Submitted by Wendy: I can barely walk. Putting one foot in front of the other takes about all I have. So tired, weak, and disoriented, I perceive what is directly in front of me as if through a veil of thick mucus. The world is dim and unfocused. Wait, something is flashing red, insistently, at the far-right corner of my vision. Instinctively, I turn toward it, and I am instantly rewarded. I see some movement, and I hear a commotion and voices. I decided to aim my stumble over there, where the action is. Something is telling me I somehow made this happen. I made the red light lead me, so I follow it mindlessly through this maze of fog. I am reminded of an experiment I saw in a documentary featuring a flying beetle. It had been glued to the head of a stationary pin. Electrodes had been inserted into its simple nervous system. By activating one or another of the electrodes, the beetle would attempt to turn towards the stimulus, flapping its useless wings harder or softer depending u...
Foremost in my mind was the fact I was dope-sick. There was another insistent pressing matter building in intensity to be taken care of before I could get well. I am not a puker. I am a shitter. When I am dope-sick, I am an everlasting fountain of filth. Hauser knows this about me. I assumed his witnessing of my tormented face was why he motioned to the shadowed corner of the room behind him, indicating a hall stretching into the home somewhere beyond the vanishing point, and said, "Second door on the left." I shuffled and shambled in what, to me, was observed as an infinitely slow progression, wherein my range of motion was limited due to cramps. I tried desperately to make it to the bathroom quickly while at the same time being careful in my movements, endeavoring to, for now, at least, constrain my bowels. I am sure Hauser saw all of this only as a momentary blur of motion, if he noticed it at all. Eventually, I made it down the hall and into the aforementioned room, for...