i think these are my last days

the world held its breath. not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of something crouching just beyond the curtain — the second attention, pressing against the thin skin of ordinary reality. the light through the window was wrong. it cut too sharp, like the eagle’s claw testing the fabric between worlds. i reached for a cigarette. my fingers passed through it. the inorganic beings love to mock hunger*.* the ash fell perfectly. the smoke curled. i took another drag. but the cigarette was never lit. the lighter in my pocket wasn’t real. everything i touched pretended to exist. and i hadn’t smoked in three years. it began with a taste — bitter, chemical, dry as desert bone. my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth like velcro. the walls began to hum, not with noise, but with vibration, as if something behind them was waking up slowly and stretching its limbs against the drywall. light bled in thick amber rays through the blinds. it wasn’t the usual golden afternoon light — this one dripped. it moved like syrup across the floor, collecting in corners, pooling under the furniture like paint spilled from a ruptured sun. my skin felt plastic. my arms weren’t mine. i flexed my fingers, and they moved two seconds late. "a shape perched on the recliner — not a man, but a stain where a man had been erased. it drew smoke into the void where its face should’ve been. i knew this trick. the inorganic ones wear absence like a mask. don juan warned me: ‘when you see the faceless smoker, it’s not watching you. it’s waiting for you to forget your name.’ just a blank stretch of skin, smooth as clay, the cigarette hovering in front of where a mouth might have been. i looked away. when i looked back, he was gone, but the smell of the smoke lingered, thick and nostalgic, like the after-scent of a funeral. i tried to go to the bathroom, but the hallway folded in on itself like an accordion. every step i took made it longer. doors lined either side, all slightly ajar, spilling out colored light: deep purples, jungle greens, crimson reds that breathed like embers. from one door came the sound of laughter. from another, the rustle of pages turning, fast and frantic. i opened a door, and there was a forest inside — moonless, dense with black pine trees. i could smell the dirt. i could taste the fog.

i don’t remember choosing to enter, but i was inside it. trees whispered things in languages i didn’t understand but felt deeply in my teeth. bark peeled from trunks like old wallpaper, revealing blinking eyes underneath. i followed a woman in a yellow dress through the trees. she had no feet, just shadows where her legs should be. she beckoned me without turning, disappearing behind trees that leaned aside for her and closed behind me. i tripped over a typewriter embedded in the moss. each key had a tooth instead of a letter. when i pressed one, it bit my finger, and blood bloomed into ink across the paper. i ran. i stumbled into a convenience store lit with buzzing green fluorescents. it was empty. shelves stocked with nothing but identical cans labeled “food” in comic sans. a man behind the counter wore a dog’s head and asked me if i had a rewards card. i said yes, and he laughed — a barking, metallic sound — and handed me a receipt that said “you were never here.” i blinked. i was on a bus.

the seats were living things — fused human torsos kneeling in perfect rows, their spines arched into headrests, ribcages split open to cradle passengers. their skin had hardened to cracked leather, warm and slightly damp where my thighs touched them. the windows weren't glass but slabs of obsidian so reflective they showed infinite versions of me, each slightly more distorted than the last, like a hall of mirrors collapsing inward. the passengers sat motionless, fishbowls bolted directly to their collarbones where heads should be. inside, thick black ink swirled, forming faces that pressed against the glass — not strangers, but people i'd known. my third-grade teacher. the nurse who'd stitched my chin when i was seven. the barista who'd handed me coffee yesterday. their mouths moved in unison, teeth clicking against the curved glass like insects trapped in a jar. the driver's hands ended in cauterized stumps, the raw flesh pulsing as they gripped the wheel. from his sleeves dangled dozens of tiny flags made from human fingernails, each one etched with a date. they flapped in perfect rhythm with the engine's growl — a sound that wasn't mechanical but organic, wet, the groan of something digesting. when i leaned closer, i realized the wheel wasn't steering anything. it turned on its own, the driver's stumps just spasming against it in useless imitation of control.

"where are we going?" i asked the woman beside me. she turned slowly and her fishbowl clouded, the ink resolving into my mother's face — not as she was at the end, but young, beautiful, the way she'd looked reading to me at bedtime. her lips formed words: "you've always known." the ink bubbled violently and spelled out YOUR STOP IS NEXT in perfect cursive just as the brakes shrieked. outside, through the black windows, i saw the carousel waiting. its horses weren't carved wood but fused vertebrae, their elongated necks ending in human skulls with too many teeth. steam poured from their nostrils in time with the music — if you could call it music. it was the sound of a ribcage being plucked like harp strings, each note vibrating in my fillings. the carousel's platform wasn't painted but skinned, still glistening. the bus doors hissed open. the kneeling seat-creatures all turned their blind, fused heads toward me in unison. the driver's stumps twitched, the nail-flags now spelling FEED THEM in jagged capitals. from the fishbowls, a chorus of my own voice whispered: "you've ridden this before." thoughts crawled under my scalp like centipedes.

i blinked. i was back on the couch. everything normal. or so i thought. i saw my father’s death again, but this time it felt like a reunion. he opened his ribcage like a photo album. we laughed at old wounds. i reached for a glass of water on the table. my hand passed through it. i looked again. the table wasn’t there. neither was the couch. i was sitting on a mound of dirt in a room full of vines, where insects whispered memories back to me—things i’d never lived, but remembered vividly. i looked down at my hands and saw that they were made of tiny people, climbing over each other, waving up at me, screaming silently.

i screamed back. from the corner of my eye, the mirror wasn’t glass but still water — the kind sorcerers use to drown their reflections. the man inside wore my face like ill-fitting skin. his pupils were tunnels. i knew if i stared too long, i’d see the eagle’s nest at the end of them, piled with the bones of all my past selves. ‘the reflection is the hunter. the glass is the trap.’ i stepped back. my reflection licked its lips. he moved when i didn’t. he smiled with teeth that went too far back. the sky split into the green of a bruise healing backward. the floor arched its spine like a dreaming dog. i laughed — not because it was funny, but because the tonal (the shiver of the universe) had shifted, and laughter was the only weapon i had left. the nagual isn’t kind. it peels you open to show you how small your fear really is. i scratched at my arms until they flaked away like old newspaper. words fell out of my veins. names of people i hadn’t thought of in years. some i’d never met. some i think i will. then there was silence. no noise. no time. just the tickle of invisible ants crawling behind my eyes and the soft warmth of something wet dripping onto my shoulder. i didn’t look up. because i knew, somehow, the ceiling was watching me. breathing. thinking. i lay down and fell through the floor like water through fingers. i fell for years. for centuries. through memories and made-up dreams. through the feeling of being five and lost in a supermarket. through the moment your name is forgotten by someone you loved.

and when i landed — i was here. in this room. writing this down, i think. though i’ve scratched through this page six times already and each time i look up, the walls are a different color. sometimes breathing, sometimes bleeding, sometimes laughing, and someone is knocking. they’ve been knocking for hours now, but i’m not sure if it’s the door. or my own skull. or god.

i drank. over and over. the glass never emptied, or maybe it never filled. the liquid inside moved like oil but tasted like metal and old television static. i kept sipping until i realized the cup was part of my hand, fused there, glass turned to bone. it didn’t matter. i would’ve swallowed anything just to make the buzzing stop. the air was thick with it. the kind of silence that howls at a pitch too high for memory but deep enough to rattle the ribs. i blinked, and the room reassembled itself wrong — couch on the ceiling, lights underground, windows looking into other windows. my body forgot how to sit. or maybe it never learned. time no longer walked. it slithered. i opened the door to the hallway and stepped into my sixth birthday. or someone’s. balloons hung frozen mid-air. the air reeked of burnt frosting. the clocks chanted in latin. my mother clapped with hands that split down the middle, raw meat between the palms. the candles blinked like eyes. i tried to scream happy birthday but teeth fell out, one by one, each with a word carved into them — names i didn’t recognize but felt guilty for forgetting. a clown approached with a face like melted wax and whispered, “you’ve been here before.” i ran. the hallway bent into a spiral, then a noose. i ran and ran, all the escape routes lead back to my mouth.

rooms bled into each other like bad dreams. i entered the bathroom and watched myself from the mirror — but i was already in the bathtub, curled, muttering in a voice too slow to be mine. the mirror-me stared at me, expressionless, while blood dripped from the lightbulb above. not fast, just deliberate. each drop echoed like a drumbeat. something was waiting between the tiles. the shower curtain breathed. i turned away and found myself at the beach. just like that. no transition. sand soft and colorless under a sky that flickered like dying neon. the ocean was black and glassy. no waves. no wind. just motionless, like it was thinking. i walked into it, and it parted for me like flesh, warm and too soft. something brushed past my ankle — thin, papery fingers.

the world split open like a throat. i fell through it. then came the city. or its ghost. every building was the shape of someone i used to love. hollow, towering, leaning in. i walked streets that smelled like rotting perfume and heard my own footsteps playing in reverse. the sky overhead was full of eyes. some blinked. some bled. some were mine. streetlights flickered in morse code, but i’d forgotten the alphabet. i watched myself pass by on the other side of the street, arm-in-arm with a woman whose face was my own, laughing at a joke i hadn’t told yet. the traffic lights melted. cars screamed as they turned inside out. a bus drove past, its windows full of screaming mouths. it stopped.

i found myself in a field of hands reaching up from the soil, clapping. each clap in perfect rhythm. a celebration of nothing. the sun above burst into a thousand smaller suns and rained petals that smelled like regret. a fox with two faces walked up to me, sat down, and began to cry. not from its eyes — from its mouth. i asked it what was wrong and it whispered, “you were never real.” i kissed its forehead and it turned to dust. the dust turned to birds. the birds sang my childhood name until their beaks fell off. i clapped with the hands in the dirt. i think i was happy. but that was before the carousel arrived. it rolled in slowly — no music, just that awful wet squeak of rusted gears. mounted horses twisted with too many legs, their necks elongated, eyes too human. one bore my mother’s face. another, the girl who stopped talking to me in college. i climbed on. the carousel began to spin, faster and faster, until the world was just color smearing across my eyes — green into red into blue into flesh. faster. the sky screamed. my skin peeled off in strips and danced like ribbon in the wind. i laughed. not because it was funny, but because my jaw no longer knew how to do anything else. i think i left my voice behind in the field. i didn’t need it anymore.

and somewhere, in the space between heartbeats, between the seconds that shouldn’t exist, i remembered the real world. or i think i did. i remembered a room. a name. a reason. i tried to say it out loud and my tongue folded into origami. the air turned to glass. the laughter came again — closer now. but not from outside. from me. because there, in that final moment, after the carousel exploded into beetles and the world folded back into the shape of a throat, i realized something: none of this was new. i had seen this place before. not in dreams, not in memory, but in the space between them. i’d been here. i was here. i am here. and i laughed.

i laughed because there was nothing left to do. because the horror was too vast to run from and too intricate to comprehend. because everything beautiful had rotted into terror, and everything terrifying had learned to sing. i laughed until my lungs emptied. until the walls joined in. until the world itself split at the seams, and the darkness spilled out like ink across the page of a book that never ends. and still, i laughed. the room wasn’t dissolving. i was. the walls bled because i had no more edges left. last lesson hissed in my skull: ‘the eagle doesn’t eat the flesh. it eats the shine of your seeing.’ i touched my face. it came away like wet newspaper. underneath? nothing but the black light of the nagual, humming the tune the inorganic beings use to call their dogs home.

i tried to remember why i started writing this down. a knock. a laugh. a voice that sounds like mine, but isn't. the ink on the page curls like smoke. I read the last line aloud. "I think these are my last days." and something behind the mirror grins — because I’ve only just arrived.