The walls of the second and third floors are porous membranes that cannot contain this part of me, and I drift like time, and as I progress, the wood, drywall, fixtures, furniture, paintings, and family photos molder in my wake. Even if they are to be fixed or replaced, they would molder again because decay is the state of all things before me, during me, and after me.

I am gravid with exhaustion; the splitting and multiple existences drains me. I shakily pull the tarp over my body and head. It is dark enough and I am weighted down enough to easily imagine I am buried under the ground. The tarp will keep weeds and grass from growing over me.

The part of me I feared was never there, the part of me I feared was always there solidifies, and now on all fours, I ascend to a turreted bedroom on the top floor. The door is closed. The door is open. The door has always been open.

Welcome to Dracula’s castle?

Under the tarp I can’t see anything. I wrap my arms around my legs and I’m curling, shrinking, and I cry because I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to be here anymore, and I’m afraid this will last forever.

Part of me finds Eddie alone in the polluted sea of his king-sized bed. I am permeable. I fill the room. I am the room. I am the world. This is the mantra. This is the prayer. The bedroom responds, the yellow walls mood-ring into other colors, curtains raspberry their tongues, the nightstand and lamp and furniture tilts, lifts, and bows to me, and his bedspread ripples, then swells like a thunderstorm cloud. Eddie stirs and moans but does not wake. I want him to open his eyes, so he can see me as I rush forward as unformed muscle and sinew. I bound onto the bed and onto him.

Lightning discharges within the middle of my chest. The blast of electrical current gnarls my fingers and arcs out excruciatingly from between my shoulder blades. I gasp and sink into the cold, fathomless waters of agony and torment. My left leg spasms against the garage wall and kicks over a shovel. Dying stars alight in my vision. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. No, this is how it is supposed to be.