Spin Glass

The house is yawning with the changing temperature.

It can be felt only barely in the thrums of vibration against the bed. It has started to rain just faintly, and the wood is expanding and contracting throughout the house. My gaze keeps going to the window. It is not voluntary.

I am trying to keep my attention on my clothes. My old clothes, the stockings and the panties and the robe, which are now too dirty with memory to keep wearing for the latter half of the day, are set on the bed. I am naked again in my room. It does not feel like my room. Actually the feeling of being out of place just won't go away, and a gentle anxiety rubs at the back of my neck. It has lingered since that moment fixing the cistern up until now, even as I separated away from Him and took a moment to myself, stripped, breathed. I spent some time on my back in bed, just pondering, but I can't remember much about that thinking session. Time just sort of burned away, in the same way incense does. In the same way, I was not worried about it. Incense is made to be burned.

I take another look out the window and surmise that it could go either way, now. It could explode into a downpour, or it could fade out again. It is a transitory kind of moment.

Here is the thought bubbling up in my mind: I would like to reset. I have had a very contentious day, but it's hardly over yet, and I still have plenty of time before sundown—and after sundown—to make it as meaningful and satisfying as the rest of my days. And I have to start off by dressing appropriately.

I do not really understand my own gender situation, for what it is worth. I am happy being some bit male and happy when He addresses me as such, but my most intimate and comfortable moments come in clothing like this. He has told me this is alright, that my opinion on myself can change freely and fluidly, that I can be all things or nothing, or anywhere in-between. Right now, I hardly know any bit of myself or my identity, except that I would like to dress prettily, so I do. It starts with undergarments...

...I will not get into many details as they're not totally necessary, but I spend half an hour on my evening outfit. It is a skirt, long red stockings, lace-up shoes. Sweater. Cotton jacket. The jacket collar goes up around the back of my neck and makes me look slick, if I have to be honest.

And finally that feeling of wrongness is going away, whether via distraction or euphoria from my appearance. In the mirror I am able to appreciate myself standing in the middle of this bedroom, looking on, neutral or maybe a little worried-looking. I am able to imagine Him looping His arm around me from the back. Our appearances in contrast are a definitive statement of color—black and white. Lightness and darkness in polka-dot, stripe, ripple. My eyes are red, so my thigh-highs are red. His eyes are entrancing, so my thoughts of Him put me into a trance.

Just in time, the rain has died down completely. It's clear outside again.

And the interior lights are bright. I tighten up my stockings and pump my jacket out, and I grin, because I feel bad-ass, and I step outside into the cold halls of His home.



I have two ways of calming down, typically: either I have hands around me, or I recall information. Recitation of memories is how I keep from going crazy, at least when I'm by myself. Nowhere is this more apparent than how I have learned the contours of His house, which is, as I've said, by and large very understandable and Euclidean. There are precisely two exceptions: reaching the Room at the bottom, and reaching the Room at the top. I have never been to the Room at the top, but I have descended into the basement before, so that is how Him and I will find one another again. The issue is that it is entirely unfamiliar.

Whether by matters of magic or the occult, or my own memory, or a combination of the three, I do not know how to get to the Room at the bottom of His house. I only know that by delving deeper into the basement I will reach it. When I emerge from the bedroom I have a directive and a mission, but that is it. Memory is nowhere to be found. As is typical, I have none of that in me.

I am gripping my hands in each other and trying to let them guide my way.



Eventually, I walk to an obscure flight of stairs and go below the floor.

His home has a basement, as I have said. It is a thing carved out of rock and then turned into flatbed, this huge singular interior that is not much taller than Him and has support beams the size of trees every few meters to keep the home steady. In points there is simply concrete and foundation, where the basement does not carve into the earth, but at other points it unsteadily seems to hold up His house all on its own. It is lit with overhead dangly lights that have been placed everywhere, almost as if to dispel the notion that He would dare own a dark, damp, scary basement. It is exactly as unassuming as the rest of His house, if not moreso. If the above is a mansion, the below is an oversized suburban cellar.

As if asleep, I keep walking in a direction.

When I come to again—because my day is all spots—I find that I am standing next to an old memory of mine in the basement. It is a stack of cardboard boxes against a corner of concrete wall. It is what my possessions looked like before I became myself, before I met Him. I don't know how I found myself here, but sometimes the present sneaks up on me, and I suppose my hands lead me to this part of the basement, and I suppose that was a form of physical memory, like my nervous system is a form of mental memory. And these boxes are an old temporal lobe.

Memory gives me a checklist.

In these boxes I had clothes and bags and suitcases and I had car keys and a wallet and I had an old playing card—seven of spades—and I had specifically a picture of my mom, my mom who I don't know very well, and I had a box of old school papers and drawings from a long time ago, and I don't know how it all got here.

And in the back of some of the boxes there is a terrific collection of dust and grime and dirt, and there are cobwebs, and there are two years' worth of time keeps. And in the boxes I also had a picture of myself which is behind two sheets of paper I used to doodle on.

I had a booklet on the local area dotted with Sharpie marks. I had my house keys. I had a picture also of my roommate and I at Lake Michigan. Printed. I had a shopping list for all-in-one shampoo and chips. I had six dollars in cash and a credit card from a long time ago.

And I had a device that goes in the ear.

In the first box on top I had clothes from when I dressed differently and I had zippers broken off and I had socks that don't fit me anymore and I had a baseball cap for a team I used to like. And I had Lexapro in a little orange bottle. Lexapro is a psychoactive prescription drug that turns your brain into a pile of rocks over time. And I had a written version of the prescription, and a spare bottle, which became empty after I used all the pills. And I had a calendar with too many appointments on it. And in the last box on the bottom I had a few other things lost in the muck of it all.

But memory loses interest eventually.

I just recall this is where I will find the entrance to the Room at the bottom of His house. I reach forward and, like before, I feel a brass door handle, cool to the touch. Instinct and reality tell me that there is not a door, but touch tells me that there is. And memory just nods along. And I click the handle down until I sense that it is free to open, and I swing forward all at once.



The back of my neck is screaming. It is saying something that I can't hear.



Here is how I will attempt to describe this, though like many experiences in His house, the words do not come easy. I think I am asleep, and I sense this because all my limbs lose balance, and a staticky tingling is beginning to permeate throughout my fur like slime mold. My inner body begins to feel weightless. And my head is very heavy, and my eyes ache. And when I walk forward, I cannot entirely sense the footsteps as feedback. I cannot touch ground. There is a delay to when reality meets my nervous system.

At first there is no ground. Actually at first there is nothing. There are no directions and there is no forward or back and there is no progress. There are also no sights of anything. If I were to describe this I would not use the words 'empty space' because that at least implies that you may be looking at a night sky, with stars in the distance and galaxies swirling around, and the sense that if you went far enough you might reach an object you could hold onto. In the Room at the bottom of His house I am going nowhere and will never reach anything.

At first.

Then I start waking up, or maybe in a sense I am getting further from the waking world, because I feel a tight clenching sensation around my wrist, then my palm, my fingers. I have no thought about this yet. Then He squeezes my hand. And I realize who it is, and my overworked amygdala responds positively to this news, and I squeeze His hand back.

Quickly I have a hand. I have a body. I have stable footing and gravity. And attached to my hand is another person's hand, and he has a body, and he has a name—Tabi—and he is floating in front of me, leading me in a direction. He is the only splotch of light in this lightless nightmare. He has brightness in his eyes. He brought me here and caught me before I fell all the way down.

I ask him—verbally I think—if we are going somewhere. And I sense immediately that, yes, we are. We are going to an old building that fell through the world.

I am footsteps and the static shock of sound through my body. I cannot perceive sound through my ears due to a manufacturing defect in my head but my nervous system is perfectly capable of detecting sound, and I can sense through touch that this is concrete or cement, something hard and coarse beneath my shoes. And Tabi is floating, so he is a bit pacier than I am. And I hope he can hear me laugh softly as he whisks me along.

The tingling sensation of dropping into the Room below his house is electric.

This location is the only place in the Room that is similar from day to day. This is the concrete floor without sight and without smell. He is taking me along an invisible path through nothingness. Actually Tabi has told me there is something here, but until we go further down, it doesn't have—room?—to manifest. So for a little while we are scurrying along. And then we find our destination, or I guess it finds us.

We do not enter the building that fell through the world.

At first it comes to me, and him, in spots. At first it is smells: salt, savory, gasoline, grease. Then it is a squeaky hardwood floor beneath my feet, and overhead lights, and neon, and then it is a sense of expanse. It is a building that exudes a trash and evening sensation and I am figuring out its layout one ray of light at a time. I see that it comes in two parts separated by stairs, short stairs, liminal stairs. I feel that it is air-conditioned and dry. And despite my mind's attempt to recognize it, to interrogate its purpose, it is—for whatever reason—is completely and overwhelmingly unfamiliar to me, like waking up in a busy crowd. The only piece of familiarity is him, floating in front of me. Tabi has gotten here, too, of course.

He is surely gathering the same clues. This is a newer establishment, probably only a story tall and with rectangular lanes going off into the furthest wall, and solid overhead lights, and a neutral aesthetic of pine wood, plastic, starry wallpaper. We are stood beside those liminal stairs and behind us, as I glance around myself, I can see a bar, soda machines, arcade machines. There is an ATM by the glass double-doors leading out into nothing. Vinyl floors carve apart deep blue carpeting.

I look back to Tabi and he is looking back at me. He seems impressed with himself, puffed out like this. He quickly signs, "I had this place as an idea, but we can move elsewhere if you'd like."

I shake my head. I am flattered being someplace new. "Just tell me about it."

"And then, would you like me to show you how it was used?"

"Yes!"

And so Tabi tells me about it.



This place is Lone Star Lanes and it was—well maybe it wasn't anything, because time does not always work like that when it comes to Tabi. But I will use past tense because he does. My understanding is that there was an establishment on the outskirts of Austin, bordering one of those highways that infest themselves with mattress stores and office parks, and it was having overwhelming financial difficulty as result of its location or its management or any combination of such things. And it was having trouble finding patrons, because people did not really want to be at Lone Star Lanes and the fries were too dry and the onion rings were too rancid for anyone to stick around, or remember it, and the existence of neighborhoods was really an afterthought in where it was placed, because I don't think anyone lived within a mile of the building. And it bordered a furniture store called Maximum Value Home Deco which was having similar troubles, and so the owners were pals, and one time they both came out of the buildings to harass a person without a house who was trying to start a campfire in a vacant lot. And they filmed this, for some reason, so things got worse for them. And eventually the owner of Lone Star Lanes was only intermittently at the building, doing other things to scrounge up money like defrauding his best friend at a building called Fast Loans, and also the employees had very little interest in being there. And as I've said, nobody wanted to buy any of the crappy food or pay to use the facilities, even if they were in alright upkeep.

So one time in April there was nobody in the building, which is pretty common for buildings. And to add to that, nobody was thinking about the building. Nobody was nostalgic for the place as a kid, because it was only open about eight years, and also the owner did not like thinking about it because it was a sore spot for him, and the employees were happy to be thinking about anywhere else. And the previous owner of the land wasn't thinking about it, because selling it was a good thing in her life. And also the contractors who built Lone Star Lanes had better things to be doing. So there really was no human being on the planet who knew about or cared about Lone Star Lanes for a moment. Of course this happens to old buildings all the time, and actually it happens to human beings all the time, too. Normally this is brief and somebody thinks about the thing again and all is normal.

But this time, for reasons related to magic and the occult, the building just fell through the world. It wasn't there anymore. And memory of it wasn't there anymore. And nobody ever thought about Lone Star Lanes ever again.



As Tabi explains, it was a bowling alley.

I cannot explain why, but I don't know what bowling is, even though I get the impression it is a common hobby. My first inkling is that it just fell out of my head, like a lot of other things. It was a misplaced paper.

Tabi teaches me while we play.

I bowl two strikes and a few spares and then a lot of very comical open frames, and still I end up beating him in a full game. We both are handicapped by our limited three fingers on each hand, but Tabi refuses to accept this excuse, and is understandably miffed during his couple of gutter balls. "I am supposed to be good at this," he whines. "Why am I so bad at this?"

Normally I would reassure him, but as I am a little competitive, I just give him a smirk. "No traction, I'm sure."

He disagrees. "The lack of traction ought to make my throws straight every time."

"Ought to," I sign, and then I don't elaborate.

We bicker a little bit and then start kissing, similarly to how I assume old gay couples go about this sort of thing. And we forget all about the game again and scamper off to the other side of the building.



There is a cushioned bench in the corner by the eating area, where I think the sound of the arcade machines blaring is least obtrusive, and where Tabi and I go to cuddle. He has his arms around me tightly and is rubbing my back, and I am rubbing his, and I have kicked my shoes off, and he is playing footsie with me further down the bench. And this has been going on a while, now, and it is completely wordless and senseless and timeless. And having given it some thought, I finally realize what he's going for.

I pull back, and I am still flush with kisses and excitement when I sign to him. "Are you just trying to make me happy so I forget about everything?"

He laughs. "Yes, obviously! And I knew you had not gone bowling before."

"I guess not!"

Tabi gives me this funny look, and kisses me on the snout. And his arms go back around me again and I am locked in this embrace for what feels like, and I think should rightfully be, forever.

I get hard during this. I don't really feel desperate and needy like I did this morning, nor do I feel celibate. My body is just feeling heat and touch and so I get hard, and so does Tabi, and he warbles a little affirmative into the small of my neck when he realizes it is a mutual, ah, accident.

So we frot a tad, but it is just that, and it is soft, and temporary, while the cuddling is endless, and I am able to get pleasantly lost in my mind with him. Although it is hard to avoid difficult subjects of thought.

After all, I am in the Room at the bottom of his house and I do not know really what that means, or where this is, or how I got here or how Lone Star Lanes got here. Though memory is telling me now that Tabi has elaborated on this some times and the answer is not all too clear. The way Tabi would describe it, Lone Star Lanes stopped existing and became an empty lot. And the owner and employees and patrons all did not need it to exist either. And instead, it just fell down and ended up in what he would call a 'Room'. He describes this as a real place, a real place buried beneath his house and above his house, too, and which is unnecessary. In the same way that I think all the rooms in his home are necessary, even the little cobweb traps and empty hallways, this Room is apparently forgettable. And it is so forgettable that it collects other forgotten things like a magnet.

Sometimes these ideas do not need further elaboration.



And now I am thinking about it too hard. And his breath is against mine and it is little help for the situation, because I am pondering the idea of this Room and where things end up when nobody needs them anymore. And I think about it because I am confused about the fact that I'm new to the idea of bowling, because I didn't do half bad, and because my muscular system, the structure by which I make spatial decisions, has no trouble at all with the windup, the delivery, the twist of my fingers. I scored one hundred twenty seven points in the whole game, which strikes me as a perfectly fine achievement.

And actually now that I am thinking about it I might have liked bowling a lot. Or at least as much as anybody can like bowling who isn't particularly good at it.

And memory is telling me I used to play bowling video games with my roommate and I also watched a YouTube video where somebody got as many points as you can get in a single game, which is three hundred. And I have been to a place a lot like this place before.

And memory tells me that it was a shitty place to be, and I was only there twice, once when I was twenty and another time when I was twenty-one. And then I moved away from Austin for a variety of reasons and forgot about it.

It just fell out of my head.

I can feel Tabi's heart beat slow. I can feel my heart beat quicken. I am beginning to feel like I am falling through this bench, through every inch of nothing below us, and sinking into the core of the earth.

- - -

Here is what is running—sprinting—through my mind.

Maybe, or at least wishfully, this 'memory' isn't real, because many of the papers I am served by my memory are false. And if I focus hard enough I can make it sulk back into the cave of nothingness, and maybe I can accept the fact that I have never been to this place called Lone Star Lanes and that my head is making things up to fill empty space. It was a dream. It must have been.

And yet right now, it doesn't feel like a satisfying answer.

I want to know for myself.

I am on air. I am slowly detaching from Tabi just as he is his sleepiest and I am clambering to my feet and I am walking to the bar, which serves both food and drink during operating hours. I have never crossdressed in public and I am feeling cold and warm at the same time, and when I reach the counter I am heaving air in and out, and I am leaning on it for stability. And I am stricken with another Gatling gun of images.

The person who works here is named Megan or something else starting with the letter "M," because I remember seeing her name tag. And also I remember ordering nachos. When you get nachos at a place like this, it's just melted cheese drizzled on some tortilla chips. And I paid for the nachos and got billed $8.55, which is too expensive, obviously. At the time I was friends with a couple people from high school who would later do some terrible things to my body and so the memory is not so nice, but I still remember laughing about how high prices were getting, and something about politics, and then we bowled. And in Austin I later met somebody who was also gay and we hooked up, and a few months later I met somebody named Megan who I recognized from a bowling alley. But I didn't know where I recognized her, so I didn't say anything. It was just one of those passing comets. And then very shortly before I got out of Austin I went to this bowling alley again and she was still working there, I think. And I thought it must have sucked to have spent almost a year working at the same bowling alley that nobody liked and nobody remembered and which had a shitty owner. And I would like to think this was one of many reasons I left Austin and went to New Jersey and stayed with my cousin, and later, a lot later, came to Michigan, which is where I met Tabi, which is where I am. And then I guess this, all of this, just went away.

And I am leaning on the counter and remember, and my head is starting to spin, and my breath is starting to fail.

I am scratching at the back of my neck. The inflammation and screeching is starting to intensify and I am about to cry. I feel like my whole world is falling apart. Why did I forget? Why did this fall out of my head? And my neck is yelling at me to turn around turn around turn around turn around

and here is Tabi hovering behind me.

And he looks so concerned.

And the lights dim again.

And he signs to me, "What's wrong?"

And my limbic system causes me to run away.



But I fail to run properly, because I am terrified and my head is broken into a few ceramic pieces, and when I am two steps away I fall to the carpet, and Tabi is now looming above me, his hands raised like he tried to stop me from falling, and there is an awestruck expression on him. I don't know what is going through his head, and so I am signing rapidly and without words, and then I am out of breath again. And he asks me again, "What is wrong?"

And I blink rapidly and try to respond before my arms break down.

"Why did this fall out of my head?"

And he lowers himself down to me. He places himself on the carpet only a foot away from me. "Oh, darling."



"Your memory sometimes excludes things from you, doesn't it? This is another one of those times. I had a feeling there was some reason that this place ended up in my Room, but I didn't know why. The emotion and your senses are so intensified by the environment of the Room."

"Why did this fall out of my head?" I ask, again.

He shakes his head. "It didn't. Surely you have it all, and it's coming back to you."

But I actually can feel it falling away, further and further away, the senses and feelings and sights of Lone Star Lanes and memory of before I was here with Tabi, and my hands are trembling viciously. And still there is this distinct sense that I have been here before and done this before and I am caught in loops, spinning, spinning. Spinning again. And his eyes lock with mine and I cannot break gaze, even though now I am trying to. And I sign, "Did we sleep for multiple nights?"

And the lights grow dimmer until we are in darkness.

"No. And I want to get that off your mind. The Room is meant to be where we enjoy ourselves." He gives me a warm smile, tilting his head. "I'm sorry your day just keeps getting more messy, but it's important you don't dwell."

Why can't he give me any answers in the world? And I sign again, not as a question but as a statement, "We slept for multiple nights."

He shakes his head.

And I sign, "I remember."

"I don't know what is going on inside your head, but maybe you do remember. It is possible."

My hands are breaking with tension, and they tremble like they are made of styrofoam, but I reach out and try to get to his hand. And quicker than anything else Tabi is willing to grab my hand. I am shaking my head, and he squeezes my palm, trying desperately to ground me. He is trying to help. That must surely be what is happening.

And I shut my eyes and try to breathe.

Do I remember how I used to calm down? And then instinct tells me, no, you never calmed down without hands around you. So Tabi brings his hands around me. He is a great, six-thousand pound comforter shaped like a sheep. He is so worried for me. He is not trying to distract me from truths. He is simply somebody who cares dearly about me, and would follow my trains of thought to their end so that he could help me step off the platform safely. He is my caretaker and my partner and, I think, the person I love most in the world. And if things fall out of my head that is alright. He will help pick them up again.

When he pulls away I am crying but not sobbing. And he is now kneeling on the floor with me, and we are sat across from one another, and he has matched his breathing with mine. And more definitively this time, he is telling me how to feel about this whole thing.

He is telling me

how

to calm down.

"I will stay in your thoughts," he signs. "You can always think of me whenever things get difficult. You can fill your head with reminders that I am here to care for you and love you at all times."

I have been through this before.

"You can shower me with love and affection and always receive it back. You can worship me in your head and will feel invigorated as a result. And you can do this even when memories are falling outside of your head. Even if your memory is all jumbled up, it will retrieve me in an instant. You will never lose me or thoughts of me."

And he grips my hands, and he is no longer signing. And yet still I can sense what he would tell me. I can feel that he will love me always, and I am always welcome as the morning sun in his house. I need not sabotage myself with anger at myself. I am lovable. I am beautiful and important. And I can enjoy my body and his house and my freedom forever.



When I look down I am hard again. I am poking up against lingerie and my skirt and, in spite of my tears and heightened mental state, I am still enchanted by his touch against my hands. And Tabi is staring down warmly at me, seeing this, sensing this. He pulls his hands away. "Do you want to take care of that?"

And I am sniffly when I respond, "Yes. I think I'd rather do that than talk about the stupid fucking bowling alley."

And he laughs so much.

With every laugh, the overheads turn on in stages. Front to back, fluorescent lights reactivate, flicker, and fully illuminate. I like to imagine that an employee remembered this place existed and threw a breaker on.

We are no longer in the dark.

- - -

br>


He is delicate with me. He can tell that I am a little broken right now, that I am sensitive in the physical sense, so his movements are deliberate so that I can watch him reach forward towards my groin, where I am bobbing up against my clothes in an unintentional way. I didn't even realize how erect I had gotten until Tabi pulled my attention to it, and he does not try and rip away my clothes. Instead, he simply puts the tip of his thumb on the tip of the tent I am pitching.

The way I am kneeling against the floor I am basically pinned to this position, and I involuntarily lean back when he pokes my member, and air forces its way out of me. "Can you—" and I have to think about it a moment, because I don't feel kinky or desperate, I just want to feel good so I can forget. And so I just ask him, "Can you just flood my senses?"

And he pulls away to ask, "How much?"

"A lot. Just make my head spin. Like the other times in the Room. I would really like that."

He gives me a long, knowing look. "We can go back to talking about your day in more detail, if you'd prefer."

I shake my head. "No, I don't want any of that. Or well I guess I do but I don't right now." I picture myself, briefly, as a ceramic doll of a goat, whose head has broken open against a dresser. Out of the crack flows memories, shaped like bowling alleys and roommates and rotting animals, and then I snap back to Tabi's gaze forcefully. "I want to feel like a wet dream and make dinner and get really drunk tonight, and then I'll sleep really well, and then we can sort all that out."

"Yes?" Tabi smiles wearily. "Are you certain?"

My body makes me lean further in. I feel tired and kiss Tabi on the nose. "Please," I sign.

His hand goes down again. And it lands on my lap. I can feel him rubbing gently at my thigh, puffed up fur being caressed through multiple layers of fabric. He leans his head down and his forehead now meets mine. I cannot imagine what is going on in his head. When I stare into his eyes at this moment, I see nothing.

Well, again I see his pupils spinning. Or maybe they are not. But my eyes are telling me to stare further in.

And his other hand is on my other thigh, and he is giving me a massage so close to my penis that I am buzzing, buzzing, my fur is all on end. I can't take how sensitive those areas are to the simplest, most delicate of touch. He doesn't approach or wander away; his fingers and palms just rub at me until I can feel my length poke out from the side of my panties and against the cotton of my skirt. I feel engorged, I feel chafing. Just to deal with this sensation I have to close my eyes for a few moments and catch my breath, exhaling into him.

I am a shuddering mess. I am leaning into Tabi for any support at all.

During this moment, the back of my neck tells me to look at him.

And when I open my eyes something is terrifically different about Tabi. I would like to describe this as a threshold being crossed, as when I stare into his pupils, they are no longer the soft and almost dopey rectangles like that of a sheep. They are spirals. Real spirals. My eyes are no longer lying to me.

And the sight of the bowling alley starts to rot away.

Static. Intense electricity. Tabi's hands close in on my groin. His eyes start to grow bigger in my vision. I cannot tell whether my own cognition is narrowing or he is growing, but his face, his muzzle, starts to wrap around me. I am a planet and he is my atmosphere.

Tabi.

Tabi.

I am shaking. The tears are starting to stream again.

And the contours of Tabi's face and his sheep's wool start to lose ground as they are replaced by his pupils swirling into the drink, spinning and enveloping everything. They are two globes forming a whole and expanding and exploding, and I am covered in a freakish form of shivers. The sensation again from my organs that I am falling and I am falling and I am falling, and my head cranes back, and I feel my spine rattle as I stare wide-eyed into Him. All my fur goes on end. And my mind is screeching as the neurons begin to fire at ten thousand times speed, and it is beginning to blast sights and smells and touch against my cerebral cortex. And then I feel at ease.

Wind is blowing against me so quickly now and I am surrounded by Tabi's eyes. To my left they spin clockwise and to my right they spin counter-clockwise. And where I was—or am?—in the bowling alley Lone Star Lanes I am no longer really present. I am hypnotized, or maybe I am something close to hypnotized. And cognition is suddenly reaching me very spottily and composing words is difficult.

Here is where I am: I am in the bottom of a very large pit examining my own biology. And this is a hallucinogenic sort of state as I am not actually anyplace or anything right now, I am just seeing my thoughts spring to life. Here is where Tabi has dissected me with a scalpel and exposed my internals as a series of errant signals all friction against one another. And here is the thesis, wherein he argues that my nerves and brain and various extant systems are built to make me have sexual intercourse so as to fulfill my purpose as a self-reproducing machine. And here is where he playfully notes that I don't fit the model, yet I still have the same parts. I still have the same wiring. And that same wiring can be interconnected and played with and manipulated and, if uncautious, it can be broken.

It feels like the inner world behind my eyeballs is being invaded by the outer world and especially by Tabi. And yet panic or fear does not come up. I am, as I insist, at ease.

Tabi holds my wiring, my neural connections, in his hands. His hands are so soft with my mind. And his swirling eyes are the hands of a god touching my brain at its most base level. Actually I think he has most direct control, and perhaps only control, over my nervous system. This is my route out of the cave. This is my external feedback processing. This is my world.

Senses and all, Tabi grips my brain.



What is there of me except my experiences?



And instinct tells me, no, there is nothing.



Tabi alters the world around me like he once altered my body to make it a goat, and he alters my touch processing to ruffle that fur he created, and he alters my sight so that I see him hovering above me, shaped like nothingness. He is glowing. And from the supple soles of his feet to his glimmering eyes I see my deity. And without using his hands, built not for work but for stage direction, Tabi makes me feel touched.

Touched on my thighs, like where he grabs me in the Room. And I feel touched on my rear, my tail, my short tufts of fur being caressed. And I feel the palms and fingers of grabby hands along my spine and my stomach and sides of my abdomen. And I am shivering intensely from the sensation but my body is paralyzed and my muscles won't respond to my screaming. My nervous system makes me want to try and fight off the sensation but I am stuck.

And I am lifted up.

My legs dangle free. I can feel fabric fluttering against wind, both my skirt and my jacket pounded by turbulence and crushed by palms. I can feel my dick again, I can feel myself hard against nylon, and one of the hands pulls me free of my panties. And Tabi is also touching my neck and chest and compressing me. And my jaw goes slack as I try to yelp.

This is difficult to describe.

I have never been held by this many things.

And my head—my face, my horns. All felt up, all touched. The sensation is unbearable. I am being rubbed and poked and massaged. And down my stockinged legs hands are rubbing at my thighs, calves, feet. He—or some extension of him—is grabbing my extremities and holding my hands. It is like my hands are being held and yet when I look I can see nothing, I can feel no resistance.

Fingers crawl up my chest to my neck like insects.

I am squeezing my hands tightly to try and cope. I feel harder than ever and I don't even know why, I can't explain why, but my body is telling me to get erect because of the sheer overwhelming sensation of it all. The hands and palms are shifting across all the map of my body and Tabi is there in front of me, looming, looming, looming. He has put two hands around my balls and along my perineum. He has made hands grip me by the thighs and he has hands rubbing my feet, caressing my toes like Tabi does for hours. And then Tabi begins to grab a part of me that can't be held.

I think he would say, this is the part of you most interesting. And so he touches my prostate. And my mind is melting, and I go over the limit of what it can handle, and I begin to dissociate.



What words can be used to explain this? My head is hot and can hardly form language.

Physically: my muscles are cramping and my groin is compressing, while at the same time my body feels loose and weightless like I can let myself go. And also my vision is going blurry and I am smiling without meaning to, and I am squeaking I think. My nervous system is being tricked into thinking I am reproducing, so it is filling my cerebral cortex with endorphins to reward this behavior. It is a very simple trick. If I had to guess, every part of me knows this is a trick, and it simply doesn't care.

Mentally: I am happy that somebody, or something, is trying to make me happy.

Maybe Tabi is, above all, good at making me feel wanted.



Tabi.



He opens his arms for me, he beckons me closer. I can hardly catch a breath and he is getting closer and beginning to choke me. Two hands made out of nothingness grip my base and my shaft and massage it and I jolt, I shudder, I wail. And then he shuts me up by shoving fingers into my mouth.

He is telling me something.

I can't hear him.

I can't hear him and then suddenly I can hear him. The words go directly through the language processing center of my brain and it is like I am remembering what he is saying as he says them.

I love you.

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

My squealing becomes a scream of overwhelmed bliss or pain or nothing

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

I feel orgasm and my limbs fall off and my body falls apart and explodes into a million overworked neurons and still he is grabbing me and choking me and breathing for me and I beg him for help

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

My world is all his.



And I wake up.

Or maybe I am still in some kind of beautiful dream.

I am in the place called Lone Star Lanes. A long time ago, or maybe never at all, this place fell through the world because it got forgotten. And sometimes I think of myself the same way. Were it not for Tabi, I think I would be completely absent.

I am on my knees, wallowing in a form of wetness and stickiness that would make me embarrassed, if I were not so exhausted. All the time is lost to me and I have no idea how long I fell into Tabi's world, but my skirt and panties and member are coated in many, many rounds of my own seed, and I have no breath, and the glow comes in waves. Long, trailing waves of happiness and warmth. Orgasm fried all my brain cells and the scent of myself is reminding me of that hypnotized moment again and I feel so, so much relief. A weight is gone. All that fear is gone.

Tabi has me in a bottomless hug. I can't stop kissing his chest.

And I love him.

Or maybe I am still in some kind of beautiful dream.

Eventually he is massaging my feet with his real hands while I drift through near-consciousness, and his fur keeps me from really waking up, until finally we both feel like it is time to go, and so he scoops me up in those great long arms. Tabi's strength feels endless, and it is a perfect match for what feels like infinite weight on my body. He carries me like a bride, but again I have no idea what I feel like I am. So I suppose it is best described as a Tabi carry. I am resting in this Tabi carry. I could sleep here ten thousand years.

And he is rising. First three inches above the floor, and then higher and higher.

The neon plastic-scape of Lone Star Lanes melts away into a kaleidoscope, and the ceiling floats away until we are entering a void where color becomes null-color, and palladium fireworks dot the sky, and all the carpet is on fire. It falls away like a crumpled piece of paper below us, and the linen-sheet stars explode into Reality, and Tabi and I float up, up, up, towards a north star which sparkles into every wavelength imaginable. We are struck by ochre and jade and ruby, and a cold wind starts to blow against us. We are entering the sensory world, the real world, the difficult world. The turbulence picks up until it is a blizzard. And soon all is snow. And all of the static re-enters my body as we pass through the dark place between floors. The elevator is spooling to a stop.

And then I arrive in the basement on my own.

All is still.

And all is still here.

Memory gives me a checklist. In these boxes there are photographs of old places and old people and there are broken devices and shattered glass and in the boxes there is an old me and I never, ever have to open these boxes again. I stand up. My breath is steady. And on the back of my neck there is a little itch, and it is whispering to me where He is, where to go to find Him. And me, and my body, and all the other things trailing behind me, walk back to my God in a stagger.