All It Takes

   The hallway still smelled of jasmine at this hour. Joel shifted his briefcase to his other hand. The oak-brown marker he scrawled to fill the leather's cracks transferred to his damp palm. He took solace in knowing that even though his heart was racing, his mind stood calm. He crossed one foot in front of the other as he passed rusting doors and disingenuous welcome mats. Thinking of the countless times he had lost the key card, his shoulders slumped until his narrow fingers extracted it from the inner lining of his coat. See, you remembered it, he said to himself only once. Opening the door wouldn’t undo everything; it couldn’t. 

He swayed momentarily, petrified that beyond the threshold, the trash that blocked the walkway and allowed the entrance to just be cracked enough to heave himself through, would pounce on him. His nose and mouth would be deprived of air. Any breath is futile, like when inhaling a balloon pressed to lips. Only his eyes would be able to peer out as garbage swelled around him. Punishment for their neglect that attracted ants and old food liquefied. Yet enough paper trash, like empty packages or items like q-tips and dental floss picks, lay liberated around the bundles. Balled paper towels seasoned the floor like the crumbs and smashed tomatoes or dehydrated spinach studded the counters and floor boards. Joel would feel the tackiness of the ground, sticking him down the more the garbage bags pressed into him. His eyes would faintly make out an unmade bed feet from his immobile body. The comforter half on the floor would reach for him, but this was a malicious hand. Daily, those sheets constrained him to bed; they seldom willingly allowed him to rise from the mattress. Gnats would dance around sterile overhead lights. Jumping from wall to wall before eventually settling on the bulge of dishes that broke through soapy water meant to aid them along. The now grey, frayed sponge would lay on top of a list of things to buy, like more sponges. His pantries, mostly bare, along with the shelves in the refrigerator, went unnoticed most days. Hours stacked on days would blur as Joel would pick through dwindling, edible food. Rarely was he overcome with hunger, though it wasn’t strong enough to make him travel down the store. His mouth soured at the thought. The decisions along the way that needed to be made and the terror of planning something so mundane would seem stupid as he was losing consciousness, yet would still be considered a hassle even in his Hefty-induced demise. 

 The apartment was as silent and fixed as Joel's mind. He looked around, waiting for the knot of dread to slide down his throat, catching slightly before settling in his stomach. He didn’t need to lie down or take a moment. He didn’t feel salt water prick at his eyes nor mind the off-hours in which nothing should normally be done, much less something permanent like throwing out pieces of himself. Rather, he placed his briefcase upon the shoe rack that housed envelopes and jackets, placed his key card back into his pocket, and grabbed the tied-off garbage bags. They protested as they swung in his hands. Bitter about being stuffed down the chute, but with a few trips down and back the hall, the threat of attack stopped looming over him. 

 A meditative trance came over him. Seamlessly, Joel’s mind focused his attention on the next problem. The blue powder he shook over the toilet bowl stripped away the brown. He collected musty clothes from every conceivable ledge around the apartment. He eyed the mop in the corner, the handle catching the light. Sparkly stars slid along the faux wood the longer Joel stared. As the night marched on, everything became more mystifying by the second. His earlier actions felt unclaimed and barely registered. The hour itself was not inconvenient, as this was the time most college students lived on. Joel’s day was just…longer than any he had for a long while. Usually his nights were relegated to inflicting damage that needed to be slept off and wept through the next day. Still doubtful of his luck, the studio hadn’t attacked him, so with the reasoning of a sound mind, sleep wouldn’t strip everything away either. Or would that false sense of security lull the new gift out of him? Would it slip onto the next student, or suffering soul, and being would become unbearable again? 

   He thought his delirium and rising muted panic had caused him to imagine a knock on his door. Another quick rap came, and Joel shut the running water off. A dead giveaway he was home, but he didn’t care. Joel knew who waited on the other side, checking the peephole more as an indicator of the mood. 

 “Jeeze, are you okay?” Michael invited himself inside, sidestepping Joel to take a better look at him. The stomach of his button-up shirt was soaked through from the dishes. His hair, swiped multiple times in frustration, was a mess and stuck down to his forehead from sweat. 

 Joel wanted to rush into him and rattle off all events of the day, but a heat rushed through him. “I’m fine. What’s up?”

Michael scanned the room, looking hesitantly at the running dishwasher and semi-visible carpet. “What’s up?” He scoffed, “Come on, man, I can’t do this anymore.” 

Joel’s laugh broke the silence. “So then don’t.” He turned on his heels to start back on the sink, but Michael caught his elbow. He closed the distance between them. Michael’s face looked flushed and waxy as he concealed his concern. Trying not to make it seem obvious that he was checking Joel’s pupils. All Joel could focus on was the blackish blue that bloomed under his eyes. He let himself be clung to by his triceps until Micheal’s inspection lightened up and he pushed past him.

Joel, sarcastically, more than he had any right to be, leaned against the table. “It’s late. Let’s get on with it.”

Michael's shapely eyebrows pinched. "What's going on with you? Don’t lie to me. Lauren saw you earlier. First time in what– six days you showed up for a shift. She said she could see you shaking out of your skull the whole time. Keeling over the desk.”

Joel’s heartbeat matched the pendulum he imagined, swinging back and forth, determining if all of this would be permanent. Joel splayed his arms in front of him. “I had that interview today. You know what? I think it went well. You were right; a lot of the people there seemed cool. Who would have thought financial auditors—” Michael pulled free Joel's hand. He started to rake through his own curls; only when he detangled did Joel realize he had been yanking on the strands. 

Horrified, Michael helped free hair trapped around Joel’s knuckles, and led him by the wrists to the couch. Michael's nails had been bitten down out of stress; he could see the chewed quick of his fingers. Embarrassment settled like dust over Joel that he was repeatedly taking advantage of their closness. 

“Trust me, it’s nothing bad—”

“Right…I didn’t buy that the last two times? But let's go for the trifecta.” 

    Joel's joints protested as he sprawled on the couch, sore from his walk back from his interview Downtown. He racked his brain for a way to explain the Promise, but couldn’t devise a way that wouldn’t sound ludicrously contrived.

     It had been a week since Joel saw Michael. Joel watched him from the loft of an uninhabited apartment party he dragged them to. His pulse had synced up with the bass of the House Music, and his attention was diverted by the spinning ice blue lights. Michael, straddling a bean bag and laughing with his horribly more adjusted friends from their macro class, allowed Joel to polish off his umpteenth drink and slink off.

He traced the vines growing from a trellis along the exposed wall when he took in his surroundings; next, he was on a lower level in the building. He could faintly hear shuffling footsteps from the few brave souls who were willing to dance overhead. Joel was seized with laughter. His eyes squeezed shut with the rise and fall of his shoulders. He ignored the bile rising, and once he stood straight, the hallway and ground switched places. The air vent now on the matte white ground blew upwards, and a heaviness hooked onto Joel as his head cleared a bit. Tears that collected in his eyes from laughter now fell without a reason. He stood there motionless as his cheeks dampened, and he was racked with a stabbing pain through his chest that pulsed through his temple; he staggered forwards. Joel’s left knee skidded against the ceiling, and he struggled back onto both feet. The door at the end of the hall had creaked open. It was barely ajar, but the neon purple walls looked like a stripe of falling night, stark against the blurry cream hallway. Joel mumbled apologies; he pressed his index finger to his lips to make sure he hadn’t been screaming. Just days ago, Michael half-carried, half-dragged him out of Wanderlust Bar because he was beside himself and wouldn’t stop yelling. When the bar back started to call the cops, Joel looked at the kicked over bar stools and became indignant because he would have bet his life he hadn’t made a sound all night.

A breeze colder than the vent swept over Joel’s face from the entrance. A window was open because he heard wind chimes clinking gently. An invite to come in? With his foot, he nudged the door wider, ready to make niceties with whoever was there before figuring out how to head back upstairs. A crackling pain rustled through his ears as if he was coming from a high altitude. It was not quite a whisper, but it pricked the hairs on Joel's neck, and he became disarmingly relaxed. The purple glow was illuminating, and the moment his gaze was strongly fixed on nothing but the empty space, the air around him stopped moving suddenly, and he was enveloped within the room. The disorientation and sadness that brought him to despair seconds ago were gone. He looked for the window as chimes rattled louder, but all he saw were solid brick walls that spread as far as he could look in any direction. A reassuring pressure blinded his chest, and his breath came in gasps. His toes brushed the floor as he moved along into layers of purple. He heard nothing but his own thoughts begging, reasoning with the glow. A Promise. A prospect in need of this help, Joel would feel like this for as long as the secret was kept. He would never utter what was witnessed that night. Never try to explain it to those the glow had not held. Nor lead anyone to this room outside existence. If this was simply upheld, he would be granted what CBT and Carbamazepine couldn’t give him in the last 20 years of his life: a lasting, euthymic state. Nonplussed, Joel focused on his heartbeat. Moving his numb hand over his chest like an uncanny pledge of allegiance. Blood rushed in his ear, drowning out his whisper. Not fully believing reality, he recited the words from childhood whenever he hoped for something that scared him. Joel wished for it: to exist in life balanced and willing to keep moving forward. The glow spun around him; purple darkening like the last hush of a deadly whisper. 

    He came to in the corner of the empty apartment. The party was long gone, with plastic cups and empty bottles in its wake. The sun had started to set. Bleary-eyed, he shuffled over the marble floors, slowly feeling his surroundings with his hand. He gulped down long sips of water from the kitchen sink faucet. Water had never been so satiating. Weakly, his fingers swiped at the water on his face when the memories of the room started to whirl. Had he blacked out and vividly dreamed? His soul pushed against the urge. A hum threading through his spine firmly repelled him from seeking the staircase.

To not dwell on the only barrier left in his life, Joel spent the next six days avoiding his old life. Distracting himself, he went to his every class on time and stayed awake through them. Sitting hunched in the back to avoid Michael, though he never showed up that week. He calculated what he had to score on every assignment and exam the rest of the semester to narrowly escape flunking out. He toiled away in the library until exhaustion consumed him. He slept in a braced position. Merely a devoted student to the jaded librarians who dimmed the lamps. He spent free hours in the laundromat across campus. Preferring 4am as the acceptable lounge nude. Occasionally covering himself with abandoned lost-and-found items. There was something somnolent about the steady thrum of water over how shirt, shorts, and underwear tumbled around. The antithesis to the transcendent purple he ached for despite himself. 

   Convinced talking wouldn’t break the spell, he decided he should grovel for the job he had been all but fired from. His manager Lauren looked startled to see him after his three-week absence. Through gritted teeth and unsure if Joel would spontaneously drop off the face of the earth again if he were to be out of her sight, she put him on probation. Joel started his next shift at the front desk of the writing center then and there. While proofreading undergrad midterms to be submitted, he resolved to interview at the position Micheal arranged with his uncle for a budget analysis intern. Joel was humming to himself and shifting as he practiced questions under his breath. Lauren paced the length of their curved desk, checking things off her clipboard and watching him out of her peripherals.

Four hours later, Joel sauntered to take the bus uptown. His button-up shirt and breeches, fresh from the only consignment store in the area, fit well enough. The plastic from where the tag had been rubbed against him with every step, rushing him forwards. Joel passed the twenty-minute ride by hatching the scratches in his new, used briefcase with a marker he had asked to borrow from a kid coloring in the row parallel to him. He ignored the judgmental look the boy’s mother had shot at him, and eventually slid the marker into the briefcase with his old clothes and resume, when the mother shot a protective hand over the child.

  Michael, still waiting for a response, sat breathlessly on the sage couch. Joel had been tracing the edges of his knuckles that pressed against the fabric with his eyes as the silence stretched before them. He took Michael's hand, struggling to make his voice match the sincerity in his eyes. Michael studied them, gasping slightly as he saw Joel transformed. He was riveted by how his eyes gleamed with unnatural clarity. Michael mindlessly let his head sway in disbelief.

Joel lingered in uncertainty, begging for Michael to stop prying. For as long as he was able to navigate the world like he had this first week of his life, he would never reveal what happened. He would live resolutely, isolated if necessary, and guard his secret with a well of new willpower. “I. Am. Great. Trust me.” 

Tears irritated the whites of Michael's eyes. His too wide smile looked deranged amongst his quivering lower lip. “Okay,” he whispered. The eerie purple hue reflecting off his face as he looked at Joel waned before, dying down.