Vomiting was my least favorite bodily function. The gagging went on and on like a hurtling, brakeless train, and I felt trapped inside myself, inside this bug-eyed act, forever.

When it finally subsided and I got hold of myself, I slunk down to a sitting position, leaning against the railing. I cried like a bitch. Everything seemed at an end. For a moment I felt like sleeping, right there on the stucco floor of the balcony, but then a crazed energy surged through me, the urge to do something. Anything! A call to action! The need to go against everything I knew, everything I loved, to behave in a way that would redirect the apocalyptic, chaotic forces away from my own concerns, my own life, rose up.

I stumbled down the steps. Morning light, the bleakest light. I wanted Janet, Chrissy. For god’s sake, Terri! Cindy! Mr. or Mrs. Roper! Furley! Lana, save me! Jumbled thoughts. I’d reached the street now, went down a fake alley and crawled under the backdrop of a sunny Los Angeles afternoon, running away from my city and toward the woods.

At the tree line I didn’t slow down and before long I tripped. I fell hard, scraping up my wrists and forearms and momentarily stunning myself into clarity. The dog had run away the night before. That was the sign, the secret to all of it. Ray’s revenge. I envisioned the dog running a hundred miles just to drag Krystal to where I was, just to teach me a lesson in humility. Like a vindictive, shorter-haired Lassie. If I could find the dog, appease it, I would find Chrissy, Janet, possibly the solution to the destruction behind me. Possibly I could reverse the whole thing! This was all a misunderstanding, I was convinced.

I could feel my own Bonnie-ness in my veins, poisoning me. My breath came ragged and the cloudy day became darker, darker the farther I ran. Soon I was deep in the woods where the treetops grew so dense they simulated a cave. When I looked back I could not distinguish any buildings, or see the edge of the forest. I had no idea how to return to where I’d started. This only renewed my despair. It started to rain.

I had succumbed to the chaos, lived inside it for only a minute, and that was where I would die.

A white flash appeared to my right. The dog! The dog, the dog, the dog! I almost barked. In my mania I wondered: Would the dog prefer barking? Over my human language? It seemed reasonable. I barked at it, yelled unintelligible things. I scrabbled through the bushes where I thought I’d seen it, but found nothing but dirt and leaves.

I lay on the ground and wondered how long it would take to starve in the woods, already giving up on finding my way back. During my time living as the characters, my thinking had become somewhat one-dimensional. My problem-solving skills had dulled down. Because of my commitment to my project, my capacity to reason well in terms of the real world had diminished, like an atrophied muscle.