained in Pseudo. I don’t think it helps to talk in terms like that. It sounds bollocks, anyway. As if we were embarrassed by what we do.
“Focus,” he chastises. I bring my thoughts back. The Mantra is humming me now, my eyes, too, unfocus. I lurch as though the horizontal lift of time is abruptly halted. I feel the heaving too, now. The Mantra is still being said.
I still hear my voice as I gag, heave and then the lyrical whistlehumming comes from within me. The liquid flows into my throat, seeps in from Outside. It try to gag but the heaving won’t let me. The mantra is still humming, still being spoken. The bowl is near my lips and I watch my head tilt through my still head, sitting mumbling. I feel the liquid crawl into my throat on small legs. Thousands of small legs working their way up my throat, filling my mouth with a cold non taste and the smell of ozone in my throat. I open my mouth and feel it crawl from me. The whistlumming is tuning itself to the mantra. I stand with Paul watching us puke, the band still round my arm, the ends stroking my wrist.
“When am I?” I ask, turning to see the silver flow from my mouth, through the air and back into the bowl. I don’t see myself standing there. “Were we ever there?”
I finish being sick. My stuff is in the bowl. I reach for my wrist. There is no hole, no puncture.
“Move your hand.” I feel the sting as the needle breaks the skin. I taste the metal as it reaches my blood. I feel myself drawn up and into the plastic case of the syringe.
“Concentrate – make distinctions. Focus. You are connected to all but are free to make to draw your boundaries. Use the mantra. And if you don’t breathe you’ll die”
I half laugh and watch from everywhere as my is blood squeezed into my stuff. Me, joining with me. The stuff soaks the blood hungrily. The blood gives it a reddish tint.
He then split it. Syphoned off some of mine, and mixed it with some of his. At first the fluids are wary. They keep apart. Then, slowly, come together, mixing over one another, the hands rubbing over each other, stroking, before becoming one.
“Now what?”
Paul started. “I’m not sure.”
“I thought you said you’d done this before.”
“No Becky. That’s not what I said. I don’t know what to do from here.” He spoke over me. I hate it when he speaks over me.
We looked at the syringe. “Should we take it?” I ask. We’re standing now, across the room. I feel the ends of the rubber touch my arm and look to see the Silver crawling from my mouth and through the air to drop into the bowl.
I suddenly don’t want to take it anymore. I turn
“-n’t be in the body for that long” Paul’s talking to me. We’re in a different room.
We’re in a different building.
“Wh…where are…How’d we get to my house.”
“We walked.” He smiles.
“I live in London. You live in Exeter. How could we walk?”
I turn. Behind me I see myself and myself and myself and myself. A hand pushes through me, up from the wrong angle, and back in on itself. I hear the Voice of God. It tells me to reach for the hand.
Then the world stops. Freezes. Falls away
Falls.
Away.
The colour drains from it, top to bottom, I look at my monochrome feet standing in a pool of colour. I turn to Paul. He’s not there.
I turn to Paul. He’s not there.
I turn. He’s not Paul. There.
I Paul
Eye.
The horizontal goes and my body is stretched, is pulled, torn. I see the edge of the page. I am turned, falling. I repeat my mantra.
It is my key.
I way home,
my way
back.
No.
Not.
My Way.
The Mantra given to me. The mantra not mine. Not like the blood, the needle, the stuff. Not mine. Not of me.
Suddenly I’m scared.
I regulate my breathing. I keep calm. My Mantra. It is all I have.
I look down and watch my narrative drop away.
