I awoke in a yellow apartment. Overlaid on the windows was yellow cellophane that was pressed loosely to the glass. It hung and swayed listlessly to some unseen current. Turning over on the linoleum floor I saw a small kitchen. My knees cracked painfully as I stood up. Walking into the kitchen I noticed a cast iron pot in the stove and move to make its contents visible. All there is some ice cold water and pieces of white ceramic. My roommate has been talking about boiling my sink for some time now.

-Do you want to go for a trolley ride tonight?
“I have to sleep first”
-What if I drive?
“I just need to get some sleep”

There is a sense of tension in the room. He turns to me and asks for my name. I whisper The Machine and he types something on a cracked laptop. Sitting in silence, I notice that his hands are knocking very loudly on his keyboard. I think there is someone at the door. He outlines his plans for continuation and I ask if he has ever seen The Shining. We call my father and I ask about monogamy. He reads us The Waste Land. I say I am sorry. He tells me he loves me. I tell him suicide is the only option. He tells me he loves me.

I awoke in a dark room. There was a dreamy haze to my vision and I struggled to pull myself out of the bed. A trolley is docked outside. I boarded and was shuttled off onto a sodium yellow highway. The passengers seemed clueless as to their destination and were too preoccupied with a streamed lecture on Dr. Faustus to notice my arrival. A woman turned to me and asks where her skin is. I told her not to touch me and she shifts into an aerial map of suburban Pennsylvania. The map asks me my name. I replied The Machine is outside my window and all I have is some boiled sink.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I am standing at a yellow window. I don’t remember moving away from the kitchen. I begin peeling back yellow cellophane, layer after layer. Sometimes I notice a tear and am able to see through the window more clearly.


“Daddy can you help me build a machine?”
-Why do you think we’re in this bunker?

My sister and I leave our house. It is an overcast day, suffocatingly warm. I ask her what “sickly sweet” means and she tells me to walk a little closer. I  limp to the outer rim of our cul-de-sac and look behind me. My sister isn’t there. There is moldering mattress laying across the center of the cul-de-sac. Meat hooks keep it tethered there.


The room is uncomfortably warm. He leaves shortly and returns with a coffee mug. The air becomes cooler, more comfortable. I attempt to communicate his prismatic tendencies but he seems too focused on his laptop. My inquiry into its damaged state is met with a blank stare.


“And what do you think is the cause of this..state?”
-I don’t think I’m very complex
“Well have you seen it before?”
-A woman at night with no skin tries to hug me.
“You are repressing some visceral fear of what lies beneath the consciousness”

Thud. Thud.

After several hours I peel the final layer of cellophane away from the warm glass. The building across the street are mundanely yellow, each window the color of day old urine. There is someone twirling their wrists on the street. I step back and try to imagine my brother’s face.


His hands are moving rapidly. Each keystroke is thunderous knock. I tell him I think someone wants to come in. He says it is just his roommate boiling sink. He says the word “schizophrenia” and I repeat it, affecting a southern drawl. I begin telling a story of man visiting my middle school and removing his hands on stage after boasting about selling cocaine.


“I disagree. In the words of William Shakespeare ‘The eyes are the windows to the soul.’ Your eyes say you want to be a doctor, why?”
-I sometimes find myself alone with The Machine in veiled room. It asks me my name and I tell it to kill the anti-god.

I press my knuckles into my closed eyes and try to see my brother’s face. I only see my own. I am in front of the window again as if magnetically attracted to that location. The person on the street is now facing me, making circles with their hands. His face is obscured by a dense yellow fog but I understand him to be my brother.

“Ok, someone is definitely knocking”
-It’s really just my roommate
“I thought he went away”
-He comes back every now and then to use my pots

We were packed tight into a large room abuzz with fluorescent lights. An air of expectation lingered throughout the evening as we awaited our reward for patience. The heat hangs above us. An adult opened a glass door so it could move. My knees were in pain but I kept still. A balding man climbed on stage and yelled something at us. Finally, he threw a handful of pocket change into the crowd and began to remove his hands.

There is someone on the mattress. It is suddenly upheaved as if attached to an invisible pulley. A flayed woman stands upright, meathook vultures picking flesh off her achilles tendons. She begins to chase me and I run. There is a buzzing getting louder; I scan the sky for crashing planes.

“You have so much potential though”
-I can’t get the dust out of their eyes
“What do they need to see?”
-I need to see my reflection
“You told me that was shattered some time ago..?”
-I just don’t know how I will ever get back


The street person is screaming now. I am balling up cellophane and throwing them onto the ground below. I hang both my legs out the window and see his face as my own. I notice something glittering on the street. I think it is a nickel.

Thud.