I took twice my normal dosage to see if it would make a difference. It did. I was scarce able to make three steps into the room before the changes came, hard and sudden, with all the subtlety of being smashed by a fistful of quarters. Time and space began to stretch and compress as every bone, muscle and cell in my body seemed to separate into sparkling, sub-atomic particles. I laughed. I tried to make my way to my bed but the walls, which had developed enormous lungs, repelled me with every breath. I felt myself slowly melt into rubber as my stomach began to dance in circles. My legs gave out and I soon found myself lying face-up on the floor.
Then the squid came. Thousands of them, startled and confused, precipitating out of every dark corner of the carpet. Cold pressure tickled my spine as they pushed me upward, toward the ceiling fan which had taken the form of a five-legged dungenes crab. It rattled its claws like maracas and called out to me in hoarse whispers.
"Karl," he says, "Karl where the hell have you been? I haven't seen you since That One Time. Are you alright?"
He was referring to the last time I went on a trip, when I convinced myself I had killed a girl in a white sweater. It was explained to me later by my roommate that the extasy I had taken the night prior probably drained my body of all its serotonin, essentially putting me in a state of depression. Supposedly this accounted for my sudden development of horrible faux memories and the intense feeling of self-loathing that stuck with me during the 5-hour ordeal. The next morning when I woke up I knew that all the awful things I thought I had commited occured in my mind, but the fact that a such a side of me existed left me worried and ashamed.
I paused for a bit, squinting to find the crab's eyes, which had persisted in evading my molasses gaze. I quickly gave up. "Crab," I said, "I mean, Mr. Ceiling Crab. You know we gotta stop meeting like this. It's not healthy -- for me -- you dwelling on the past. Tonight all I want to do is go to the park and play on the merry-go-round, maybe hit the swingset for five minutes and try to remember what it was like to be a kid when I didn't need to have a reason to be anywhere, everytime."
I concentrated on the gears turning through his shell as he deliberated. They squeaked on every third rotation. Finally he threw his claws to the air and breathed "A-haaaa....." I could tell he was nodding in approval, even though he didn't have a head.
I clapped my hands, "Don't bring your cell-phone!"
We took our sweaters and packed our bags and caught the subway out my window, taking the scenic route, and didn't come home until way past our bedtime, when we stood at the front door and realized that there was nobody inside to wait for us.