I woke up feeling like a new man, but not in a good way. Not new as in shiny and refreshed, but new as in different and changed. Alien and strange. My consciousness altered and implanted in a surrogate host. The first thing I noticed was pain. Agonized throbbing inside my fragile skull. You are in your son’s head. That lovely voice, my head stuck in that sweat chamber, staring into that room of senseless carnage. Then came sickly heat, radiating from the inside out as I lay in a puddle of toxic sweat. My throat on fire, forehead burning. Stomach a roiling stew.

My breath was ragged and sour-tasting. Thoughts laced with shame. A mental state conditioned by countless morning-afters where I’d had to atone for ill decisions from the night before. I grasped at wispy memories that broke apart before coming into full view. The ones featuring Malia in what seemed like sexual interplay troubled me the most.

The room was dark. I squinted at the windows and saw that it was night outside. I startled when I saw the silhouette of a figure sitting in the chair beside me. Its head swiveled when it saw me move, heard me groan. And in that brief instant I braced for the clicking sound of echolocations I was sure would come. Penetrating my mind and implanting those marauding thoughts. Leading me to murder. Marching me to my padded room.

“Have some water,” the shadow man said, and I relaxed when I recognized the voice as Al’s. Saw the glass in his outstretched hand. The water was room temperature but I’d never tasted anything more refreshing. It lubricated my cracked lips and soothed my parched throat like a balm.

Oh, but I was home. Safe. That hellacious night was over. I’d survived, and there was something in that realization that eased the hangover. Even produced a little pride – the most seductive of all sins.

“More,” I said, holding out the empty cup. “Please.”

Al returned with a fresh glass. This one far more nourishing than those replenished by Razz. Or whoever had been pretending to be him. I could faintly recall tearing at his latex mask while thrashing in some drunken delirium. Him cackling with laughter while pinning me against the ground. Christ, what a disaster. What a mess.

I sat up, waited for my throbbing head to subside, then repeated the last thing I had said before passing out. “Where’s Cassie?” Adding, this time, “Where’s Rox?”

It must have been somewhere in the twilight hours between two a.m. and five a.m. I could tell by the depth of silence, the breathless hush. Those few hours when, on any given day, half the planet is experiencing a mass hallucination entered into during sleep. I used to think half the world was dreaming the other half into existence. Sometimes I still do.