Are you trapped in the hallway? There’s a pill for that.
Looking for doors? Opportunity? There’s a pill for that too.
How about $2,500?
“This is exactly what you need Amy”, Mindzies’ words rolled around in my head. We were looking for some weekend gigs, scrolling through classified ads. I wonder what he meant. Considering I’ve never been a fan of cryptic shit. Or quick cash for that matter.
Maybe I was, in fact, feeling trapped. He had a thing for numbers. Without him I’ve started to slip. It baffles me that some people can get through life alone.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. Feeling for my reassuring little pepper spray bottle. I sighed deeply, feeling the cold cylinder in my palm.
Wind blew through my hair as I sized up my surroundings. An empty parking lot, a large strip of office building, and a distant feeling of fear and confusion. Perhaps guilt, that Mindzie will never know I followed through.
The waves of guilt rolled off me as I stepped into the building. Well, it looked more like a hotel, just eerily empty. Sitting where a receptionist should be lay a man kicked back in an office chair. Hearing my entrance he pulled a cliché cowboy hat off his face and put it on.
“Finally”, his voice was loud but expressionless. He threw his arms out as if expecting a hug. “Oh. It uh. Sorry”, he mumbled, pulling out a laminated card to hand me.
I plucked the card from his hand to squint at the thick text:
“Apologies, I have Broca’s Aphasia, a rare malfunction of the language processing cortex of the…”
it went on.
I handed it back. I think I get the idea. Homie wasn’t so much cryptic as he was disabled. “Roger that then”, I said. “Time to begin?” He waved an arm to the only door in the lobby. “Well uh…”, I paused. Why was I hesitating? Yeah, it was weird. But I had just run out of ideas for rent this month. I needed to get creative, or desperate maybe.
“Isn’t there some paperwork or…” I trailed off remembering his condition.
So convenient.
He continued to wave his arm to the door. Smirking, like he knew something I didn’t.
“It’s not like you would read it anyways”, he said. Guess he can talk. I furrowed my brow in confusion.
He reached back into his pocket for the laminated card, as if I had missed something.
“No it’s ok” I said. Perhaps I was being rude.
“Well then”, he replied, pushing open the door to reveal dim fluorescent light.
I stepped in after him. My eyes were treated to a disturbingly long hallway. The illumination died off in the distance giving the illusion of endlessness.
I looked back at the man. He stood still, hands behind his back. Staring somberly off into the dark.
“Now what?”, I asked.
He looked at me, shrugged, and said “you pick”.
Not very reassuring. “Could I at least get your name?”, I stalled. Maybe trying to ground myself.
He raised an eyebrow, looking down to his chest, guiding my eyes to his nametag.
“Astar, got it”, I said. A weird name for a weird person. Kind of like Mindzie. I always used to tease him that swapping an L for an M wasn’t the same as regular therapy.
“This one?” I asked, pointing to the first door on my left.
Astar gave me a halfhearted shrug.
My eyes peered back down the dim end of the hallway. “What about down there?”, I asked.
He shook his head. “You’re not ready for that”, he replied.
I continued pestering Astar about nearly a dozen doors until I found one that caught my eye. I hadn’t noticed until now but the doors had little inscriptions. Above the knob infront of me, in tiny gold letters, was “ The Voice “.
“Go ahead”, Astar encouraged, as if reading my mind.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside. It was probably 24 by 24 feet of concrete. Laying in the center was a boy. Young, malnourished, adorned with paper scrubs.
What the fuck.
I turned my head back to the door. Through the slant window I saw Astar hold his hat to his chest, nod, and walk off into the darkness. What the hell does he want from me?
Turning back to the boy I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Hello?” I asked.
The boy slowly turned his head towards my voice, unresponsive. His skin looked like someone had shrunk wrap a skull. Over his eyes was a single piece of duct tape.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I was trying to figure out if my pepper spray was even useful at this point when he opened his mouth. His lips curled back to reveal no teeth. His gums, sown together, from hundreds of stitches.
Nope. Fuck this.
I turned for the door when suddenly Astar’s voice popped up. Some vintage intercom system crackled awake.
“Awe. Heh. Leaving so soon? It is simply gushing to see you!”, Astar said, tapping some invisible mic with his finger.
Oh hell no, is this guy drunk? The rather dehumanizing comment ironically struck a nerve with me.
“It is so sad, it will miss you if you go!”, Astar added.
In some panic or shock I flipped back around. The boy had started wailing. Tears burrowed their way through the duct tape. Blood and spit flung out between the stiches as the boy shuddered in fear.
Suddenly, anger burst out of me.
“What the fuck are you doing? This is a human being!”, I screamed to the air. Whatever was happening, I felt a sincere rage. This was not ok.
The boy’s crying amplified as he started to crawl towards me.
I can’t. I don’t know what I signed up for, but it wasn’t this. I shoved open the door and tumbled into the hallway.
Astars voice popped back up, “Running from emotions? Perhaps this is why everyone leaves you!”
It’s not like he knew me. But his voice hit where it hurt. I got up to run to the exit but my body wouldn’t listen.
He was right. There’s nothing left for me out there. Mindzie was gone. And you know what? Fuck him. I’ve never been in a fight in my life and I was going to kick his ass.
I started walking down the dark hallway. A door hardly visible at the very end. He had to be there. I was scared shitless but my rage had the steering wheel. Eyes wide open I slowly walked through the hallway as Astar continued to crack nonsensical puns over the air.
Finally I arrived at a door inscribed with “The Blender” above the handle.
Fully prepared to pummel the ass of a man far bigger than me, I pushed open the door. Stepping inside I whipped out my pepper spray. Accidentally striking the most inoffensive stance. Eyes closed, arms fully extended, holding the thing like a crucifix.
Nothing happened. Instead I heard strange noises. Opening my eyes I became immediately overwhelmed. The scene before me defied all expectations.
Astar sat, defenseless. Wired up to a whirring array of heavy curved magnets which hid his face. To his right, a microcosm of swirling tubes channeled into a centrifuge. He leaned back in his chair. The deep rhythms of science, madness, the fear of death itself, seemed channeled into this very room. He reached behind his head to flip something on.
“What’s happening”. The words spilled out of me, knowing there would be no answer. “What… What is… Where…” it was useless.
The room hummed a primal and familiar vibration. My body shuddered in tune. Light swirled around the walls faster and faster until it all jolted to a stop. A whirl. Click. hiss. Then a quiet rattle. A tray to my left collected a single pill.
Astar sat up with a weak and monotone laugh. “What?” I replied. He limped over to the pill tray. Pinching one and holding it up to the light. He almost smiled, maybe even shed a tear. If I didn’t know better, proud.
I leaned away. “Who are you?” the words finally came out of me. Arms limp, he sluggishly approached me. Still frozen in shock, I watched as he reached for my chin and pulled me up close to his face.
My chin gripped tightly in his left hand, my jaw slacked open. He shoved his cracked and dry fingers into my mouth, rapidly placing the pill between my molars.
“You’ll see”, he whispered.
His eyes searched my face for only a second before grabbing my head and slamming my jaw shut. My teeth rattled, crushing the pill instantly. The bitter taste quickly burrowed itself into my gums, numbing me.
I tried. For a minute the adrenaline, the screaming amygdala, I tried to kick him off me. But I lost myself.
Astar collapsed. A pile of bone and flesh, no longer Astar.
I was no longer me. I forgot Amy, ripped out of my neocortex.
Suddenly I was 12. Scared. I couldn’t hear music, talk, all I could see was words, but I couldn’t use them. I think I had a dad, he would scream when I asked questions. I forgot how to ask them. He would force me to sit in a corner. Homeschool he called it. He drank, smoked, mumbled about politics, screaming anytime I left the corner. That is, until I finished the “monolith”. A tower of books. Frued, Yung, the shadow. Channeling the dark desires inside. ID, ego, superego, fear. Others must be afraid.
I remember desperation. Hatred. I need others to understand. I’ll force them to understand. When I opened my mouth, nothing came. No one laughed. No one even knew I existed.
Shards of a broken life consumed me. A vision, a hope, a design to finally free the mind of a tortured soul. My only love. I studied. Failed. Studied. Hours working as a no one. A powerful mind with no outlet.
I remember project artichoke. The slides, samples of my very brain on display before me. Chunks of myself I could touch.
Then, the ashes of the ashes of MKULTRA, until I was all that was left.
An empty soul. Pieces of my brain in a government closet. I just wanted to say something. Even one sentence.
So resolved, I manifested her, the blender. They will know me. To put ones mind into a pill.
Then I became Astar and Amy. Agony. We are the same. All that is left now is shame. I feel her hurt, blame, regret.
Finally I have a voice. Hers. Yet all I can do is cry.
From under her subconscious I bored my way to the edge of her mind. Her voice, I craved my first words, before the final mergence. But I couldn’t speak. I crawled my way through the wreckage of our mind. Approaching a vestigial rats nest of swarming, screaming neurons. Balled up, afraid. They sang songs of shame and self hatred. Refusing to be fully observed. It communed with itself, dumping precious transmitters into nothing.
All roads led to this, sapping life from everything inside her. I had to see. I let it pull me in. I deserved it.
Suddenly, I was Amy. Looming in the dark. In front of me, a door. A dim Ray of light cut around the edges. Our bathroom. Mindzie lay inside. I’ve spent years in front of this door.
Fuck. God, I’m so sorry. My weak and trembling palm could hardly grasp the doorknob. I couldn’t open it. Not yet. Deep within me a screaming motivation unfolded itself.
“I need to scream, run, no, I need to speak”.
I pushed open the door.
For the first time I finally saw it. All of it. The universe couldn’t have picked a worse way for Mindzie to go.
A swarming carpet if mucosal linings. Blood, empty bottles of pure ethyl and isopropyl Alchohol. My eyes circled the scene, swelling up and crying as I landed on the beautiful boy lying in the center of the mess hugging his stupid stuffed shark.
A sick clarity grabbed a hold of me. I stepped over him. Walked through the wall. Back into Astars’ office.
I can finally speak. I gazed down, dumbfounded.
Astar lay on the floor. I remember now. He’s only sleeping. I must show him to his room, he is tired.
With a new strength I grabbed him by his collar and dragged him out into the hallway. I reached a door inscribed with “A star with no light”.
This is it buddy. I pulled him through the door. It was just like the voice room.
I let go and stepped out. I knew what I needed to do now. I walked back to the office. I knew there were others. People needed me,
It was my office. My computer. I knew the password. I can’t remember who I am, what I am, or what i was. All I know is I can finally speak.
Do you need to speak? Are you trapped, looking for a way in? There’s a pill for that.