Kyle and I sat together on the couch, a little removed from the others. My stomach was in knots and I was letting out little stress farts, which Kyle had the grace not to remark on. Instead, he asked me how I was holding up. Not so hot, I told him. He said I looked ghostly, and in truth, that’s how I felt. Everything felt—thin. It was the only word I could think to describe it. My skin. My breath. My grip on reality.

The Hum feels so intense now, I told him. Ever since the other night, in the park—

What happened the other night was good, he insisted. Please don’t regret it.

I told him that I didn’t.

It’s just that every time we tune, I said, I find it harder and harder to return. Like I feel like if I do it again I might just slip right in, and never come out.

What do you mean ‘never come out’?

Just—lost in it forever.

I could tell I was unsettling him, and I felt guilty. In the midst of all this, he didn’t need me spiralling out. But ever since the other night, it was as though I had been shifted off my foundations. Maybe we had gone too deep. Or maybe we had done it wrong. We should never have tuned alone.

This is all so fucked, Kyle said, glancing towards the window.

I took hold of his hand, and he gently squeezed it.

You know you could end this right now, I said. If you just walked out that door.

He looked back at me, and searched my face—Yeah, and I would never see you again. They’d never let us.

Maybe that’s the sacrifice we have to make, I said, nodding to the others in the room. For them.

He shook his head, not willing to entertain it. I need you with me, he said.

And I need us to leave here, and not in the back of a police car. I’m responsible for you.

We’re responsible for each other. We entered this together.

But—

And we either stay together or we leave together, he said.

Without saying it, we both knew that if we left together they would separate us. We existed together only in the time that remained for us in that house. Like a man crushed below a heavy weight, who lives only as long as the weight continues to press down upon him and dies the moment it’s removed. I told Kyle that I felt like my life had just totally collapsed in around me, like an addict.

I don’t even know what’s left if I remove you from it, I said. Or this house. It would just be me alone with The Hum and—

So don’t. Don’t remove me from it.