the experiment

Easily the stupidest thing you've ever done. Soft white walls growing softer and whiter as the shit seeps into your brain. Slow haze and roiling guts, present fiction mixes with past reality forming a virtual psychoaudio collage of indeterminable quality. The angle all wrong, the ceiling stretches to become part of the wall.

No doctors. No, sir. Not me. Doctors are like goddam auto mechanics. Fix one-thing, unplug another...

Ratso. From the other room, fucking Ratso and Joe squawking from the television.

Well, just exactly what the hell you think you're gonna do? Die on me?

I'm going to Florida, that's my only chance.

You know what's wrong with you? You got fevers. You kinky as a bedbug. How you gonna get to Florida?

Are we there yet? Are we fucking there yet? Your shuddering turns to convulsions as you let loose a stream of vomit onto the kitchen floor. Hands and knees now. Steady, old boy - this is just an experiment. You remember how it is right? The sickness will pass. The sickness will

Why are you keeping this?

Jane. Janie, no. Janie's voice rises up from last month, an old conversation crackling out of the ether. A dusty old recording. Analog reel-to-reel.

I thought you were through with that shit...

I just-

What, are you going to start using again?

I just keep my old gear around as a reminder.

Bullshit.

It's not really quitting if you never have to resist temptation.

The tape snags, stretches, and snaps, your voices lost in the past, as nausea gives way to bliss. On the edge of Euphoria now; a warm, fuzzy blanket. Almost there. Just push on through.

When I put you on that bus down to Florida tonight, that'll be the happiest day of my life!

There are big, gaping holes in the fabric of time. The clock's hands skip seconds and entire blocks of minutes, jumping and jittering around the face.

You get your first palm tree in South Carolina.

You're telling me you keep this shit around so that you don't use it?

How'n hell a dumb Bronx kid like you know that?

I'm just saying that if I'm never tempted, I'll never know if I can resist-

Where the hell did you get a stupid idea like that?

I read it.

I read it. Saw it in some article about a month ago-

Shee-it. You believe all you read?

And you believe everything you read?


INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

"What have you gotten yourself into, huh?

A mess. A goddamn mess. Treated to a private laser show, the stars explode in the heavens above. Your stomach is rattling the cage door, wanting desperately to vacate its confines.

"If you have to shiver, why don't you pull the blanket up more?"

Hurts. Hurts so bad. There's a pain now, right behind those closed eyes. Eyes as good as welded shut, and a mind that just will not wake up. Want to go. Want to get the fuck-

"Shhh - baby, be quiet, lie still. I'm-"

-out of here.

"-here now. I'm here now. Everything's going to be okay."