Gummy Galore
You take it at midnight. A single gummy, peach-flavored, soft in the center and hardened at the edges. It’s wrapped in cheap plastic, the kind that sticks to itself. No label—just a smiley face drawn in fading Sharpie. You bought it for seven dollars from a guy in a denim jacket standing outside the 7-Eleven on Mass Ave.
You pop it in your mouth. It’s chewier than you expect. The flavor is artificial, with a sourness that doesn’t fade. Nothing happens for the first ten minutes. You brush your teeth. You scroll through Instagram. You stare at a meme and can’t tell if it’s supposed to be funny. You get into bed. You pull the covers up to your chin. You close your eyes.
That’s when the room begins to shift.
At first, it’s subtle. The mattress softens beneath you. The hum of your mini fridge starts to sound like something wet and alive. There’s a buzz behind your eyes, like electricity collecting in your skull. Then your limbs dissolve—it’s not painful, just a distinct sense of absence. Like you’ve left them behind. You feel yourself dropping out of the bottom of your body, into something vast and slow and warm.
Then you blink—and the bed is gone.
You’re standing barefoot in the middle of a narrow dirt road lined with stone houses. The ocean’s somewhere nearby; you can taste the salt. The air smells like woodsmoke and orange blossoms. The sky is bruised purple. Lanterns flicker in the windows of the houses. Someone calls your name, but it’s not yours. It’s older, rounder. You turn your head instinctively like you’ve heard that name a thousand times before. You raise your hand and don’t recognize the fingers.
You walk toward the house at the end of the lane. Someone is waiting at the door—familiar and not. You can tell they’ve been waiting for you a long time. Inside, the rooms feel worn in a way that makes your body ache. You find yourself sitting across from them at the table. You don’t speak, not at first. There’s no need. You fall in love slowly, then all at once—like stepping into a memory you forgot was yours.
You fish every day at dawn and gut your catch by feel. You plant trees that outlive you. You have three children. One of them dies at age seven. A fever in her sleep. You bury her beneath the birch tree and never speak of it again. Not because you forget—but because remembering reopens something you’ve tried to let die.
Years pass. You fight in a war you do not win. You come home changed. Your wife learns how to make you laugh again, but not in the way she used to. You quit drinking after your youngest catches you weeping into the stove. You pray, not for anything in particular, but as a ritual. A shape to your silence. Some days, the joy is so pure it frightens you. Other days, you feel like a ghost in your own kitchen. You watch your hands slice onions as if they belong to someone else.
And then, one evening, after decades, you sit with your wife on the back porch as the sun slides down behind the dunes. You look at her face—weathered, beloved—and just as you’re about to tell her you love her, you blink.
And you’re back. In your dorm room. On your twin XL. The LED lights lining your wall are humming. Your throat is dry. Your mouth tastes like chemicals, plastic, and peaches. Your phone is buzzing somewhere on the floor. Your roommate walks in, holding a half-eaten protein bar.
“Dude,” he says. “It’s been an hour. You good?”
You don’t answer. You’re crying, quietly, without knowing when it started. Not sobbing—just sort of leaking. Your pillow is damp. Your pulse is thudding, not with fear, but with the weight of everything you remember. Everything you shouldn’t.
You remember how your daughter used to sing to the moon when she thought no one was listening. You remember the way the birch tree creaked in the wind. You remember the smell of your wife’s shampoo. You remember dying. You remember being alive.
The peach flavor still lingers on your tongue. The salt wind still lives in your lungs. That name—your name, the one from before—echoes in your chest like a bell you can’t unring.
You’re afraid to blink again.
Anatomy Adrift
You say it as a joke.
“I feel like my skin doesn’t fit.”
Everyone laughs.
Someone sparks the next bowl.
You pass it like a secret you don’t want to keep.
The high comes on slow, then all at once—
a thousand pins pricking the perimeter of you,
as if your body is trying to remember its shape
but failing.
You look at your hands.
They shimmer.
You move your fingers, and the motion lags behind,
like your limbs are buffering.
Like you’re a bad download.
Then the feeling starts.
Your forearm tingles—not itchy, not numb—
just wrong.
Like your sleeve is wet.
Like your skin is inside out.
You scratch it and feel a seam.
A fold.
You pinch. You pull.
It peels back—
not blood, not muscle—
just more skin.
Smooth. Pale. New.
You look up, and they’re all watching.
Their eyes are red—raw, lit from within.
One is already halfway unwrapped,
his face sliding off in ribbons, smiling with no lips.
“Finally,” he says, “You’re getting comfortable.”
You try to scream.
You try to run.
But your foot catches on a curl of your shin,
half-peeled and sticking to the floor.
They crowd in, gently.
Helpful.
Unwinding you like a roll of paper towels.
“There’s nothing underneath,” you whisper.
You want it to be a question.
But it’s not.
They nod.
That’s the point.
They’ve all been through it.
They tell you it’s freeing.
Eventually, the last layer lifts.
You don’t feel pain.
You don’t feel anything.
Just air, finally touching what was never meant to be touched.
You sit in the silence of the peeled.
You smile.
They smile back.
You’re all so smooth now.
So silent.
So clean.
Narrowed, Nestled
It starts with the floor. Rising, almost imperceptibly, as if lifting to meet your body. You’re lying down when you first notice it—how the edge of the bed feels closer to your ribs than it did a moment ago. You sit up and look around. Everything is the same, mostly. The lights. The window. Your hoodie is crumpled in a lump on the chair. You take another hit, deeper this time, and tell yourself it’s just in your head.
Then, the walls start to breathe.
Not a metaphor. Not a feeling. They breathe. The corners tighten, just slightly, as if the room is sighing inward. The ceiling pulses once, slow and shallow, and you feel it in your teeth. You laugh. You point it out to your roommate.
He shrugs. “You’re tweaking,” he says.
You watch the window fog from your breath. You blink and realize you can see it—the mist hanging, hovering, like you’ve filled the air with something too heavy to leave. The room isn’t just shrinking now. It’s leaning. Sloping in on itself. The closet door eases open half an inch and stays there like something inside it is watching you.
You try to stand, but the carpet clings to your socks, sticky and unwilling. The corners of the room draw closer. The posters curl in on themselves. The walls are moving—not fast, not dramatic. Just a few centimeters every time you stop looking. Every time you exhale.
There is a low sound behind the radiator. Like someone whispering through a mouth full of static.
“Stay.”
You bolt upright.
You reach for the door. The knob is warm.
Oozing.
It beats like a heart.
You wipe your hand on your pants and turn—
The hallway is longer than it used to be.
Students pass you in single file, eyes closed, fingers grazing the walls. None of them speak. One of them is screaming. You reach out, but your hand presses into the wall like wet paper. It leaves a mark.
Your phone buzzes. You check it. You okay? But there’s no signal. No time. The walls creak. The floor tilts. The lights stutter and hold.
You scream. No one turns.
You run back. Somehow, the door is there again, wide open. Waiting. Your desk is exactly as you left it. Your weed is still lit in the bowl. And on the bed—your body. Curled up. Calm. Smiling.
You are already home.
You’ve never left.
The building breathes in again—
deeper this time.
You don’t exhale.
Joint Judgement
You don’t usually smoke joints. You say they burn too fast and taste too much like paper. But tonight is different. The music is low, the floor feels soft under your socks, and some guy with a shaved head and chipped nail polish hands you something already burning. You ask what it is.
“Something special,” he says.
You take it. The inhale is sharp—dry, bitter, like burnt tea leaves and old firewood. You cough once, then settle into the couch. The joint makes its way around. No one else reacts. You try to speak, but for a moment, it passes.
Then the memories begin.
At first, they flicker—a swing set at dusk, a lemon-frosted cake, a woman in a blue dress saying, You left something behind. It’s waiting for you. You don’t recognize her, but your chest tightens when she speaks. Your throat does something involuntary, like it remembers silence.
You try to ask whose memories these are. Your voice cracks halfway through the sentence. The voice that finishes it isn’t yours.
You excuse yourself. The foyer seems different. The mirror in the bathroom is wrong—not warped, just slightly off. Your reflection looks like someone you were once related to. Your eyes are tired in a way you’ve never experienced. Your jawline is bruised with a grief you don’t understand.
You wash your hands until the sink stains gray. Ash gathers under your nails.
Later, you learn the truth. Not from the guy—he’s already disappeared into the playlist, into the smoke. Someone else tells you, laughing.
“Yeah, he mixes them in. His uncle’s ashes or something. He says it’s like…communion. Said it made him feel close to him.”
You pause, trying to make sense of the words. His uncle’s ashes. They land wrong in your brain—too dense, too human. You imagine the paper burning, the ash mixing with your spit, smoke curling out of your mouth like something sacred and disgusting. Your stomach tightens. Your throat goes hot. You wonder how much of him is still in you. You think you might throw up, or laugh, or both. Instead, you nod, pretending it’s funny.
You haven’t slept since.
You keep dreaming about a town you’ve never visited. About a body in an urn with your name carved into the side. About a voice—dry, cracking—whispering things only you should know.
You see the woman in the blue dress every time you close your eyes.
You still don’t know what is waiting for you.
Artifact Aftermath
Los Feliz, maybe. Echo Park, probably. Somewhere east of the 101, where the palms lean like they’re in on something you’re not.
You buy it from a guy named Orbit.
That should have been enough.
He’s leaning against the brick wall behind an ATM, jacket made of mirrored panels, each square cracked or smudged, like it’s been through too many reflections. He wears sunglasses at night. You ask what strain it is. He says it’s called Insight. You make a joke—“I could use some of that.” He doesn’t laugh. He just nods once, slowly. Like it’s already done.
You’re with your friend. The one who’s been your best friend since middle school. The one who knows what your voice sounded like before it dropped. You two split the eighth in the parking lot behind the rec center, sitting on warm concrete under that one busted streetlight that always hums its low-pitched song.
The weed is vacuum-sealed but warm. Like it’s sat in a pocket too long. When you open it, the smell isn’t dank. It’s…off. Like something that’s been buried and then dug up again. You both make a face. You joke about Orbit lacing it, but neither of you laughs with your whole chest.
Still, you smoke it. Out of that old green pipe your friend’s older brother left behind when he joined the Navy. You each take two hits. You say it’s nothing. You say it’s mid.
It doesn’t taste right. Not skunky. Not sweet. Something else—bitter, alkaline, like battery acid and burnt plastic. You cough hard. Your friend laughs, but it sounds far away. The lights around the courts flicker.
The ground feels like it’s sloshing beneath your feet.
Everything goes still, like you were paused. Then restarted.
Fluorescent lights. A curtain. The smell of antiseptic and something cooked too long. Your mom is sitting in the corner with her arms crossed, eyes hollow. A nurse says something about dehydration. Something about synthetic cannabinoids. Your memory is Swiss cheese.
But what you remember—clearly, sharply—is the heat in your neck. The way your skin felt like it was moving.
You ask for a mirror. They refuse. They tell you to rest.
Later, alone in the bathroom, you pull down your collar.
It’s small. Just above your clavicle. Irregular. Textured. A patch of skin that isn’t skin. Dark brown, with ridges. It catches the light when you tilt your head.
It doesn’t wash off.
You don’t tell anyone. Not your mom. Not your friend. Not the doctors. You Google things in secret: synthetic weed + rash + drug reaction.
The mark never goes away. It doesn’t grow. It doesn’t fade.
But sometimes, late at night, it itches.
Sometimes, when you’re sweating, it feels cool to the touch.
And sometimes, in the mirror, it looks like it’s breathing.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow – Ecclesiastes 1:18