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Side Effects Include……

I’m in a room. Completely devoid of light. It is cold in here. I have no idea where I am. I know who I am. Or do I? Strike that… I know who I was, but not who I have become.

The lights blink on, a blazing light. I’m in a completely-white room square, smooth walls surround me without a single door. I look up. Only light, no ceiling that I can see—just a source of white light illuminating. It’s almost as if the walls themselves are illuminating the space.

I am barefoot—the floor below me is cold but not unbearable. Smooth as glass.

The walls around me blink to life. Flashing moments in time of David, Mom and me, throughout our life. No particular order, just nanosecond flashes. Sometimes, a picture I may have had, other times fast-forwarded video of things we had done. David in his diapers on the beach his belly sticking out, the camping picture, our visit to the gym in Tahoe, riding bikes to school, playing Wii on Christmas, a fight we had in Utah. I am surrounded by two lifetimes in less than ten seconds, then blinks back out.

Pure white. Four walls. I yell out, but in there, sound falls flat upon the wall. I would expect an echo in a room this big, yet there is none. I walk forward to touch the wall. It’s the same smooth surface as under my feet. I bang on the wall with the base of my fist. It is solid. Not an inch of give.

The surfaces blink to life again. This time, they are showing my life. My first day at school, my first teacher Miss Gates, my dog Muffy, being carried out of the house by Jack Hyatt wrapped in a blanket, my first kiss, a fight, running through the woods, the first time I fell in love, Halloween, slipping and falling in my new shoes on wet tile during my first interview in NYC, my wedding, my divorce, the phone call in Panama… and then the four walls just stop on two images on opposing walls. The images seared in my head. One from 2009, the other from 2011. They are the mental pictures I can’t seem to forget of my mother in her coffin and David in his.

I know it’s them, but it wasn’t them. Their skin waxy, the hair lacking of the sheen they once held. Their faces drooping—it’s them, but it’s not them. David’s face is all swollen at the bottom, my mother’s the same. I notice every detail in their faces. The screens blink off.

Complete darkness. It feels like minutes before the life flashes on again, each wall displaying a giant question mark. Every few seconds, they divide in two, then four, then sixteen, until the walls look like they are polka dots. They flash out before going completely black.

The wall in front of me blinks and displays the following for only a moment:

“You know who they were, you know what they have become, you know who you were, who have you become?”

As soon as it was there, it snaps out of existence as does all the light in the world.

Pitch black again…