A Box Inside a Box

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1
 

It’s 4 AM and you’re still awake. Confused neurotransmitters splash around in your skull, thoughts carving through well-worn neural pathways, anxiety like a defibrillator, blasting your heart, a frenetic bass drum, a pounding so intense that you're sure you can see it, throbbing beneath the skin, protruding, like a fist trying to punch out of your chest.

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Shadows, like ink, pour down the walls, dripping, flooding, pools of darkness encroaching.

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Though you're sunken in the La-z-boy, you feel weightless. Though you sit motionless, you feel like you're flying. You're an insect, buzzing, inextricably drawn to the flickering electric-blue light, having confused the 4K display for the moon, for a star.

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This was me, before Opti-diet. A sad-faced, obese woman on the screen, hollow eyes looking down at you. But this is me now! A tanned, thin version of the same woman spins across the screen. She wears a pink dress and a brilliant smile. I’ve never been so happy. She turns side to side, lifting the hem of the dress, all sculpted legs and high heels. I’ve never felt so good.

 

This is all in high definition.

Somehow, her face, her figure, look more real than reality itself. Call now and live life as the person you were always meant to be.

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You wonder, if I’m not living life as the person I’m meant to be, then who am I?

 

Delicious food, delivered to your door. Call now!

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You're in the family room, but you're alone. Where's your family?

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They're all asleep.

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You think of them, lying on their backs. How can you be sure they're still breathing?

In their moonlit rooms, they look pale and drained of blood.

 

A body rolls over and utters something breathy and incoherent.

 

Dreamscapes, projected onto the insides of their closed eyelids.

 

A childhood memory percolates inside your consciousness, bubbling up, foam and bile: Mom and Dad, a flurry of profanities, barbed words and their endless marital discord. Doors slamming, kitchen dishes shattered. Your father peeling out in his S-10 in a way that felt final.

 

Would you ever see him again? Would he come back for you?

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Satellites orbit the planet, signals transmitted using the Ku band (12-18 GHz).

 

You flip to the 24 hour headline news.

 

Disembodied heads, these news anchors, they're your family now.

 

And they'll never leave.

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Soon, the screen begins to blur, becoming disorganized and incoherent.

 

You wonder what it means, until you don't.

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Soon, it all starts to fade, until

 

you

     fall

          into

               the

                    space

                         between

                              two

                                   thoughts.

​

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2
 

A small man dressed in a dark-colored hoodie, creeping along the bush line.

 

Its 4:30 am and he's awake.

He sees the shifting light of your television.

​

It calls out to him.

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Ethereal.

 

He can’t look away:

 

It’s the face of god. It’s a woman’s ass. It’s a car crash. It’s the sound of shattering glass in a restaurant.

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And as he peers in, studying your motionless body, he wonders who you are and what you do.

 

How can he be sure that you're still breathing?

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You're a body inside a room.

 

He looks at you lying there; statuary at the altar, all bathed in throbbing blue light.

 

He can see the screen, reflected in miniature, hovering, like blue postage stamps inside each eye.

 

You're a mirror.
 

You're a body.

​

You're a body in a box, looking at a box.

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A box inside of a box.

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