Chapter 8: Arjun’s Mind

Arjun immediately, silently shouted at himself. What the fuck, you idiot? You could have just said ‘no.’ Made up a lame excuse. Told a bunch of white lies. Oh my god. You’re so stupid!

He couldn’t really disagree with himself, and meanwhile, Marianna and Paco were all set to start the process.

Idiot. Idiot! Just say you and Meera were sexting and sending each other naked pics, and so you don’t want them seeing all that. It’s barely even a lie. It’s a little bit of embarrassment to save yourself from so much more.

“Great,” Marianna said, clapping her hands together. She walked over to Arjun’s side. “Give me your hand.”

“Huh?” Arjun jerked back, confused. “Why?”

“My my,” Marianna said, “somebody’s very sensitive and suspicious all of a sudden. I just need to make physical contact, Arjun, and it’s just your hand in mine. It’s not like I’m asking you to cop a feel of my breasts — as if you even waited for permission the first time.”

Arjun’s eyes widened, shocked by what Marianna had just said.

“I’m just messing with you,” Marianna said. “It was an accident, and all is forgiven.” Then she rolled her eyes, switching in an instant from playful to impatient. “Just give me your hand, or else I can’t go into your mind.”

Arjun cautiously held his hand out to Marianna, allowing her to interlace her fingers with his.

“Amor, ready?”

“Yes,” Paco said. “Arjun, look over here.”

Paco motioned for Arjun to look into his eyes. Arjun did so, unable to hide his discomfort. Even in the best of circumstances, he wasn’t sure he’d like being on the other side of his own powers.

Arjun tried his best to not take his eyes off Paco’s — even if it felt uncomfortable — by studying the colour of his irises. They were brown — almost a sand-like colour. The pupils looked as if they were inviting Arjun to get lost inside of them. Suddenly, they dilated, covering nearly the entirety of his irises, leaving only a faint corona of silver around them. Arjun suddenly realised that he could barely move his own body. He felt tied down — not completely immobilised, but restrained and burdened. The room around him began to fade from his vision; it was like all the lights were dimming at once. It reminded Arjun of those unpleasant dreams where his eyes just weren’t working properly, and nothing he did could change that fact — not flipping light switches, putting on glasses, or even going outside into the daylight.

At a certain threshold, Arjun’s perception shifted. It seemed as though there was a tangible, moving darkness creeping into the room from every direction, swallowing up its dim, blurry remnants.

While Arjun experienced all of that, Marianna put the tip of her thumb onto the center of his forehead. Arjun didn’t notice; he was lost in the trance Paco had placed him in. He also didn’t see Paco’s pupils suddenly constrict to almost nothing, while his irises turned a bright, moon white.

BLACK VOID

The black void: Arjun remembered it from when he’d been knocked out. As one might imagine, it didn’t take long to confirm that it looked exactly the same. This time, though, he tried to really examine it. It was unsettling to him. Despite appearing entirely black, it felt to the young man like it was swirling, undulating — even expanding.

He vaguely thought of his science classes; one of his teachers had once tried to describe to the class the idea that the universe itself was expanding — its very fabric. Nobody had understood it. Even the biggest nerds in the class hadn’t pretended like they could. The teacher himself hadn’t seemed surprised or disappointed. He’d said that it was so alien that only a few people in the world could even understand the math and science that suggested it; nobody really ’got’ it. Maybe Einstein had. Maybe Hawking. He hadn’t even seemed confident of that.

Arjun still didn’t understand it, but, with great discomfort, he considered that he might be perceiving something very much like it, here, in his own mind.

He was sure that that science teacher would be frustrated by the fact that Arjun himself was clearly visible. He could look down and see something that looked very much like his own body; maybe it was a little fuzzy — lacking in detail — but he knew it was his, and it looked like it would under normal light. To say that the endless black void contained no light sources would be an understatement.

After an interminable period of peering at the darkness and examining his own arms, Arjun began walking. It happened almost instinctively. It also felt odd to him, considering that he couldn’t feel any ground beneath his feet. It felt odd in another way, too, because he was walking amidst endless blackness. Never mind what he was or wasn’t walking on; where, exactly, was he walking to?

Why aren’t the Garcias here? Arjun thought to himself. He wished he hadn’t. His sudden awareness that he was alone made him feel awful.

Arjun kept walking, seemingly to nowhere. He felt that it was utterly pointless, and the endless black void wholly reinforced that feeling. Still, something within him — a voice that wasn’t a voice — was telling him to walk. He couldn’t discern how the voice sounded, or the gender — if it even had one. It just kept telling him to walk.

Then something very strange happened. He stopped walking, but he knew he was still moving. He was levitating. Then, he was flying. He just knew that he was. He knew that he was as free as a bird, and that he could propel himself in any direction at all. The idea of ‘ground’ was gone. There was none. It was all ‘sky’ instead — endless, onyx sky. It wasn’t proper air, though. No matter how quickly he flew, there was no wind to sting his body, including his eyes. There was no physical discomfort to distort his vision.

He realised he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He looked at his arm again. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t blurry, as it would have been in the real world, had he looked down at it with his naked, myopic eyes.

That’s odd, he thought to himself. Then he paused, and thought about the thought. Then he started laughing. Just that, he added. Nothing else. Just that one thing.

Arjun shut his eyes hard. He crossed his legs, sat on air, and ignored that silent voice that kept telling him to move. He wondered how he’d find the Garcias; he didn’t think walking, running, or even flying around blindly would accomplish much of anything. For the moment, he judged, the ball was in their court. They’d found him before, and so he had to trust that they’d find him again. What am I supposed to do until then, though?

With an annoyed sigh, Arjun opened his eyes.

What the...?

In front of him, the endless dark pit suddenly took on colour, warping and changing. It was weaving hordes of coloured mists, recreating what looked to be his bedroom. As it congealed and solidified, Arjun became convinced it was a carbon copy of the real thing — apart from the fact that it looked more like an open diorama than a room in a house. It reminded him of how an interior designer might mock up a room, except that it was life sized.

His bedsheets, blankets and pillows laid in a mess atop his bed, just like how it always was. The only time it wasn’t a mess was when his mother came into his bedroom to tidy up everything while he was at school. Arjun didn’t care about the mess; he liked it to some degree. Most of the mess was purposeful. Some of it, he could admit to himself, was just due to his own laziness. That wasn’t something he’d so readily admit to his mother.