EXPERIMENTS IN AN ISOLATION TANK
HE FLOATS on the ocean surface, limbs splayed like a pinwheel. The water is cold, but the clear sky above him is hot. His back shivers while his chest burns. He rolls over to reverse the sensations. The current of the sea is slight, and he drifts. There are no waves. He is simply carried along by the lazy whim of the flat tide. Looking down through the purple water, he sees gigantic shapes that swim beneath. They are monsters, but they are far below. He can only discern blurry shadows darting past, larger than anything he has ever seen. One shape in particular sails under him, then circles, repeating the path, again and again. At each return, it seems to rise ever so slightly from the ocean depths, closer to him. The shape looks like a whale, but it has three long horns protruding from a head, like the barbs of a trident spear.
The man is uncertain how long he has been in the water. The sun never goes down, never moves. It simply hangs in the sky like a golden eye staring in judgment upon him. The eye is ceaseless in its vision, and there are no clouds to cross over it. He remembers nothing before the ocean.
Looking at his own body, the man wonders how he came to be in this vast expanse. Curiously, he examines himself. He is light-featured and aged in midyears and wears print shorts. There are no scars or other markings to give away stories of his life. He wears no wedding ring. He is alone.
The purple water sparkles and shimmers around him. It would be a beautiful sight to behold, were he not trapped in it. He drifts for a long time, rolling from his chest to his back, alternating between floating and swimming. He has no destination, but thinks the greater distance he travels, the increased chance he has to discover an escape from the frigid sea. His tired arms splash rhythmically and his legs kick like a sluggish motor. He swims, then he floats.
The black shadows pace his progress far below.
~
“The theta state of mind is one in which your consciousness is greatly expanded. You are completely relaxed, as if floating, untethered by the senses which so often betray us. You should feel inspiration and understanding and recall long-forgotten memories.”
Chris gasped and opened his eyes, frantically splashing in ten inches of water. The lid of the tank was open, and Dr. Edwards spoke in a loose, monotone voice. He did not look at Chris as he spoke, but gazed down to a clipboard encumbered with stacks of loose notepaper and official-looking forms. Chris sat up and clenched at the sides of the isolation tank for support. The sea-smell of Epsom salt hung thick in the office like rotten brine.
Dr. Edwards turned to look at him over the top of delicate-rimmed glasses. “How do you feel, Chris? Refreshed? I know it may take a moment to acclimate yourself back into the real world, but the benefits of treatment should remain with you.”
“That was horrible.” Chris stepped out from the fiberglass-shaped egg, splashing water across the gray shale floor.
“Wait, let me get you a towel,” Dr. Edwards said.
“What did you do to me in there? It feels like you left me in that thing forever.”
“The treatment is only for one hour. See, it’s four o’clock.”
Looking up across marbled walls to an iron clock, Chris confirmed the time. He shook his head, flustered, and took the cotton towel, rubbing it through his hair. “I was floating in the ocean.”
“Yes, people liken the sensation of the isolation tank to exactly that of floating in the ocean,” Dr. Edwards said.
“There were things swimming below me. I don’t know what they were, but they were terrible things. Things that could swallow me if they rose from the depths.”
“Oh, I see.” The doctor turned back to his clipboard, bearing shambles of papers, and began scribbling frantic, looping notes. “Would you call them formless things? Nameless things?”
“I guess. I just knew I didn’t want them to get any closer.”
“How do you think that relates to why you’re here?”
“Because I’m scared of something. I have this constant fear all the time. I still don’t know what it is or why I feel this way.”
“You fear something so great that you have submerged it deep within your subconscious. However, it is now leaking out and manifesting itself into phobias, imprisoning you alone in a life of insecurity and fright. What do you fear, Chris?”
As Dr. Edwards spoke, water pooled at Chris’s feet and rolled across the floor. He noticed it first as runoff from his own soaked body, dripping where he stood. But the puddle grew, and it poured out over the edges of the isolation tank. Neon purple lights looped inside the rim of the tank in fluorescent coils, so the water spilling over appeared as a violet waterfall.
“Your tub’s overflowing,” Chris said.
The doctor looked to the tank and his face turned sour, as if moldy milk curdled in his mouth. “When you climbed out, you must have knocked something loose. Wait here and I’ll turn the water off. The main valve’s in the other room.”
Edwards scurried through a plain door. He was a small man, wiry and bald, with thick bristling eyebrows like speckled caterpillars crawling above his eyes. He wore a yuppie’s uniform: white slacks and a lemon-yellow cardigan, with the open collar of a peach shirt flowing out. When Chris first met him, he thought the doctor dressed like a meringue pie.
The purple water streaming from the tank increased in pressure like an uncapped hydrant. It shot at Chris, and he flinched.
“You turned it the wrong way, Doc!”
Christ on crutches, it’s righty-tighty, lefty-loosey , Chris thought. Everyone knows that . The water quickly flowed to each wall of the room and began to rise, pooling over his ankles. It isn’t possible for water to rise so quickly in such a large space. It would take hours for that kind of build-up . He splash-stepped to the door Edwards had hastily exited and found it locked.
Chris pounded on the door. “Hey, you locked me in here! Turn off the water!”
The water quickly filled the room, rising up his legs. Chris stumbled about, banging on each wall in turn and yelling out curses and pleas. The incandescent lamp in the center of the ceiling grew brighter. His towel floated past, mixing with medical charts and glass jars and photographs of his life. After scrambling through the rising tide, he stopped to stare in shock at the pictures as they drifted to him, pooling like flies swarming upon festering flesh.
The pictures were of him at all ages, candid and furtive. There he was as a boy, curled up under bed covers, staring one-eyed at the shadow creeping from his closet. Older, now a teenager, cowering in his doorway, afraid to cross the threshold. Early adult, an image revealed him sobbing in the bathroom, hands tightly pressed over his mouth to muffle cries. Scores of pictures floated past, each a portrait of his phobia or terror.
One picture edged above the others. He was a child, lying in the basement of his home, pins pushed through his chest, his fears bubbling out in release. He was being crushed with stones. He was being told to be strong .
The medical charts and glass jars began to sink through the water, falling below the surface to become blurry shadows. The office walls sank in on themselves, sliding so placidly under the sea that they left behind only ripples. The photographs remained. His father was in each one …
~
The man blinks. He is back in the ocean. He flails and swims a few strokes before lying prostrate in the purple water, allowing himself to float freely once again. The sun hangs motionless in the clear sky.
His name is Chris, and he wonders about his strange thoughts as he looks below.
The blurry shadows move beneath him. They have increased in number. The one with three horns circles higher now. Peering down through the murky depths, he can faintly make out markings upon its hide. It has the black-and-white coloring of an orca whale. Instead of a tail fin, the monster trails long sinewy tentacles, like those on a giant squid. Another shadow has risen as well. It is tubular and somewhat translucent, like a cavernous worm, with two separate heads that move in unison. The two heads morph into massive claws then back to heads again. The creatures do not threaten him as he drifts, but they rise, and Chris feels a foreboding take hold, like icy fingers choking him.
He does not want to see the blurry things swimming beneath, so he rolls onto his back. The warmth of the sun upon his chest is pleasant after the chill of the water. His back cools in the refreshing sea. Soon his chest will sear and his back will turn frigid. There is no respite but to turn over and over. Does everyone float alone in this great ocean?
Why is he here? What has happened to him? The man grapples for any fleeting clue. He knows nothing but his fears and the dream of a doctor. He floats on the surface and examines the horizon. It is a perfect line, encircling him like the rim of a bottle. Above the line lolls the clear sky and below is the purple water. He thinks of his mind, floating free like his body, and a rising image of a face comes to him, ascending from the depths.
~
“Sensory deprivation is the removal of stimuli that could otherwise mislead you. The sense of sight, sound, even gravity, are subjective perceptions which are shed in order to engage the clarity concealed within one’s brain. This is achieved through the isolation chamber.”
Chris gasped and opened his eyes, frantically splashing in ten inches of water. “Let me out of this damned thing!”
Dr. Edwards looked at him over the top of his glasses. “Is something the matter?”
“Jesus, yes! How’d you get me back in there?” Furious, he scrambled out of the fiberglass tank, stumbling to his knees and spilling purple-hued water.
“Back in there? It’s only our first treatment. We’ve just begun.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. I got out of there already and you locked me in here and I—I …” His voice trailed off as he looked around the room. There was no sign of any flooding, aside from the water he dripped onto the gray shale floor.
“Let me get you a towel,” Dr. Edwards said.
“How long was I in there for?”
“Not long. The treatment is only forty-five minutes. Your brain slows while in the theta state of consciousness. Neurological activity is heightened to peaks you are not used to. It is an extraordinary realm to explore, your mind. The isolation tank allows you to live as if in a waking dream.”
Chris wrapped the towel around his torso in a tight embrace, and glanced at the clock. “Screw me on Sunday, it was so real …”
“Tell me what you saw.” The speckled caterpillars above Edwards’s eyes crawled closer together in fascination as he wrote into his bound stack of papers.
“The monsters were getting closer. I was helpless.”
“You are never helpless. Remember that.”
Chris shivered and clenched the towel tighter as if to hide inside its cotton folds.
“I saw my father.”
“Yes, Chris, yes!” Edwards’s tone changed like a burst of orgasm. “We are making progress now!”
“I haven’t thought of him in years.”
“You have repressed memories of your father and he is the source of your fears, the monsters rising to you.”
“He died when I was seven.”
“Your father was a great man. Many people sought him for his wisdom.”
“What are you talking about? My father was an asshole. I remember that he beat me every day. He—he experimented on me.”
“You were too young to understand. He taught you strength, but you have since forgotten it. You hide your fears below a gruff exterior. You do not face your fears, and so your fears swim deep within. Inside, you are still a seven-year-old boy.”
“I don’t have to listen to this crap. You don’t know what it was like with him. You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
Edwards’s voice changed: “Gawwdammit, Chrissie, after all these years you haven’t learned a thing, have you?”
Chris shrieked.
The voice was of his father: “You’re scared again, aren’t you?”
He knew he had been caught. He was a little boy again, cringing and wet under his father’s shadow. “I’m sorry, Poppa, I’m trying to be strong!”
“Your lesson’s not over yet.” His father, in the lemon-yellow cardigan, hauled Chris up and pushed him back into the isolation tank. “Face your fears or they will swallow you!”
Chris wailed, and the clear lid crashed down, slamming his head forward into the water. He sobbed into blackness, choking on the salty brine …
~
The man lifts his head from the ocean, coughing and gagging and screaming. Salty tears fall from his eyes and mix into the salty sea. The salt is the same, he thinks. The ocean is made of his tears; a collection of lonely laments pooled to form his very own prison. Chris realizes he fell asleep in the calm purple tide. He had been lying on his chest, swallowing the water, while the sun cooked him from above. His back feels bright red and blistered. His chest is pale and soggy like a dead fish. He rolls over.
He dreamed of the doctor again, and also his father. He barely remembers his father’s face, but the voice haunts him. The voice once spoke of many things, cruel things that he shudders to remember from boyhood. He tries to push those things back into the darkness, but they have grown too great to hold within, and the cobweb-covered fears of his father pours out.
Memories, like photographs, float upon the ocean of his mind.
A creature with horns and a tail follows him as a boy through the halls of his house, stalking. It is his father in costume. He slashes Chris across the arm with a knife. His father, now as tall as the ceiling and with many arms, holds a whip and whispers words like an old woman. Later, a formless shadow falls upon Chris as he sleeps, a germ borne upon the wind that places his hands around Chris’s throat.
“Be strong,” his father tells him. More words are spoken, indecipherable in ancient tongue, as if several voices converse at once from the same mouth.
He weeps in reminiscence, and the sun stares upon him, watching, judging, calculating. The blurry shapes below swim faster, excited.
One night Chris visits his father as he sleeps …
~
“Fear is the sensation induced by a perceived threat. It is innate and controls one’s behaviors. Irrational and delusional thoughts fill the vessels that are built of fear. Only when fear is conquered will your brain blossom from a small seed of potential into the beautiful rose of self-realization.”
Chris gasped and opened his eyes, frantically splashing in ten inches of water. Shivering and panting, he rose. The tank was like an enclosed bathtub and he stood, back pressed against the open, hinged lid.
He wrapped his arms around his chest, staring at the doctor in a wide-eyed plea. “No more, no more, please don’t put me back in there—”
The speckled caterpillars on Dr. Edwards’s face wriggled in concern. “Chris, therapy should be gratifying. You are being cured of an imbalance, a predilection for phobia that is not natural to you. You must free your mind to rediscover the strength that is your birthright.”
Chris shook his head. “You’ve left me in there for years.”
“I assure you the session is only for thirty minutes. Come on out of there and let me get you a towel. Remember, you once compared your life to being adrift at sea, surrounded by faceless fears?”
“The fears are inside that tank,” Chris said.
“Your senses are isolated inside that tank. You see what your life is. You must put a face to your fears. That is how they are defeated!”
“I killed my father.”
Edwards froze at the abrupt announcement. It hung between them, and Chris quivered at the cold sound of his confession. The coils of neon purple lights glowed brighter. Blurry moments swam past, and each man pondered what words to speak next.
“Yes, I know. We have known all along,” the doctor said. “Your father perfected a practice to eliminate fears, to rise up and own this world. The strength of mind is invincible. People live their lives amongst unnamed terrors that hold them back. Who is not afraid of embarrassment or of failure or of loneliness? Who can defeat the fear of death or damnation, let alone the fear of earthly reprisals, of laws and norms? We are taught these fears from infancy, taught by our parents, customs which weaken us, defeat us and lead to the shackles of subservience. Only men who are strong take what they want. Only men without fear live forever.”
Chris’s heart pounded in a rapid rhythm as he listened to the doctor. Memories of his father pounced anew, the panic that crippled him in life and left him in tears, catatonic on the floor, unable to function. He could not remember why he came to visit Dr. Edwards, or having ever met him before, but the doctor struck him as familiar. His voice and the things he said mimicked the man he knew last when he was only a boy.
“Your father taught you pain and fear, and he taught you the means to defeat them. He taught you power. You conquered your greatest fear when you were only seven. Such a remarkable feat! Why, Chris—why are you still scared?”
Softly, Chris spoke. “I can’t give up my childhood with him, even if he was a monster. All I have left of my father are the fears. It’s all I remember. But I don’t want to let him go, I don’t want to forget him.”
“He wanted you to kill him, to prove yourself worthy. Your father taught you strength, and his greatest pride was the night you embraced it; the night you crept into his room and placed your hands around his neck. Child hands that wielded the magnificent strength to crush his larynx and strangle him while he thrashed in tears beneath you. You defeated your greatest fear, the fear of your father. You were ready, Chris.”
“I killed my own father . He’s dead, don’t you get it? I’ve had to live with that my whole life.”
“You killed your father, but he is not dead. Who do you think brought you to me?”
More tears. Chris again shook his head in denial.
“It’s time for you to face your fears,” the doctor said.
The words lashed at him. There would never be an escape; he knew he was trapped in that prison. If it was a dream, he would never wake, and if it was a nightmare, he lived his life within it. Chris wiped his eyes and ceded. He lay down in the isolation tank.
Edwards lowered the lid and his lemon-yellow cardigan glowed under the lights.
“A famous man once said, ‘There is nothing to fear but for fear itself.’ Remember that, Chris.”
~
The man wakes and splashes and chokes again. He knows the end will arrive soon. He falls asleep more often now, and the dreams rolling in his thoughts are more vivid, sapping his strength and sanity. He cannot determine where he belongs or if it even matters. If he cannot stay awake, he will drown in this ocean. If he does not drown, he will be swallowed by the things below, or worse. The sun still has not moved in the sky, and he tries swimming closer to it.
The propulsion of motion sails under him. Panic floods him at this new sensation, and Chris rolls onto his chest to gaze into the water. The blurry shapes have risen much closer from the depths. It is their swell he feels as they swim past. He is tiny—insignificant in size—compared to their enormity. Each of the shapes is terrifyingly long, stretching as if fifty isolation tanks were laid side-by-side.
Closer, he now sees the orca with trident-shaped horns and trailing tentacles has an open gash along its back, pink and frothy and filled with teeth. It is nearest and rising quickly. The two-headed worm has spiny humps like a camel impaled with cacti. There is a gelatinous blob of many colors that ascends, and also something resembling a crocodile, covered in scales and electrical surges. They swim faster now, their circling formation tighter. Chris is at the epicenter of their spiral, as if at the tip of an inverted funnel.
They are all his father. He is immersed in his father.
He is his father.
He rolls onto his back. The sun blinds him. The sun is his father, too. He cannot escape the eye that sees all.
They are his fears, and Chris must conquer them. He feels their torment, the way he did when he was seven. The anger burns, its rays cooking his chest. He feels the forgotten strength—his father taught him to harness it, to use it. His father taught him well, but he was so young, and he cried out in remorse. It was his father, and Chris killed him, and the fear of reprisal and regret had washed over his waning strength, drowning it. The memory returns, the burn, the strength. His father was right—he can conquer anything.
The man drinks deep of the purple water …
~
“Your father was heralded as a savior. He was our light and the prophet. You, Chris, you are to take his place. It is your thirty-third birthday, the day of awakening. Long have you lived imprisoned, but now it is time for your father to be free. Come forth, in peace and in strength, and be anointed.”
Chris gasped and opened his eyes, frantically splashing in ten inches of water.
Dr. Edwards looked over the top of delicate-rimmed glasses. “How do you feel, Chris? Refreshed? I know it may take a moment to acclimate yourself back into the real world, but the teachings of your father should remain with you.” He paused, and then stared sternly at him. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Chris said, calm and confident. “Yes, I am.”
Chris rose from the water and stepped forth, dripping onto the gray shale floor. A towel was offered, and he refused. He embraced the ocean and grasped his own neck between his hands, squeezing, feeling his larynx tighten.
The speckled caterpillars leapt on Edwards’s face. “Congratulations! Your progression is remarkable. I never thought we could have brought you back in such a short period of time. Your father said you could do it, but I just didn’t believe. Only one session in the isolation tank and fifteen minutes at that! Truly amazing. You are your father’s son.”
Chris interlaced his fingers and squeezed tighter around his throat, choking himself. Changes began to emerge on his face. It aged and grayed, features sharpening. Wrinkles grew on his brow, and crow’s tracks strode across his temples.
“Yes, Chris, yes,” said Dr. Edwards.
Chris’s chin grew broader, dimpled, and he staggered from his feet as the room grew hazy and lopsided. His father’s features overlaid his own, like a dark cloud floating over the sun. Ears shrank and scars appeared on his cheeks, erratic and twisting to the corners of his mouth. His lips thinned and paled and trembled, and he watched from faraway as Dr. Edwards gazed upon him, his own face brilliant in rapture.
“Remember, there is nothing to fear but for fear itself.”
From deep underwater, Chris shrieked in denial. Something snapped in his brain and, like flicking a switch, he released himself. He lunged instead at Edwards and latched around the man’s neck in a flare of clarity and rage. The doctor spasmed like a puppet. His clipboard flew through the air, spraying the room in pages of notes and forms and photographs. Chris’s hands clenched, squeezing, and the doctor’s windpipe constricted.
Edwards tried to cry out but instead his tongue unfurled, lolling swollen and extended between flapping, hissing jaws. Confusion washed over his face, and he sank to his knees, clutching frantically at Chris’s hands. Tears glistened around bulging eyes, and his delicate-rimmed glasses shattered on the floor.
Face blank, Chris bore down on Edwards, tightening his grip. Fingers dug into doughy flesh, crushing the fragile cervical vertebrae. He stoically watched as the doctor fell limp. Edwards’s meringue face darkened, and Chris knew he had defeated his father.
The purple light of the isolation tank still shone bright, and Chris laid the doctor’s body to float freely inside it. Grimly, he closed the lid over him. He sat in the office, embracing the adrenaline rush he had not felt since he was seven years old. He felt no remorse, no fear of reprisal.
Chris felt no fear at all.
He quietly walked out of the doctor’s office and locked the door behind him. The office was tucked away in the back of a small strip mall at the side entrance to the main boulevard. The parking stalls were directly in front, christened with signage that read PATIENTS ONLY . There awaited his BMW. He may have lived in fear before, but he had done well in the world. Now he was unstoppable.
He entered the car and flipped down the visor mirror to stare at himself. Roaring in triumph, he pounded on the steering wheel. A new life fell into place. Thanks to Poppa , he realized. Chris pulled out onto the street and slammed down the accelerator, racing away, his heart revving like the car. He felt invincible.
The doctor was right: therapy was remarkable; his fears were gone; the black depression and mutilating self-doubt were removed, like shitting out bad food ingested the night before.
The sun fell, and traffic on the streets was sporadic. He barreled into the oncoming lanes so others had to drive wildly to get out of his way. Chris could cause the fear now; he would never be a victim again. The light at the intersection turned red and he drove through, laughing. He drove with no destination, but the greater distance he travelled, the increased chance he’d have to discover an escape from the frigid sea. Letting the current of the highway carry him along, he drifted until the coastline shimmered in the distance under the setting sun. The sky turned from blue to indigo, darkening in rhythmic hues.
He drove and left the highway. He drove down the street, drove through the iron chains signaling the end of the road, drove onto the pier.
The land fell dark as the last of the sun’s light cast onto the ocean. The darkening color of the water turned purple, purple, purple.
Chris had nothing to fear but for fear itself. He was invincible.
He drove on until his car floated freely in the air, off the pier and, in a burst of glass and rent metal, the BMW smashed into the deep sea below. Sinking fast, Chris struggled in the driver’s seat, kicking against the door. He tasted the familiar salt. The visor mirror fell open and Chris saw himself in the reflection.
The blurry shadows surrounded him.
~
The man opens his eyes, gagging on the choking water, but he feels strength now. He feels determination. He envisions the face of his father on the blurry shadows and knows how to defeat them.
The horned orca rises and swims to him.
Chris watches it approach and, in sudden revelation, screams. It does not have his father’s face after all. It wears a lemon-yellow cardigan and has rows and rows of speckled caterpillars crawling upon its brow. Its mouth opens wide, a horrible cavern, like an isolation tank with no escape.
He remembers: He has nothing to fear, but for fear itself.
But Chris does fear it, and he knows it is coming to swallow him.