11/20/23: A Haunting
For months, Miguel had felt like he was being haunted.
It started at first with something inexplicable. Every morning, a key would appear on the chair on his front porch. Some were old, rusted things. Others were shiny. One time it was a key chain. He would remove the keys, but they would just appear again. It was unnerving.
And then his life became abnormally inconvenient. The printer at work was perpetually jammed. The microwave would turn on by itself. Doors throughout the house would slam closed without warning. The carbon monoxide alarm would beep incessantly at odd hours of the night, no matter how many times he replaced the batteries - he’d finally had to dismantle the entire thing.
Finally, after several months, things escalated, and it felt like he was living life on hard mode. The dry rattle in the walls at night turned out to be termites, and he’d had to move out for two months while his house was fumigated. Then the washer and dryer broke down. He’d had to hire a handyman to saw the machines into pieces in order to remove them from the laundry room.
Then his car died. The mechanic told him that someone had poured sugar in the fuel tank.
“Sugar?”
“Sugar,” the mechanic said. “It’s a surefire way to kill the whole engine. You can’t wash it out afterwards since the heat caramelizes the sugar against the insides. You don’t have any enemies, do you? Or kids running around the neighborhood who might do this sort of thing?”
“I work in shipping,” Miguel said. “No one in shipping has any enemies.”
His mother, upon hearing the fate of his car, gave him the number of the local holy man. “Just try it,” she had said. “I hear good things.”
“Ma, for the last time, these people are all charlatans,” he said. “They prey on poor old superstitious ladies like you.”
“Hey, who’re you calling old?” she snapped back.
But in the end, it was the dead fish that finally convinced him.
He had inherited two Dwarf Gouramis, named Sam and Frodo, from an ex-girlfriend. He’d gotten attached, despite himself.
One day he came home from work and noticed an odd smell coming from the living room. Sam and Frodo were floating lifelessly at the top of their tank. Miguel felt vaguely nauseated. But when he went to scoop them up and put them in a plastic bag, the water was hot.
“What the fuck?” he said, pulling his hand back. He looked at the tank’s temperature regulator, and saw that it was set to 178 degrees Fahrenheit, which shouldn’t have been possible. Sam and Frodo had been sous-vide.
He sat back, running his hands through the carpet to dry them off. The smell emanating from the tank reminded him of his mom’s fish stew.
“Alright,” he said. “I give up.”
He called the holy man.
“Close your eyes,” the man said, holding the palm of his hand against Miguel’s forehead. “Take a few deep breaths for me. Clear your mind…”
He removed his hand, and Miguel blinked his eyes open.
“Yep, you’re definitely haunted,” he said.
“You sound very certain, er…. Mr. Flores?”
“Call me Felix,” the man replied. He didn’t look like a holy man, which for whatever reason bothered Miguel, who had been expecting a long beard, or maybe some robes.
“And how do you know that?” Miguel asked. He watched as the man stood up pulled a thermos out of his bag, pouring the two of them what looked like an auburn-colored tea.
“Your description of events is classic for a haunting. It starts at first with relatively harmless events, like doors opening by themselves at night, or the microwave turning on and off by itself. You’re a self-professed atheist, so you shrug the events off, but there’s a part of your lizard brain that wonders if something is out to get you. That subconscious belief gives the ghost more power and allows it to interface more directly with the world, which in turn leads to more paranoia, and… well you can see how it just snowballs from there.”
“You’re telling me that I believed it into existence?”
“Yes. If you had called me, oh, a month ago, I would have given you some plausible non-magical explanations, and that would have stopped the progression. For most of my clients, I just provide gentle reassurance, which nips it in the bud. But it’s too late for that now - the ghost has reached critical mass. Whether or not you fully believe in it doesn’t matter anymore, because it believes in you.”
Miguel massaged his temples. The only reason he had agreed to this was because there was a “Results-or-your-money-back” promise.
“I still don’t believe you,” he said. “Ghosts don’t exist.”
“I realize that that’s what you’re saying, but obviously there was enough of you that believed, that that’s kind of a moot point.”
“Okay fine. Then what do we do?”
“Therapy.”
“Excuse me?”
“With your permission, we’ll both drink this tea I’ve prepared, which has mild psychedelic and dissociative properties. It will allow us to see the ghost that’s been haunting you. And we’ll have a session together, in which we work through why it has been haunting you.”
“There is a zero percent chance that I’m drinking any drugged tea of yours,” Miguel said standing up. “I don’t know who you are, but inviting you over was a mistake. I’d like you to leave now, thank you very much.”
Felix the holy man stayed seated, with a gentle smile on his face.
“Miguel, you drank the tea ten minutes ago. You agreed the first time I asked. Look at who you’re talking to,” he said.
Miguel blinked. A ghost was hovering in front of him.
“Hey pigeon-face,” the ghost said, flipping him a middle finger. “You keep on phasing in and out. You gonna hold steady this time? God, you’re dumb as rocks, you know that?”
“What the…”
“Listen, here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna sit there on the couch all nice and quiet, and then the tea is gonna wear off, and then this Felix guy leaves, and then I go back to making your life miserable. Capiche?” the ghost said.
Miguel felt lightheaded. He sat down on the couch to avoid falling over. The ghost looked like a faint, transparent man in his mid-30’s, wearing business casual.
“Jonathan, I’d like for you to cooperate with this process please,” Felix said, taking a sip of tea.
“What’s in it for me, huh?” said the ghost who was apparently named Jonathan. “I was doing perfectly fine, making this goat-turd’s life horrible, so I’m gonna ask again, what’s in it for me?”
“Oh my god,” Miguel said. “Ghosts are real.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” the ghost said.
“Jonathan, this process will go a lot easier if you work with us here. Do you want to just start off by saying why you’ve been haunting Miguel?”
“Cause he’s a dumbass, that’s why,” Jonathan said.
“Jonathan…”
“Fine. Because he killed me, that’s why. And got away with it too!”
“What on earth are you talking about? I’ve never killed anyone in my life! I don’t even know you!” Miguel said. He had a sudden flash of hope. “Wait. Do you have the wrong person? There are a lot of Miguel Martinez’s in the world.”
“This chuckle-fucker doesn’t even remember what he did! No, you’re the right Miguel Martinez alright. I’ve been following you around since you were twelve years old.”
“Twelve?”
“May 9th, 2005. You were in Madison, Wisconsin, hanging out with your toad-gizzard friends at the Highway 30 overpass. You dropped a rock onto the freeway on a dare. Well guess what? That rock hit my windshield, and I hit the freeway soundwall and died from traumatic head injury. Ring a bell now?”
The ghost sounded out of breath, despite not seeming to need to breathe.
“Oh no…” Miguel said with a whisper.
He remembered now. He had been new in town, and desperate to make friends. Jimmy had dared him to do it. And there was some thrill to it, the thought of doing something dangerous. He’d picked a rock, had heaved it over the overpass, and then run away. But no one had gotten hurt, right?
Or wait. He remembered now. He had looked back over his shoulder, and one of the cars had crashed on the highway.
He’d blocked the memory of it. Cut off contact with the other boys who were present. Had buried it as deep as he could in his subconscious, convinced himself that it had never happened.
“That was you…” Miguel said.
“That was me! I had my whole life in front of me. I had a kid. Her name is Cheryl. It’s been fifteen years - fifteen years she’s been living without a father!”
There was silence. Felix was staring out the window, as if observing something on the city skyline.
“I’m sorry,” Miguel said.
“Well I don’t accept!” Jonathan said.
“Carry on,” Felix said. “You both are doing great. I’m dealing with some of the other threads as well.”
Felix removed his hand from Miguel’s forehead.
“I know that this isn’t what you expect from me,” Felix said with a sigh. “But you’re not haunted. You’re just incredibly incompetent as a human being.”
“...what?”
“I don’t mean to be insulting,” Felix said.
“Sorry, are you saying that the explanation for all of this is that… I’m stupid?”
“I reviewed your intake form in great detail, and did some background research. We can go through the examples you listed one by one: the microwave you have is a Toshiba 3800T, which was recalled two years ago. The mechanic you went to - Precision Platinum Full Auto? You didn’t read the reviews online did you?”
“It’s close to my house… I see customers there all the time.”
“They have a reputation for straight up fraud - the current owners were charged twice in New Jersey before moving here to NorCal. My guess is that they made up a bullshit excuse for why they needed to perform and charge you for a full engine swap.”
“They told me that someone poured sugar in my engine tank…”
“That’s a plot device in that kid’s book by Roald Dahl. Matilda. You read it?”
“Should I have?”
“It’s a good read, you should give it a try. Let’s continue shall we? Regarding the termites: home inspection reports are made publicly available on the county website - I printed out a copy for you; here you go.”
He handed Miguel a sheaf of paper, with a paragraph circled in bright red.
“Evidence of termite damage at the northwest facing wall, with possibility of ongoing damage, recommend specialized evaluation for termite infestation,” Miguel read. He had a vague memory of the property inspector saying something about that, but he had been so busy with work at the time…
Felix had brought out a level, and was examining one of the doorframes.
“See this, here? The owner before you must have over-oiled the hinges. Under certain conditions, the door will swing shut by itself. Look,” he said, poking the door. It swung with more force than Miguel would have expected.
Felix walked through the living room, commenting as he went.
“The fruit flies are breeding from that planter you have on the balcony over there. You’ve daisy-chained some landing strips by the TV - that’s a catastrophic fire hazard waiting to happen. The salt substitute you have on the kitchen counter is composed of potassium - you’ll get hyperkalemic if you use it too often. That fish tank over there is - you’ve set up the temperature regulator with two incompatible components, did you know that?”
“Well one of the parts broke, so…”
“You probably bought it off Alibaba or something, didn’t you,” he said. He paused, sniffing the air a few times. “Wait, you said - “
He pulled out a small box from his bag and turned it on. He waved it in the air a few times, then frowned.
“Most importantly, you have a carbon monoxide leak. Have you been experiencing any headaches? Paranoia? You said you dismantled the carbon monoxide alarms?”
“They wouldn’t stop beeping,” Miguel said weakly.
“Let’s continue this conversation outside,” Felix said. “I’ll check on the other threads.”
Felix removed his hand from Miguel’s forehead.
“No you’re not haunted,” he said with a sigh. “I had to check though. Sometimes two things can be true-true, unrelated.”
“Two things can be -”
“I know your mother referred me to you as a holy man, Miguel. But I wear many hats. I’m also a private investigator. Because sometimes, the truth isn’t supernatural - it’s that someone is actually out to get you.”
Miguel just stared at him. Felix gave him a grim smile.
“You broke up with a woman named Teresa Miller three months ago, correct?”
“Yes? ”
“Did you change your locks afterward?”
Miguel felt stomach acid in the back of his throat.
“What are you saying?”
“I reviewed the video footage from the security camera across the street. For the past few months, she has been coming into your house after you leave for work. It’s always an hour after you leave, on the dot. If I had to guess, she has a tracker on your car.”
Felix looked pained, then pulled some photos out of his messenger bag. They were of a faint figure, recognizable to Miguel as Teresa, entering his house.
“I took the liberty of speaking with some of your friends and family. It was a bad breakup, wasn’t it?”
“You could say that,” Miguel said. He felt faint, as if his vision was disconnected from his body.
“Your sister said to me, ‘Miguel, that fucking asshole. I don’t know why Teresa stayed with him for so long. It took him fucking her sister for her to finally see the light. God, I’d never wish him on any of my friends - ‘“
“You spoke with my sister?” He didn’t even feel hurt, just amazed that this was happening to him.
“Part of the job. Anyways. A fair number of things are attributable to a malicious actor with access to your personal space. Let’s start with the broken appliances and work our way to the sugarized gas tank…”
Felix removed his hand from Miguel’s forehead.
“When was the last time you took your Depixol, Miguel?” he said.
“Sorry?”
“Your mother called me to check up on you. She said you’ve been calling her at odd hours of the night, saying something about dead fish.”
“I’m being haunted,” Miguel said.
“Haunted?” Felix said.
“I didn’t believe it at first. I don’t believe in ghosts. But what if they believe in me, even if I don’t believe in them? And then that brings them into this world, and just by being here, you and me, we’ve both changed the course of history. I’m afraid to even think about the problem, Mr. Flores. And the keys! There’s always a key left on my front porch - it’s like someone wants me to open a door somewhere, wants to send me a signal, a warning, but I don’t know what it is - you have to help me, only a holy man can - “
“Miguel. I’m Felix, your uncle. Not a holy man. You know me, I helped raise you up since you were a kid. Answer my question again. When was the last time you took your Depixol?”
“I don’t need Depixol, it’s awful, it makes my hair fall out and I sleep all the time, and it’s just a conspiracy by the ghost, you see? The ghost doesn’t want me to be able to sense it, it knows that the Depixol keeps me weak, blind so that I can’t protect myself from it, so - “
“Miguel. You know how important it is to take it. You have schizophrenia. There are no ghosts here - “
“NO. I’m not doing it again, I’m doing perfectly fine, I just need these ghosts to stop following me -”
“I’m going to step out for a second to make a phone call.”
“No stop! I know what you’re doing. I’m not going back there again, you’re not going to commit me, I’m not going to take those depot shots again, I’m not going to do it, wait, call Teresa, she’ll tell you the truth, she saw the ghosts too, that’s why she moved out - “
Felix removed his hand from Miguel’s forehead.
“Ah, this is a difficult one,” he said. “You’ve caused a quantum snaggle.”
“A what?” Miguel said.
“Well, think of all the recent events surrounding you as a kind of waveform, full of theoretical possibility. There are an infinite number of explanations that can fit the data. But until we commit to one and collapse that waveform, any one of them could be possible.”
“I thought you were going to tell me I was haunted, and then ask me for some money to dispel the ghost. Isn’t that what - “
“Wait, don’t mention ghosts - “
“- that will -”
Felix looked at Miguel and Jonathan, and sighed.
“Ah shit,” he said.
“What I’m saying is, why should I forgive this muffintop - “ said Jonathan.
“- hey stop calling me - “
“- when he so clearly deserves to have his life made miserable? You know, I was a philosophy major in college and studied the whole theories-of-justice thing ad nauseum - deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, all that. But now that I’m on the other side, do you know what my choice is? Retribution, baby. I have been wronged, and I choose RETRIBUTION.”
“Jonathan, first of all, once again I am so sorry for all the harm that I have caused. I just wanted to point out, if your daughter was here, what would she want - “
“Don’t you dare bring up my daughter - “
“Miguel, I want you to take a deep breath. That’s right, a deep breath in…. And out…”
Miguel opened his eyes, and the ceiling was a kaleidoscope of fractals, spiraling in sync with each breath that he took.
“What’s… going…” he tried to say, but his mouth felt like it existed on a separate continent from the rest of his face.
“Shhh, you don’t have to talk. Just focus on your breathing. You’re here in your apartment. The year is 2023. You’re in the middle of an acid trip. You’re six hours in, although it may feel longer than that. I’m your trip sitter. And you’re safe. Utterly safe.”
Miguel tried to relax, which was easy because it felt like there was a gentle weighted blanket over his entire body.
“I feel like I’m hopping… between different… dimensions…” Miguel managed to say.
“Just go with the flow,” Felix said. “You’re completely safe here. If you want a change of music, just let me know.”
Miguel listened to the Gregorian chant that Felix had put on, and drifted.
Miguel stared at his body.
“I’m dying, aren’t I?” he said. The car which he had been driving had flipped over. There was blood trickling down his face.
“You’re dying,” Felix said, standing next to him.
“So what does that make you? Some kind of angel?” Miguel said. He walked away from the car, leaving his body behind, watching as an ambulance approached from a distance.
“Technically a psychopomp,” Felix said. “Although I can create some wings for myself, if you want the Judeo-Christian aesthetic. Your mother is Catholic, right?”
“Not a very good one. But yeah,” Miguel said. The thought of his mother finding out about his death suddenly made him profoundly sad. He had an image of her walking down the empty corridors in his house, having to gather his things.
“I don’t want to die,” he said. “I’m too young to die.”
“I know,” Felix said. And then: “I’m sorry.”
“I just hope that she doesn’t have to clean my apartment alone, you know? She’s not on speaking terms with Angela, my sister. But maybe my death will bring them back together. Maybe that would be enough to put bridge over troubled water”
“You’re not dead quite yet,” Felix said, pointing at Miguel’s body, which was still breathing.
“Yeah,” Miguel said, as the ambulance stopped behind the car, and paramedics rushed out. “I keep on flashing in and out of visions. Of times and places that aren’t this one. Is that normal?”
“Your brain is shutting down. It releases a flood of endorphins. Some people see a rerun of their life. Others see versions of their life that could have been.”
“I thought that near-death endorphins would be more fun. This just feels… disorienting.”
“You’re not the first nor the last to say that,” Felix said. They both watched as firefighters appeared on scene, rushing out with Jaws of Life.
“My neck,” said Miguel, looking at his body. “It doesn’t look right. Does it look right to you? Oh god.”
“I’m sorry,” Felix said again.
“Isn’t there another way? I don’t want to die. You’re an angel, work a miracle! Do something!”
Felix removed his hand from Miguel’s forehead.
“Miguel, are you there?”
Miguel opened his eyes. A moment ago he had felt like he was having a normal conversation with Felix in his apartment. But now he was lying on a therapist’s couch, in an office.
“Where am I?” he said. His eyelids were heavy, and it was a struggle to focus on the room.
“You’re here at the Well Mind institute,” Felix said. “You’re currently undergoing MDMA-assisted treatment for depression. If you experience any memories, they may feel more vivid than normal.”
“What were we… what were we talking about?”
“You were recounting a memory from childhood - of throwing a rock off a highway bridge, and of causing a car crash. I asked you what you would say to that driver if he were here with us now.”
“I could have sworn that I was talking to him just now…”
But as he looked around, there was no one else in the office aside from him and Felix.
Felix removed his hand from Miguel’s forehead.
“What did you do?” Miguel asked. They had been standing by the side of the road just a moment ago, watching firefighters trying to retrieve his body. But now they stood in front of his house.
“Working a miracle,” Felix replied.
Miguel waved his hand through the air. Dust motes seemed to pass right through it. If he looked closely, his arm was faintly transparent.
“I’m still out-of-body,” he said.
“Still a ghost,” Felix agreed. “I’m bending the rules for you a bit, you have to understand. I can’t just snap my fingers and change everything. What I can do, however, is send you back in time by eight months.”
It was golden hour, and the light was pouring through the trees onto the side of the house. His persimmon tree was still alive, he noticed. He had remembered it dying over the winter; removing its lifeless trunk from the yard had been one of the items on his neverending to-do list.
A car pulled into the driveway. As they watched, the real, living version of Miguel unloaded groceries from the backseat.
“And what am I supposed to do as a ghost?” Miguel said. “Whisper dire omens into my own ear? Move objects around when he’s not looking?”
“Some haunting may be involved, yes. You’ll find that you have some small modicum of influence over the physical world - directly proportional of course, to how much others believe in your existence.”
“If the choice is between living as a weak-ass ghost or dying, I might choose the former, thank you very much.”
“I’m giving you an opportunity here. You’re going to have to snowball your influence. Right now, with enough effort, you might be able to make a tiny tear on the bottom of those grocery bags that your other self is holding over there, and spill his groceries into the driveway. Do something like that enough times, and he’ll start to think that something’s out to get him. It will take months - but eventually that effect will snowball - he’ll believe in you more, giving you more influence to haunt him, leading him to believe in you even more.”
“And what? After I’ve turned his life into a horror movie, I get to turn tangible and become a real boy like Pinocchoio?”
“No. The goal would be to take advantage of the butterfly effect, such that your actions would ripple forward in time so that the car crash never happens. Such that you save yourself. Such that you never die. When we catch up to the present day, your original timeline gets wiped, and your two selves will merge, sharing memories.”
“Ah.”
“I’m making it sound easier than it actually is. Timelines have a certain resilience to them. They like to bounce back to their original form. So Plan B would be to accumulate enough influence to simply stall the car engine on the morning of your commute.”
“Pour some sugar into the gas engine or something.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“So what you’re saying, Mr. Martinez - “
“Call me Miguel”
“- Miguel. Is that you stopped taking your Depixol because you didn’t need it anymore,” the psychiatrist said.
Miguel had been placed on a psychiatric hold exactly once before in life, during the psychotic break that had led to his original diagnosis of schizophrenia. This was a different inpatient ward, but the features were broadly the same: there were no sharp objects, everything was vaguely colorless, he shared a room with someone who wouldn’t stop screaming at night, and his ability to leave the ward lay in the hands of one individual.
It was a Monday, which meant there was a new inpatient psychiatrist taking over the unit. Miguel was hopeful that this one would look upon his case more favorably.
“Right right,” Miguel said, fumbling with the words. It was hard to speak in straight lines when he was so sleep-deprived.
“No wait. What I mean is that I thought I didn’t need it anymore. My old self. But then I started becoming more paranoid, and thinking I was haunted. There was this whole thing involving keys being left out on my front porch - and I thought maybe the ghosts were trying to send me a message about opening doorways. But I see now that these were delusions. I’m of no harm to myself or others.”
He was perhaps saying that last phrase more than he ought. But he knew, vaguely, that in order to get out of here, he had to prove that he wasn’t a danger to himself or others.
“Your uncle mentions that you were talking about ghosts, and other timelines. That you thought you had died in a different timeline, and had been sent back in time by an angel - “
“A psychopomp.”
“- excuse me, a psychopomp, in order to save your own life.”
“I know how ridiculous that all sounds now,” Miguel said. “They were all delusions. I see that now. Restarting the Depixol this past week has helped me see that.”
There were still times in which he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye, something odd about the way that shadows moved in the corner of the room. But it was happening less and less now. They had given him a depot shot of Depixol. Now all he had to do was get out of this ward.
“Ah, I see what’s causing the quantum snaggle now. You died in a different timeline, and one of my other selves must have taken pity on you and sent your spirit back in time.”
Miguel just stared at Felix. Somehow, this was not the kind of holy man that he had been expecting.
“That’s very… New Agey of you,” he said.
“The issue of course, is that you’ve introduced too much uncertainty into the system. The universe has all of this <ERROR> data from your spirit mucking about with the physical world. And it’s trying to pattern-fit different explanations onto data that shouldn’t exist.”
“Look man, I called you partly to get my mother off my back, and honestly, as kind of a joke, but I’m not going to pay you for any of this mumbo-jumbo, you know that right?”
Felix shook his head gently and laughed.
“Don’t worry, I’m not charging you for this,” he said, standing up and putting his messenger bag over his shoulder.
“Oh. Well good,” Miguel said.
“There’s nothing that you or I have to do in this timeline anyway,” Felix said. “Our alternate selves out there are doing all the heavy lifting.”
“I think you need to think about what function your anger is serving right now,” Felix said.
“What function? It feels good, that’s what function it serves,” Jonathan said. His corporeality seemed to phase in and out as he spoke, which Miguel found distracting.
“I was just a kid!” Miguel said. “I was twelve years old! I’m sorry, what more do you want from me?”
Felix put a small pile of grapes on the table in front of Miguel.
“I have some small snacks for you,” he said. “Try nibbling on one, if you want. A little bit goes a long way, when you’re tripping.”
“I don’t think I can move off of this couch,” Miguel said. “I think I’m having an out of body experience. I keep on seeing other worlds…”
The two of them stood outside on the curb, as they waited for the fire department to come and investigate the gas leak.
“I don’t understand how that could have happened,” Miguel said.
“We only ever hear about the carbon monoxide cases that are fatal, or that get found out,” Felix said. “Never the ones that are subclinical, or just cause headaches and mild paranoia in other people.”
“Maybe that was why I’ve been acting so dumb lately,” Miguel said.
“Maybe,” Felix said noncommittally.
“Obviously, we need to call the cops,” Miguel said. “She’s stalking me. She’s trying to ruin my life. She is ruining my life. I can’t believe she killed Sam and Frodo.”
“Who?”
“My fish,” Miguel said.
“Oh right, the fish. You’re right though, we should get law enforcement involved.”
“Hon?”
“Wha?” Miguel muttered.
“Did you fall asleep again?” Teresa said. “You’re the one who wanted to watch the Two Towers. If you’re going to fall asleep, I’m changing it to something I want to watch.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” Miguel said, trying not to mumble.
“Liar,” Teresa said.
“What?” Miguel said with a jolt. “Who are you calling a liar?”
Did she know? Did she suspect? Had she opened his phone while he was asleep and gone through his texts? No, the phone was in his hand.
“Relax, dummy! I heard you mumbling in your sleep! Something about fish, and keys and time-travel,” Teresa said with a laugh. “I should have filmed you - you never believe it when I say you sleep-talk.”
“Oh,” Miguel said, relaxing, drifting back to sleep on the couch. “It must have been a dream. Let’s keep on watching. I won’t fall asleep this time.”
Miguel and Felix stood under the fig tree, watching as the branches swayed in the wind. They were in a garden, lush and brimming with life.
“Where are we?” Miguel asked.
“In the place between timelines,” Felix said. “Some call it the Garden of Life.”
He pointed upwards at the branches. “Each one of those is a different possibility. A different collapse of the waveform, so to speak.”
“So I’m not dead.”
“Well, in one of those branches - you see the one right there, the one on the top left - you are dead. But for now, all of these are possibilities. Each of these has a different explanation that can fit the data.”
Looking up at all the different branches, Miguel suddenly understood. As he turned his gaze from fig to fig, he saw into each and every world.
“Do I have to pick?” he said. “All of these seem bad.”
“Better that you decide and take ownership of your decision than wait for the waveform to collapse on its own and decide for you,” Felix said.
“So if I choose that one - “ he pointed at the fig where he was still talking to the psychiatrist while hospitalized.
“Then you’ll remember this moment as just another delusion during a psychotic break,” Felix said. “If you pick that one over there, you’ll wake up on the couch with Teresa, thinking this was all a dream. That one over there means that you’ll have to work through therapy with the ghost of the man you killed when you were young.”
“Well obviously, the one where I’m halfway through an acid trip seems like the best option,” Miguel said. “There’s no ghosts or buried trauma or car crashes there. Just recreational drug use, which floats my boat.”
Felix shrugged.
“If you would like,” he said. “Though it may be that it is the one in which you’ll learn the least about yourself.”
Miguel stared into the figs, and he could see the future unrolling like a carpet in each one. They were all happening simultaneously.
“But which one is true?” he asked.
“All of them are,” Felix said. “They’re both real and also a metaphor. But you only get to choose one. In some of them, you’ll remember this moment. In others you will not.”
Miguel bit down on his knuckle as he thought.
“I don’t know that I like myself in any of these,” he said finally.
“Then, whichever one you choose, endeavor to be a better person afterwards,” Felix said.
And then, after a moment, Miguel leaned forward and plucked a fig from a branch.
Miguel sat up from the therapist’s couch. He looked at the clock. A full three hours had passed since the start of their session, but it had felt like an eternity.
“I’m pretty sure that I was randomized to the psychedelic portion of the study, not the MDMA arm,” he said. His mouth felt dry and full of cotton.
“What makes you say that?” said Felix, his psychiatrist.
“I just saw the most incredible sequence of images. I feel as though I lived multiple other lifetimes in an instant just now. That’s not MDMA, at least from what I understand of it,” he said.
“That’s very interesting,” Felix said. “How would you characterize the experience, if you had to describe it?”
Miguel thought for a moment.
“I saw a literal physical manifestation of my guilt in the form of a ghost. Guilt about that rock I threw over the freeway when I was a kid, that caused a car crash. About the way that I treat my mother and my sister. About the way I treated my ex, Teresa.”
“And?”
“For the past year, nothing in my life has gone right. I used to think that it was some kind of punishment - that I was being haunted. I wallowed in it, would always complain - until finally my mother made me seek help. But I don’t think that I was being punished - I think I just wanted to be, because I felt like I deserved it. It felt like I could never really live my life, because I was always being haunted by my past self. But I feel like I know how to move forward now.”
“That last sentence sounds very action-oriented,” Felix said neutrally.
“Well. Let me put it this way. I think I have some apologies to make,” Miguel said.
Their session wound to a close, and the golden hour faded from the office windows. Miguel called a car to take him back home, thinking about all the wrongs he needed to make right. His body felt wrung out like a washcloth.
He found himself humming a silly tune as he walked across the driveway to the front porch. For months, Miguel had felt like he was being haunted. Today, for the first time in a long time, his soul felt light.
As he opened the front door, a bird flew down and landed on the porch. It deposited a small, bright key on the chair, and then flew away.
“Oh,” Miguel said with a laugh. “It was magpies the whole time.”
Thanks for the story!
(dumbie -> dummy?)