Flat on my back, I awoke to bass booming in the background, as if I were outside of a nightclub...

I yawned. Sat up in bed, and my nostrils widened at the strong scent of marijuana smoke. Then I stretched my arms and lost my breath, for a second, when I sighted a vista of floor-to-ceiling windows.

Outside, it was a golden morning, and I was awed by the postcard-perfect sea views. The azure ocean appearing like an exquisite pattern of ripples, sparkles, and small waves. Its waters moving like a massive blue sheet of shimmering satin.

Taking stock of the bed, too ... It was nothing if not lavish, and I felt as if I were practically floating as I rolled from side to side and stretched my limbs out on the super-soft memory foam mattress ... smooth, cream-colored silk sheets caressing my skin...

Then I wiped the sleep from my eyes and further panned my gaze around ... This bedroom was palatial. Featured a vaulted ceiling that must have been 40 feet high. It was clean too. Not a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. And everything was white- white walls, white marble floors, white furniture. Everything sparkly, electric white.

All appeared shiny too. Almost to an exaggerated extent. Like an Instagram filter. The entire room brightening, practically blinding, making me squint my eyes as I continued scanning around the room, wondering where I was, where I’d woken up.

And who I was ... Given the shock, I knew I wasn’t at home. But I didn’t know what or where home was.

I couldn’t even recall my name...

Though I couldn’t recall how I got here, a slideshow of images, flickering like an old PC, flitted through my mind: a long glass table, an electric scale ... Me wearing blue latex gloves that made my fingers look like popsicles...

Then I had visions of driving, inching forward in heavy traffic while tapping at a phone affixed to a Hyundai’s dashboard.

Then a hazy recollection of a house party. At an apartment with vintage movie posters papered over the walls. A din of chatter and someone with a jackhammer of a laugh. A Young Thug video, muted, playing on a wall-mounted flatscreen TV...

Following all that, somehow, I had woken up in this luxurious, high-rise residence.

I slid out of the bed’s silk sheets, ambled over the windows, which encased the entire room. I touched my forehead to the cool glass and saw only an infinite sheet of sea. I couldn’t spot a nightclub anywhere, or even a sliver of land. What if I was abducted by aliens, left on a water planet? But nowhere in the bedroom did I spot any space aliens, and the bass was sounding from all different directions, booming like distant fireworks.

Padding over to the bathroom, I found that it too was white. White as fresh milk. The bathroom equipped, decked out in white everything. White towels, white jacuzzi bathtub, toilet, sink. It was when I found myself facing the mirror atop the sink that I experienced the most unexpected.

Everything in the bathroom was white ... Except for me.

Standing in the mirror was a young Black man, in white silk pajamas. A young Black man with face tattoos. An inverted crucifix between my eyebrows and a couplet of incomprehensible scribble across my left cheek.

Hold up, I thought ... I knew that face. It was the famous rapper Shootah Sho. I was Shootah Sho! But how did I get from driving a Hyundai to being a world-renown rapper?

At this point, the previous night’s events slowly crept back into focus, clearing up like clouds after a storm.

I’d been smoking weed at a house party. One of my friends had brought a friend, and none of us had ever seen this guy. But there was something mysterious, intriguing about him.

He was like a celebrity. He had that “it” factor. Not only due to his swarthy, handsome looks; but charisma just oozed from him. He exuded a certain magnetism, and everyone in the apartment’s living room was drawn to him. Everyone at the party wanted to know him. Everyone asking him questions as he held court. And he had brilliant answers to any question. He cracked joke after joke, leaving everyone in stitches. He ripped unbelievably big bong hits and blew perfect smoke rings, smoke rings the size of donuts, as he regaled us with charming anecdotes, film trivia, and random quips. He appeared to know everything about anything. It was as if he were the human embodiment of Google, or powered by ChatGPT.

Even his name caused a stir. “Satan.” Who the hell names their kid Satan? But no one could gather whether or not it was his real name because, just like ChatGPT, he was evasive in all his answers to personal questions. Not in a way that implied malfeasance, or condescension, but rather his was jocular. This Satan was a merry prankster.

But when I caught him in the kitchen later, annihilating a box of marijuana cookies (chewing loudly, too, with his mouth wide open) he appeared far heavier and older, the etched lines on his forehead far more visible; twin grooves on each cheek framing his mouth like parentheses. His wavy black hair, which had been neatly combed and shiny, now looked greasy, had been sculpted into two twin wet spikes. His long face had dimmed, too, shifted from jovial to subdued. Though his split-open eyes still appeared glittering, curiously restive...