Another Saturday Afternoon

“Goodbye Josie.”

I awoke suddenly to the sound of my own voice. I sat up, pulled off the magazine that was stuck to my face, and prepared to survey the room when my body was suddenly shot with pain. A blazing headache engulfed my mind and my chest screamed out in soreness. Worst of all I felt hot all over, like I had slept with a blanket in the middle of summer.

“Ugh,” I moaned as I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my temples. “That’s a hangover.”

I had gone on a bender last night and ordered lots of food and drinks to celebrate making it through exam week. A necessary morale booster given that I almost certainly bombed at least one of them. I was going to party with my roommate Josie, but she needed to finish her project, making my celebration a lonely one.

“Josie…” My mind wandered back to Josie and the goodbye as I acclimated to the light. There was no one else in the messy apartment. The TV was off and my phone was dead. The only reasonable explanation was that it was a dream. Not entirely satisfied with that answer I got up from the sofa, my legs nearly giving out as I tried to stand.

My morning was off to an awful start.

I made my way to the kitchen, which was in no better shape than the living room, and started making coffee when I heard the front door open.

“Valerieeee!” A singsong voice called for me from the entryway. “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” I said without looking up from the coffee machine.

“You didn’t-” Josie stepped into the living room where she paused, momentarily taking in the mess of beer bottles, cups, and fast food that was currently in the living room before continuing. “You didn’t answer any of my calls this morning.”

“Phone’s dead and I’ve been asleep until just now. Aside from this hangover and being sore, I’m alright,” I answered while taking a peak at the time on the stove. 12:31 PM. A momentary panic hit me before I remembered it was the weekend and I went back to watching my coffee cup slowly get filled.

“Hey Josie, want to get lunch?”

“Sure!” She answered far too perkily for someone who pulled an all nighter. “But first we need to go to my lab. I finished my project!”

She started fidgeting with excitement. I took a sip of my now full coffee cup and savored the bitterness.

“That’s awesome,” I replied earnestly before taking another sip. With the hangover, body pain and poor sleep I wasn’t mentally equipped to handle Josie’s level of energy. However she had agreed to lunch and that was good enough for me.

“Let me get changed,” I said glancing back at Josie.

Josie looked like a dog who had been promised a walk only to have their owner go the wrong way, but she said nothing and started cleaning the living room. I took another sip of my coffee before setting it down and going towards my bedroom.

I didn’t feel particularly flashy today, and I probably didn’t look it either, so I dressed to the occasion. I threw together a simple outfit, a plain t-shirt and some jeans, quickly brushed my hair and grabbed my sunglasses before making my way back.

Once I returned to my spot in the kitchen, I watched Josie clean the living room.

“You made quite the mess out here,” she said playfully.

“Well it was a party,” I replied with a smirk taking a sip of my coffee.

“Did you really need to order dinner three times?” she asked holding up all the delivery bags.

Seeing the conversation heading in a bad direction I pivoted.

“You ready to go?” I asked willfully ignoring the fact that she was waiting on me.

“Yes!” she said excitedly as she hurried over to the kitchen to toss the bags in the trash.

“Okay,” I responded and downed the rest of my coffee. “Let’s go.”

The first step outside was misery. Pure misery. Even through my shades, the sun assaulted my eyes. Blind, I recoiled. I attempted to help my eyes by looking down. Nope. The bright concrete continued the sun’s assault unabated.

At least I don’t feel sore anymore, I thought to myself as a small comfort.

“Val?” Josie asked from behind me.

“One sec,” I said waving her off. “Still recovering from the hangover.”

Josie respected the answer and waited quietly behind me. Once I was as comfortable as I was going to get we started walking towards her lab. Josie hurried to walk beside me and then stared at me expectantly.

I chuckled on the inside. I knew what she wanted and I contemplated teasing her a bit, but figured she had waited long enough.

“So you finished your project?” I asked casually. Josie’s eyes lit up.

“Yep! You see the problem was actually kinda silly,” Josie laughed and then began her technical dive into the problem.

Honestly I didn’t really understand Josie’s project. Josie loved talking about it in intense technical detail and she frequently did so quickly. The only things I really grasped was it had something to do with gravity and brain waves. But that was okay. I enjoyed being swept up in her energy. So, despite it going over my head, I found myself listening in and asking questions in a vain attempt to understand. That was our dynamic.

Finally, we arrived at Josie’s lab and she excitedly went to unlock it. Truthfully it was more of a garage or storage unit rather than a lab. She was renting it from the school to store her project when she wasn’t working on it. Eventually she took to working on it in the unit. We only started calling it a “lab” that after I jokingly said it made her look like a mad scientist.

After fiddling with the lock, Josie lifted the door revealing her lab with a flourish. Inside was an open area flanked on all sides with tables covered in parts and wires, with a chair, small table and Josie’s project sitting in the center.

The device, tentatively named the Anchor by Josie, was a black monolith that was bolted to the floor. It was covered in exposed wires, lights and circuits. Next to the Anchor was the small table with a white clicker and a headpiece on it. The headpiece looked like something I’d see in a hospital. It had wires leading out of the headpiece and into the Anchor.

Josie slipped in past me and positioned herself next to the Anchor.

“This is it!” She said using her hands for emphasis. She always had a flare for the dramatic. “The Anchor!”

“What is it?” I heckled, playing along.

“I’m so glad you asked! This is my final project. It links neural pathways across-” She paused.

I chuckled inwardly.

“Actually, it would be easier to show you,” she said dropping the showman act.

“Go for it,” I urged.

“Okay, uhhh…” she thought for a moment.

“Here’s what we’ll do: on my cue you’re going to roll a die without looking at it,” she gestured towards a twenty sided die on one of the side tables. “And, before you look at it, I’m going to tell you what you rolled. After that we can go eat.”

With that she began to put on the headpiece.

What? She just blew past the most interesting part of her presentation. I’ll have to ask her to explain it. If it works.

Once she was set up with the headpiece on and the clicker in hand she gave me an urging look. I picked up the die and dropped it on the table without seeing the result.

“Okay. The die is rolled,” I said increasingly curious as to what was about to happen.

“Okay! Creating an anchor point.” With that Josie clicked the clicker.

Suddenly Josie looked like a small shock went through her. Then she suddenly turned towards me.

“We need to leave,” she ordered.

“What abou-” I started.

“It’s four,” she cut me off and began taking off the headpiece.

I checked the die. It was a four. Before I could say anything Josie spoke.

“Let’s go.”

She dropped the headpiece on the floor, pocketed the clicker and rushed over to me.

“Josie, what’s going on?”

“We need to go.” With that she grabbed my hand and yanked me forward. Seeing no reason to fight against her I followed along. Once we were a good distance away from the lab Josie relaxed, but only for a moment.

“We are going back to the apartment,” Josie commanded.

“Why though? I thought we were getting lunch? And what about the lab?” I shot Josie a barrage of questions.

“Look Val,” she turned and looked at me directly in the eyes. “We need to go back to the apartment right now. I promise I’ll explain everything then, but we need to move.”

Suddenly she looked over my shoulder, realized something and swapped places with me. Her grip was tighter than before.

“And stay away from the road,” she finished, pulling me along.

With me thoroughly silenced we started walking back towards the apartment.

We didn’t take a direct route to the apartment. We took odd turns and cut through parks with no apparent rhyme or reason, but Josie was so intent and forceful that it was clearly intentional. All the while she was muttering to herself about random things, like fireworks and bicyclists, and eying specific people with intense suspicion.

Why is she being so paranoid? I wondered to myself as I went along with her antics. I attempted to make small talk with her and ask her questions about the experiment and the Anchor, but she ignored me.

It was getting harder and harder to ignore the differences between the Josie before using the Anchor and the Josie after using the Anchor. The Anchor clearly did something to her. She might need to see a doctor.

The more I think about it, the more… wrong this feels.

“Josie, stop!” I dug in my heels.

“No. We need to go to the apartment,” Josie insisted trying to pull me along. “I’ll tell you everything once we get there.”

I didn’t budge.

“Josie something is clearly not okay. You’ve been acting strange ever since you used the Anchor.” I shook off her hand and backed off from her. “It might have done something to your brain, made you paranoid.”

Josie shot me an exasperated look.

“Josie, please,” I begged. “Let’s go-”

Suddenly time seemed to slow down.

A blunt pain drove into me as a red pickup suddenly pulled through the crosswalk, hurting my right side and sending me towards incoming traffic. Josie jumped forward to catch me, but it was too late. As I tried to catch myself a silver sedan sideswiped me, severely hurting my left side. Completely off balance now, I fell forwards with the momentum of the sedan and landed face first on the corner of the curb.

After that things went dark.

As I started coming to I saw Josie crouched over me, crying.

“I’m sorry Val.”

The smell of blood was in the air. My front felt wet. Am I bleeding?

Josie.

“It’s always the same.”

Blurs were moving frantically behind Josie. I heard chatter. Blurs again. People? That’s not important right now.

It’s okay.

“I’m so sorry.”

I need to tell her, I thought, but no words came out. The pain flared. Intense, insufferable pain. It was the punishment for resisting.

“Val, I promise I’ll fix this.”

Josie. It’s okay.

I fought through it. I tried again. Pushing myself, but my body was unresponsive. The pain however? The pain remained.

“I promise.”

“Ugh,” I finally managed a grunt.

“Val, are you still with me?” Josie looked me in the eyes, her crying slowing a bit.

“There’s nothing.” I gasped the words out. “To fix.”

Josie stared at me, her crying starting to intensify.

“It’s not. Your. Fault.” My body tensed from the pain, but I got my message out.

“But… but…” Josie struggled to find the words.

“You’re going to die,” she finally squeaked out.

“You don’t. Know that,” I attempted to reassure her despite my condition.

“But I do Val, I really do.” She looked pale as if recalling a painful memory.

“You always do,” she whispered.

As I was figuring out what to say, the adrenaline started draining from me and a severe drowsiness started to overtake me. Noticing this Josie stood up.

“I promise you Val. I will fix this.” She pulled the clicker out of her pocket. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

I suddenly became very aware of the weight of my own body. My eyelids started to close involuntarily. I understood I wasn’t going to be conscious for much longer.

“This isn’t,” I said fighting to maintain consciousness. “Good-”

Before I could finish, Josie clicked the clicker.

---------------------------

“-bye Josie.”

I awoke suddenly to the sound of my own voice. I sat up, pulled off the magazine that was stuck to my face, and prepared to survey the room when my body was suddenly shot with pain. My sides were killing me and I had an awful headache. It felt like I had split my head open.

“Ugh,” I moaned as I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my temples. “That’s a hangover.”