In that unquiet vastly stitched

(Me and Jason - right - from back when he had ten toes.)

There’s a time machine at the end of the hall. I told you about it already next week. It’s not a DeLorean and it’s not a police box. It’s a room in my friend Jason’s house.

The red light, wait, the red light comes earlier, I believe, that bit. I have not told you that bit yet. Too early then. Or else too late. I can’t remember nor foresee which.

There’s a time machine at the end of the hall.

I went there for some clothes, for Jason, for the hospital, for where they’re cutting off his toe, that’s all, it started reasonably. I believed it to be a closet. Believed, reasonably. It wasn’t a closet and have I mentioned there’s a time machine at the end of the hall? I will.

When you flip on the switch for a light – which you didn’t, I did – a red glow appears and the sound of static fills the space. I was looking for undershirts. I found a chair, and a red light, and a little radio, and mirrors cover the walls, and when you sit in the chair like a death chamber electric chair, straps screwed to the chair arms snap on your wrists, and really, I ought to write a blog post about the time machine at the end of Jason’s hall.

Look into your eyes. In the mirror. I did mine. And your eyes are there but your face soon melts away. From the staring. Different shades of red blinking maybe Christmas lights. This explaining will be better in the future, I hope.

You know that it’s working when the clouds come. No reflections now and then the shapes. After, definitely after, I believe. Then the moment you met Jason in 1991. 500 comments on an old Adri blog. Distant fingers wave. And the part where you stop blogging and the part where you die. Rewrite this in first person. Imagine it’s me. “OK then, I’m Harry” – Twenty-three, pointing down Hawthorne.

This is the point in the story when I’m in a time machine at the end of the hall.

Then… then? Cannot remember getting out of the straps; cannot remember leaving. Perhaps I will. Cannot remember the return to the hospital where downstairs, there’s a sign that reads, “Assaulting a nurse is a felony.” Jason takes the clothes and he says, “I was going to ask you to bring me some clothes!” but I’m too early now and he hasn’t yet. I will show up later here before this has happened.

I’m still in the chair, perhaps, there’s a chance of it, I know, of that being the case, that’s how these work in the movies, and how can I ever be sure when there’s a time machine at the end of the hall?

If his hospital stay is long, then I can go back and I can check.

(Actual sign. I'm sad that it is needed.)

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“In that unquiet vastly stitched” is stolen from Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.

“Distant fingers wave” is stolen from probably every William Burroughs novel ever.