Maelstrom

3: Interlude

Time was wonky in Dimension M. Forever could be condensed into a Tuesday.

Angelo had been sentenced to his box at the beginning of Time, which meant he had been there for fourteen billion years and also for no time at all. He often grew bored, walking in circles — squares? — around his cell, watching the blinking clock which was projected on the ceiling. It always said A watched pot never boils.

No matter how hard he thought, Angelo could not remember life before the box, nor why he had been sentenced to eternity inside of his cubical prison. Apparently, neither could the warden

"I don't know, man," he said, "but you're here. And my job is to keep you as you are."

Angelo slept at odd intervals, curling into a ball on the ceiling, and waking up flat on his back on an adjacent wall. He rarely ever touched the floor; it was covered in tally marks, counting down the days that he had been in the inter-dimensional prison. The divots overlapped and intersected.

He talked to himself sometimes, multiplying by five and having a socratic seminar-like conversation with different pieces of his consciousness. Some faded away after a few hours of arguing (Angelo was indecisive) while others stayed and threw balls of dark matter at the back of his head for seven backwards days.

Forever was lonely. And having lived it forwards, backwards, upside down, and from behind wore Angelo down to a fragment of what he once had been. He was an eroded mountain, left to face the wind even as a lump of rock.

Once the floor had been destroyed by his fingernails, the back wall of his cell swung open.

"Angelo," said the warden, "Dr. Borne."

The warden stepped aside, making room for a man in a button down shirt and jeans.

—

Angelo had never thought about the prospect of Dimension M having a café. He always assumed it was a white void with a compound at its center.

Dr. Borne led him through the halls of the prison — the stairs went through walls and the corridors were occupied by a dark smog. Angelo swore it had eyes.

"Why are you letting me out of here?" he asked the doctor.

Dr. Borne looked at him like he had just asked why the wheel of time turned. (It's a real thing, the wheel. A guard once slid Angelo a photo.)

"Because you've served your sentence," he said, "and there's no reason for you to stay any longer. Unless you've committed a second crime."

"What was my first?"

"I wasn't one of your jurors. How should I know?"

The café's windows looked out onto an abyss, a bottomless pit with a spec of light at the bottom. Angelo stared at it, squinting, while Dr. Borne ordered the both of them a coffee.

He wondered if he was dreaming again. In his cell, he once dreamt of a kind of freedom where he was still locked away. More space. People to talk to. A different body.

"How did you sleep last night?" Dr. Borne asked, setting a mug down in front of Angelo.

Angelo smiled. "I don't sleep. And there is no night here."

Dr. Borne nodded. "Right," he said, taking a sip of his coffee. It left a stain on his upper lip. "And I'm guessing you haven't been well in general, so I won't bother asking."

"Smart man."

They laughed in sync.

"Why was I let go," asked Angelo, "really?"

"Don't know. I'm just the court psychiatrist."

"There is no court here."

"Then how'd you end up in prison?"
"I don't know," Angelo hissed, "I had been in there forever, quite literally."

The doctor leaned back. "I'm not all that familiar with how time works around here."

"It doesn't."

"Work?"

"It's like a ball of yarn. All tied together and overlapping. Tomorrow is actually two days ago, or something like that."

"So your sentence truly felt like eternity," Dr. Borne concluded.

Angelo shrugged. "I guess so."

"And how do you know you won't wake up in your cell tomorrow?"

"Because therapists don't torture people. It's against their code of honor. And the only way I could end up back in that place is because of you." He jabbed his finger in the doctor's face.

Dr. Borne responded first with a small smile. "What makes you say that?"

"The wardens can't leave the prison. They're only good for opening cell doors and bothering the inmates. It's like they're cursed to walk the hallways forever. Like ghosts."

"You're smarter than I would have thought someone who's spent an eternity in an iron box would be."

"I'm observant."

Angelo truly only suspected that the wardens were confined to the prison. He only suspected everything he "knew;" all of his knowledge appeared in his mind in the same fashion he had appeared in his cell. He never learned it. It was as if he had been programmed and sent out into the wild.

"So why am I sitting here," asked Angelo, "with you?"

Dr. Borne reached for Angelo's mug, suddenly empty, and stood from his seat. "Walk with me."

They exited the cafe and entered the great nothing outside, a path appearing beneath their feet.

—

Jean had fallen asleep in Kit's bed after he was gone. Their bed.

He hadn't fought it like she had expected him to. He hadn't denied anything like he had in the past. He went voluntarily, packing two bags and having a final phone call with his internet psychiatrist before he practically shoved Jean in the driver's seat and opened his GPS.

She woke up worried. In the past few days, she had become accustomed to Kit curled up in a ball next to her. Chewing through his cheek. Crying. He devolved more in that week than he had in the five years that she had known him.

She sat up and looked out the window at her bedside. It was raining. Of course it was.

"I'm gonna get better," Kit had said the night before, "I'm gonna get better and then we can live like normal people. If that's what you want."

Jean had taken her eyes off the road and stared at him for a moment. "We are normal people, Kit. You are normal people."

"You know what I mean."

Jean had scoffed. "No, I don't."

The place — Monmouth — had been bigger than she had expected. Nicer, too. It looked more like a school than a hospital, one large building made of stone surrounded by well-kept grass and a gazebo that could be seen from the parking lot.

They had sat in silence for a few minutes, before Kit kissed her and took the both of them inside.

She missed him.

Wallowing through the living room, she stopped in the kitchen doorway. (She hated the apartment. Why did the kitchen have a door?) Her first instinct was to cover her eyes and cower in the corner.

A ghost hovered over the tile. A white sheet with cut out eyes.

And a bloodstain over where a human heart should have been.