28. SICK (V)
My esophagus burns at all times. Swallowing is an effort that hardly seems worth it. I try to eat rice but it’s too much work. When Two uses the toilet after me,
she sees my bile mixed with blood and she says it’s gone too far and I say we are making progress. We shave our heads every third day. We have quit watching TV, opting for music, either Elvis or the bass-heavy trance Two likes. It feels good to see our individual ribs. Two’s breasts have shrunk and her arms are little more than bone. We take turns cleaning our five-gallon buckets.
We ingest ipecac four times a day. We now swallow laxatives and stool softeners every morning. We have been doing this for a month.
It’s not the same as chemo, not even close. Our regimen is more like punishment than a permanent state. But it’s working because I quit thinking about having sex with Two and about getting a box spring and Two is doing well because she’s quit crying about feeling sick and about Derek and she’s even started asking to up her doses of everything.
Sickness bears Honesty. Honesty bears change.
We seek with as much Honesty as we can muster.
Yet we’re blocked with fear and want and memories of how we wish our childhoods had been. It’s time for Reprieve.
It feels wrong having Two buy the DMT, but she knows people and I don’t. I insist on paying for it. She arrives at my apartment around ten on a Friday night. It’s our fifth week of Seeking. Two’s excited. She tries to hide this fact because she thinks it demonstrates selfishness. I tell her it’s all good. I tell her Reprieve is both a celebration and a tool for digging deeper into Self. She tells me she’s never smoked Demisters and I tell her it’s easy. I turn off all the lights except for the lamp she’s given me. I hold the tin foil. I tell her not to suck too hard. She laughs. She’s nervous. She takes three hits. I guide her backward, her bald head a fragile egg being placed underneath a mother’s warmth. It’s my turn and I take four hits and the taste is my adolescence and I want One to hold me and I close my eyes and enter the void.
I’m all over the place.
I feel Jerome entering me and I feel him grab the back of my head and it’s so close to One’s touch and then things are dark as my face meets cinderblock. I’m mute, living in a psych ward. I’m a fifteen-year-old boy silently urging my father to climax so I’ll be left alone. I’m John Doe and Mason Hues and Thirty-Seven and One. I’m a teacher. I’m a leader. I’m a boy who knows more about the world than anyone else, even One.
I think I hear crying, but I’m not sure.
The crying gets louder and I see the body that houses Two’s consciousness sobbing and I know she’s broken down walls that aren’t supposed to be broken. I reach out and take her hand. This calms her because all we want is connection.
She tells me everything is beautiful and everything is horrible. I know exactly what she means. She tells me so much of her life has been about sex. I tell her people’s loss of connection to God results in this particular perversion. She asks if I think she’s pretty. I tell her she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Her pinky is a grazing deer on the grasslands of my ribs.
Two says, “Was it better before?”
My eyes are only partially closed. I see Two’s hipbones poking out from her jeans. They make me think of smashed dinner plates. I ask her what she’s talking about.
“In Marble, with the others.”
“Different.”
“Different better?”
“Just different.”
“What went wrong?”
“We thought fear could change the world.”
“Fear dissipates,” Two says.
“Exactly.”
“Then what changes the world?”
“God,” I said.
“Do you believe in God?”
“No.”
“How can there be no accidents if there’s no God making sure everything goes according to plan?”
My body is a supernova swallowing itself, everything exploding through contraction. It’s modus ponens. Something has to play the role of God, and that something is us. I sit up at the same time as Two, both of us floating and sinking and dying and becoming immortal.
“Fuck me,” Two says. “That’s it. The One Truth: we’re God.”