It Is Two A.M.

Do You Know Where Your Sanity Is?

The drain.

It’s down the drain.

It MUST be, to have the dream you just had.

You have switched places with Alex. You are inside him, at Jay’s party. You’re feeling depressed and you don’t like anyone there, and everyone’s drinking and it seems like a good thing to do, at least SOMETHING to do, so you grab a bottle and start swigging. And suddenly everything seems less loud, less obnoxious—just less—and you like the feeling for awhile until it takes you over, and now you’re starting to feel worse and worse, because, like they tell you in school, alcohol is a DEPRESSANT and what could be worse for DEPRESSION than that? So you sink and sink, but you’re already at rock bottom, so what happens?

You go below, you go under, you question why you’re at the party, you question why you’re even ALIVE, and what’s worse, you desperately have to go to the bathroom, but the one downstairs is being used, so you trudge to the one upstairs, and all you want to do is relieve yourself, but you’re in there, and the lights are bright and you see yourself in the mirror—PASTY and TIRED and STRINGY-HAIRED and SAD—and you see the shower and the gleaming tub and you decide THAT’S what you need, so you turn on the water and step in but you’re not thinking, you’re not SOBER enough to take your clothes off, and the next thing you know you’re sitting down, tired and soothed by the warmth, and you know you’re going to fall asleep, slip downward, downward—and your hand reaches for the drain because you WANT the tub to fill, because maybe if you sink far enough, if you sleep deep enough, you won’t have to come back.

IT’S A DREAM!

A nightmare.

It’s CRAZY to even THINK that Alex did that.

You are wired, McCrae. You are crazed and disturbed. And you watch too many horror films.

First of all, even if Alex had CONSIDERED what you were dreaming about, he would have just run the BATHWATER. What’s the point of putting the shower on? Besides, HE COULDN’T EVEN TURN THE DOORKNOB when you first found him. How could he have closed the drain ON PURPOSE?

Forget it.

Put it out of your mind.