Master's Story - Segment 2

His bed proved to be his second worst enemy, behind himself.

For the longest time, Jack couldn't get to sleep. He hadn't spent much time in hotels, but even a hotel with a worse bed gave you a TV for background noise. One doesn't notice that one has become not just used to, but dependent on some manner of white noise until one tries to sleep without it. Jack had, for the past several years at least, been falling asleep to the sound of late-revelling partiers, the sound of television, the steady creaking and settling of his house. But the facility didn't creak, it didn't make the kinds of sounds that old buildings were supposed to. Or, if it did, the later-added faculties and rooms were well-isolated and well-soundproofed enough that they didn't reach him. What he heard was the sound of his ears ringing, the crackle of every swallow, the gurgle of his stomach. His body settled around him even if the building didn't. And he was suddenly far more uncomfortable about that fact than anything else.

Even when he did sleep, it was in fits and starts. He'd wake up sweating, he'd wake up cold, he'd just plain wake up. First he tried sleeping in his clothes, then he tried sliding a layer off at a time until he was fully naked. Even then, he'd wake up shivering one moment and sweating the next. His jaw was clenched, his teeth grinding.

When he heard the door unlocking, he froze in panic. It had seemed like he had finally managed to close his eyes and drift off somewhat only seconds before. Maybe not even fully drift off, more that he got caught on the edge between the two states. Jack realized he couldn't remember slipping his boxers back on, but his moment of panic about being seen nude abated in a rush of sweat and nerves. He felt just awful. Stretched too thin, his head full of molasses and concrete. His sinuses swollen to twice their size, squeezing his skull. His eyes itched terribly. He wanted something, anything, to take the edge off. Any drug, any liquor. Hell, even sober sleep sounded good right now.

Janna let herself in with a smile and his breakfast. She walked wordlessly to the foot of his bed and sat down, passing him a metal tray. Balanced on it was a small, steaming glass of what looked like tea, a tall pitcher of water, and a clean pink bowl containing a salad. It was a kind of 'dragged through the garden' affair. Jack felt ravenously hungry, but at the same time, the sight of any food - not to mention a leafy nightmare - was utterly repulsive. He filled a little earthenware cup with water and gulped it down. The cold liquid hit his throat like an invading army, he felt his whole body shudder. Something was deeply wrong.

"I normally won't bring you breakfast, don't get used to it," Janna said with a polite gesture. "But most guests have a hard first night. You certainly look like you did."

Jack huffed in affirmation, looking into her eyes for a second before poking the salad with his fork. He hadn't eaten a salad like this since... well... probably since he was a kid. He took a tentative bite, surprised at how flavorful it was. He couldn't see a lot of dressing, but what was there seemed pretty strong. At the same time, the feeling of deep revulsion bordering on queasiness worsened. He gulped down another glass of water, then tried a bit of the tea. It tasted... inexplicable. There was absolutely a flavor, he just couldn't have described it with a gun to his head.

"That's elderberry echinacea tea steeped in fresh spring water," Janna explained casually. "Echinacea, or coneflower, has tremendous healing properties against bacterial agents. If you brought in a cold or a flu, that will counteract it. Elderberry is a more general healer. Before we build clean prana within you, we have to scourge the dirty energy you're carrying around."

He tried giving it another sip. It didn't exactly taste healing - if such a thing had a taste. Though he was aware that he would probably be the last person to know what something healing would taste like. The only way it really tasted 'healing' was that it tasted a bit like a fresh band-aid smelled.

"Your breakfast is a salad based on five different greens - chard, kale, mache, arugula, and spinach - topped with a microgreen blend, thinly sliced daikon radish, onion, cherry tomatoes, a crushed clove of garlic, and activated almonds. The dressing is olive oil with salt, pepper, and a hint of lemon. Everything on that plate was both grown and made on-site."

"Is all the food... like this?" Jack asked through a mouthful of squishy greens. The flavor was certainly inoffensive, but his stomach continued to do trapeze acts.

"There are certainly some heavier dishes that Kitty can make. Calling our menu entirely vegan is perhaps a bit dishonest. We have on-location sources for both eggs and fish, so we can assure perfect ethicality in their harvesting. However, a principle of our dietary construction is the five rices and five greens. Even accentuated with things other than rice or greenery, every dish is constructed around one of the two pentads."

"What's with the two sets of five?" Jack asked absentmindedly, not particularly caring but wanting something to drown out the sound of his chewing - and the uneasy noises in his stomach.

"Well, I'll save you the full explanation for now. But the basic principle is this," Janna's lips curled into a smile. He'd clearly asked the right question to let her prattle on. "Man was a hunter-gatherer, not much more advanced than the animals he killed for sustenance. But he was domesticated by grains."

"I'm sorry, what?" Jack snorted.

"Bread is the backbone of every major civilization in world history," Janna gestured wildly. "It kept better than any of his game or his foraging, it was easy to produce in large quantities. All he had to do was settle down and follow the schedule it set for him. Ancient cultures around the world recognize this. The Torah speaks of the seven species of plants which were acceptable offerings in the temple - two grains; wheat and barley, then grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. Then the Confucians write of the five grains in ancient China - rice, wheat, two millets, and soybeans."

"And all this leads to you..." Jack intentionally trailed off.

"Our cuisine uses as a base the five rices - red, yellow, white, brown, and black - and the five greens - chard, kale, mache, arugula, and spinach. The pentad of greens represents a suite of foods which can absorb the negative energies of the body and be processed out. You'll be more regular with us than you've ever been in your life," Janna said with a slightly teasing smile. "Then the five rices all feed your chakras and enhance your body's spiritual energy. It is not simply enough to remove the bad or to imbue the good, we must do both."

"So you base your diet around this stuff because a bunch of people who didn't live past thirty used to eat it?" Jack sounded a bit more snarly than he'd maybe meant.

"But that's just the thing," Janna's grin deepened. "Man ate bread, he cultivated wheat. Man cultivated rice and eats rice. Man cultivates greens and eats those same greens. We value food which does not need to be changed. That which the earth gives to us in ready form. Most meat must be cooked, fish does not."

"You probably still should," Jack added petulantly. "And you should wash rice too."

"Washing something does not change it," Janna looked at him smugly. "Something we should demonstrate with you."

Jack glanced at his breakfast - which he'd picked at about a third of - and decided to just go along with it and wait until lunch. Hopefully his stomach would be better settled by then, especially with the help of a hot shower. He moved the tray aside and brought himself up out of bed, suddenly feeling a rush of disorienting vertigo like he was rottenly hungover. The vertigo made the nausea worse, and the worsening nausea seemed to make the vertigo worse. He must have been showing his distress, because Janna came over and set a hand on his shoulder.

"You're entering withdrawal," She explained.

"Yeah, obviously," He grumbled. "I just didn't expect... I thought..."

"You thought it would be a headache and some shakes?" Janna asked with a surprising amount of sympathy. "You are standing at the culmination of many year's worth of bad decisions. Unfortunately, it is not a situation where the strongest withdrawal wins out over the others. The more you've put this off, the more things you stacked between you and it, the harder it will hit you when it comes through."

For several long seconds, he stood in place trying to get his bearings. Janna kept her hand on his shoulder and looked at him with a kind of disgusted pity. He considered throwing in the towel, saying that he needed to go see a doctor. His heart was starting to race, it was hard to tell if that was another symptom or anxiety about the others. But, eventually, he powered through it enough to shrug off Janna's hand and take a few steps.

"The key of today is going to be to not push you too far," Janna lectured. "You will quickly come to realize that our decision to isolate you for the first few days was not done idly."

Slowly, he waddled his way over to the bathroom, pushing back the glass door to open the closet-sized shower tucked into the corner. In contrast to the dull concrete grey of the rest of his room, the tiles of the shower were such a beaver-puke melange of deep green and brown that looking at them made his dizziness flare up. He sat for a moment on one of the porcelain benches protruding from the wall and stared down at the drain in the center of the floor, trying to find some comfort in the waffle pattern of gunmetal gray. Janna followed him into the bathroom and sat on the counter, watching him sympathetically.

"Are you gonna watch me shower?" He asked sulkily, "Should I put on some trunks or something?"

"I imagine that would impede cleaning several of the parts which need it the most," Janna let out a sharp little bark of a laugh. "I assure you, Mr. Madsen, you don't have anything I haven't seen a thousand times before. And your nudity is nothing to be ashamed of. In time, you will likely see me undressed as well."

"You're really going to make me do this?" Jack groaned.

"At such a time that I'm satisfied you're washing yourself correctly, I'll give you back this modicum of privacy." She gave a smirk. "But, if you'll pardon my rudeness, you do not look like you do."

He grimaced and rose slowly, as soon as he felt like he could do so. The little indignities were probably only going to get worse from here, but this one stung a bit. He couldn't say she was wrong, but the idea of having somebody critique his washing and his body certainly didn't feel good. As a little insult to injury - the alternating sweats and chills he'd been dealing with for the past however long meant that he was shriveled up pretty pitifully.

Janna, credit to her, didn't comment or make any sort of face when he slipped out of his boxers and stood in front of her naked. Glancing at himself in the mirror, it would probably have been pretty easy for her to cut at his insecurities if she'd wanted to. He was pretty sure cults were all about that, but she didn't comment on the little pot belly he had, the sunken chest and slight moobs, or the shrunken nub and balls currently sitting on his crotch. Even leaving all those aside, there was acne, flakes, grease, the whole suite of embarrassments. About the only silver lining he could see was that he hadn't soiled himself overnight.

Turning on the shower, he let out an immediate shudder of blissful relief at the feeling of hot water on his stomach, his head, and his back. There was a top head hanging from the ceiling and two little vents on either side of him around forehead height angled down toward the drain. It meant that the floor only needed a barely-perceptible slope to bring the water into the drain, and it meant that he could stand at the intersection of the three streams and he could simply putter and soak in the heat for as long as he wanted without any part of his body feeling left out. There was also a detachable head on the wall for later. But he was also wholly aware that he was being watched, and that likely Janna had some manner of a time limit in mind for him. He reached for the soap and brought it to his face.

"That's soap for your body," Janna interrupted him. "You want something gentler for your face."

"Soap is soap," He responded dully after a moment.

"You notice how your face breaks out while your arms don't? Or how it's more sensitive than your thighs are?" Janna stood up and stepped toward the shower, she pointed toward the shelf on the wall stacked with assortments of bottles and packages. "The body part isn't the same, so the skin isn't either."

"Okay, how about instead of you waiting for me to do something wrong and then correcting me, you just tell me how you want me to do this?" Jack huffed.

"That'll work," Janna slipped out of her soft shoes and stepped closer.

She was wearing the same neck-to-ankle grey tunic that the rest of the staff usually wore, and the sleeves and hem were both starting to dampen. She didn't seem to mind. Stopping just short of actually getting under the streams with him, she reached over to the shelf and grabbed a razor and clear bottle of what looked like olive oil.

"Before you do anything else, shave what parts of you need shaving." Janna handed them to him. "Shaving is rough on your skin, so it is best that it is done first."

"I don't need to shave anything," Jack looked at the razor disinterestedly.

"You don't need to, but I would suggest you shave your face for now. Anything else can be saved for later." Her lips screwed tight.

"I like my beard," He mumbled.

"It can hardly be called one," She probably could have been a lot meaner, but it still felt a bit cruel. "Regardless of how it looks, we should try to heal the skin underneath it. It will grow back nicer and healthier through well-maintained skin."

Jack grumbled but did as she said, leaning into the plastic, fog-resistant mirror on the far side of the shower, oiling each cheek and under his jaw before sliding the razor across. He couldn't have even guessed the last time he shaved, it had been a long time. That he only had a wispy, patchy beard to show for it was indicative of something, probably genes, but he couldn't have really said what. Everything was of high quality, the oil stuck on his skin even under running water but seemed to be peeled away with his hair by the blade, the blade moved smoothly across his face without a nick or a hitch. All-in-all, it probably took a minute, two tops, to completely cut everything away below the ears. At which point, he handed the razor and oil back to Janna. In response, she handed him what looked like a small fisherman's net and a bottle of something creamy and white.

"Now, you'll exfoliate, thoroughly." Janna instructed.

"Don't people use a loofah for that?" Jack glanced at the mess of netting.

"This is an African Rope Sponge." She pointed at the net. "The fabric is fairly rough and textured, you will probably find it uncomfortable the first few times you use it. But the coarseness combined with a hotter shower will open and clear your pores more effectively than anything else you've ever used. The design and elasticity also allows it to reach even the most difficult spots, you can wrap it around your shoulders like a shawl and get between your shoulder blades where your own reach would fail you. The wash that accompanies it is a natural, mildly acidic menthol blend which will only enhance its power."

Uncapping the bottle, Jack squeezed a handful out into the net and bunched it in his hand until it was foaming. It made his palm and fingers tingle, not unpleasantly, but more intensely than he might have expected. He quietly hoped that the acidity was as mild as Janna insisted. Wadding the soapy rope up, he started to wipe it gently across his freshly-shaved cheeks. Janna cleared her throat loudly, then held out her hand. Jack gave her the loofah after a moment's hesitation, and she grabbed him gently by the hair, pulling his head forward out of the stream toward her. Then she started to rake the sponge against his cheek forcefully, enough to make him yelp. He tried to pull away, but her grip was surprisingly strong. Suddenly, he was a kid again.

"I told you, the first few times will be uncomfortable. But you must scrub with purpose," Janna spat the final word viciously as she cleaned him. "We are opening pores long-neglected, they will not respond to gentle treatment."

"I get it!" Jack yelped, trying to pull away again, but her grip on his hair tightened.

Janna scrubbed his face with painful roughness for another few seconds, mainly his cheeks and forehead. When she seemed satisfied, she let go of his hair and handed the rope sponge back to him.

"The face was the part I most needed to be sure of," Janna smiled. "The rest you can handle yourself. You needn't be as forceful as I was, but do scrub, don't just wipe."

Jack winced and slumped back under the water. Glancing at himself in the mirror, his face had turned pink and puffy, he was bleeding very mildly in a couple spots where Janna had lanced some acne. Still, he did look... well, it was hard to say he looked better just yet, but he immediately looked less oily and flaky. He could see some of his pores, for one.

Scrubbing his shoulders and arms with about half the force Janna had used, Jack managed to not draw any complaints about his lack of skin-shredding vigor. It turned out he didn't need to go nearly as hard as she did, the wash made his skin tingle. Glancing every now and then at the sponge, he could see scrunched clusters of his own dead skin like lines of dried sea foam on the sand. It only took a few seconds of scrubbing a body part to make it the same baby-pink his face currently was. By the time he had gotten around to stretching the loofah across his back, he had more or less settled into the tempo Janna seemed to want - though he was also drawing pinprick-sized drops of blood in a few spots. His skin really had been pretty bad. If this actually did get less bad if you did it more often, he would probably have to make some version of this a habit. Though, ideally, with something that smelled a bit more pleasant than the eye-wateringly strong smell of mint he was coated in.

When he had finished that, Janna had him quickly soap the more private parts of his body. She didn't seem especially concerned about them being done a certain way so long as they got clean. When he was done with that, she handed him a bottle of shampoo - which he didn't need explained to him - and when he was done with it, she handed him another bottle.

"Conditioner," She explained without him asking, "You use it the same way you use shampoo."

"Isn't conditioner for people with long hair?" He asked anyway.

"Conditioner is for people who want nice, healthy hair," Janna corrected, her eye seeming to twitch just slightly. "Regardless of length."

Jack didn't want to argue with her, so he squeezed out a small palmful of it and rubbed it into his scalp. His nose prickled. The smell of it was much stronger than that of the shampoo - which had seemed to mainly be some kind of specialized scalp care - and as well as being stronger it was also... unmasculine. He wouldn't have gone so far as girly, it wasn't flowers and sugar and rainbows, but it smelled very strongly like the green, fruity mixture that had been in his breakfast bowl. Still, it was too late to quibble about the scents. He washed his hair with it and rinsed it out. Janna gestured for him to turn the shower off. She handed him a towel and let him dry quickly, then handed him another bottle. The stuff inside was the color of butter and looked just as thick.

"This is moisturizer, and a strong one at that," Janna gestured toward the mirror and had him stand in front of it. "You only need a very small amount of each body part, you'll find it spreads easier and farther than you'd think. I expect that bottle to last you the entirety of your stay."

The smell of it came at Jack like a punch as soon as he popped the cap. It was every bit the flowery, feminine-smelling puke he'd been worried about. Janna could clearly see his displeasure at the smell.

"You're not the first man to have that reaction," Janna snorted. "I understand it isn't the gasoline and bacon smell that most men's products sell themselves on, but that's because it's natural. It smells like the things it is made of - and the smell will weaken as your body absorbs it. Consider it a small, momentary indignity with a worthwhile tradeoff."

Janna took the bottle from him and uncapped it, gesturing for him to extend his palm. Jack held his hand out and let Janna squeeze a little pea-sized dollop onto the tip of his finger. He kept his hand extended and waited for more, but she recapped the bottle.

"That's for your left cheek, you'll get another like it for your right, then one for your forehead." She lectured.

"And for the rest of me?" He started to rub the little dollop into his cheek. It really did go a long way. Wherever it touched became slimy. He held his hand back out and she gave him another small dollop.

"This is very special-use, it is for your face only." Janna explained. "There is a bottle like it - though with a darker fluid and a wider neck - in the cabinet if you should need it. Ashy elbows and knees, cracking hands in the winter, those kinds of uses."

"Aren't you supposed to moisturize everywhere?" Jack asked.

"Yes, but with some limitations," Janna set the bottle down next to him. Jack watched over his shoulder through the mirror as she seemed to look him up and down. "For one, not everybody's skin reacts well to every lotion. The one you're using is actually my second attempt at the same formula, the first caused some discomfort to some clients. As well, if you're unused to actually using a full-body moisturizer, your body won't absorb it as well as it should. Best to prime the pump, slowly."

Jack took another pea-sized drop on his finger and covered his forehead. When he was done, he made a few faces in the mirror. The small spots of blood seemed to have more or less closed up as quickly as they opened, the small flakey patches between his eyebrows and on the sides of his nose looked better - though were still red. He had to admit that he did look better without the wispy patches of beard. All over his face where he'd applied the lotion, there remained a weird, almost medical-looking shine. It was a bit strange and alien, but the tingling didn't feel bad. He certainly felt a little... off. In part because of all the frankly girly smells that were hanging around him now, but mostly he just still felt queasy. As soon as the hot water and the steam had subsided, the miserable parts of his day had returned.

Janna shuffled behind him a moment before handing him a folded-up uniform, the same monotone gray, androgynous fit as the one she and likely everybody else was wearing. Jack settled into the pants - notably having an elastic band instead of a draw string. He stepped into the shoes - no laces. And then slid on the tablecloth-sized shirt that draped around him like a dress or a robe. There were no two ways about it, he looked like he was in a cult.

"No laces or belt?" He gestured at his shoes and gave Janna a knowing look.

"We've not had any incidents, but we've not allowed there to be any." Janna waved him off. "It is more common elsewhere than one would hope."

"Grim," Jack stepped back into his bedroom and bravely took another large bite of his salad. His stomach started turning in knots almost immediately.

"These are all tough pills to swallow." Janna followed him. "If you want some actual scientific background, the majority of self-harm attempts in the medical field are made while under psychiatric care - which much of our work falls under. However, for those who participate in therapy and come out the other end, the risk does go down dramatically."

"Mhmm," Jack grunted back. He tried sipping the tea again, it didn't taste any better, but it was almost... centering.

"Now, for the record, I'm not going to time you on your hygiene in the future, but I do expect it to be done faster than you've done it today. Once you are on roughly the same schedule as the others, your options will either be to wake up earlier or get it done faster," Janna's voice became coldly professional. "When you are eating with the others, breakfast will not wait for you."

"Don't people tend to trickle in?" Jack asked.

"You would be surprised just how easy it is to get into a schedule, even if you aren't used to it." She seemed to brighten a bit. "Especially when there are social pressures to do so. Having never had a job to wake up for, it will likely be a new experience for you."

"Yeah, sure," Jack sighed. "I just slept like absolute shit."

"I'd have been surprised if you hadn't." Janna retorted, gesturing to his tray. Jack let her take it. He was still hungry, on some level at least, but couldn't imagine taking another bite. The water and the tea didn't exactly speak to him.

He wanted coffee, he realized, even though he didn't tend to drink it much. More than that, he wanted spiked coffee. He had an ache in the back of his neck around the base of his skull, and another ache in his jaw. Both of those were probably more stress than symptoms.

"Are you ready to get started today?" Janna asked, giving him a worried look that suggested he might have actually been able to say no.

"Yeah, good to go," Jack was willing to wager that saying no would mean a trip to Ohemaa's. If he could avoid that, he was going to do everything in his power to.

"What have we forgotten to do?" Janna asked him with a voice like a preschool teacher.

Jack was genuinely unsure what she was talking about. He was dressed, washed, fed (relatively), and as up as he was going to get. When he shrugged back to her, Janna handed him the pitcher of water and gestured to the little potted plant sitting above his bed. Jack rolled his eyes, filled the little watering can, and tipped it toward his plant.

"Now, repeat after me as you do this," Janna cleared her throat. "The rock at home on the river bottom doesn't know the heat of the sun."

"The rock at home on the river bottom doesn't know the heat of the sun," Jack mumbled.

"Now, what do you think that means?" Janna watched him finish pouring, then nodded happily.

"I don't know, what does it mean?" Jack responded without any interest.

"It's not a test," Janna stuck her nose up as she walked out, "I'm not going to grade you, I want you to think about what it means and come up with an answer."

The light of the sun hit his eyes like a physical punch, Jack winced as he stepped out into the hallway. He wondered if the lack of windows in his bedroom was intentional, not as an anti-escape measure, but to discourage him from spending his free time there. Janna set his breakfast tray down on a cart and left it by the window for somebody else to pick up, then walked down the hall at what was clearly a restrained pace for how long her legs were. Jack still had to walk faster than he would have liked to keep up. The effort did nothing to lessen his feelings of unease. Suddenly there was a great swarm of little black floaters at the front of his vision, flies, dots, and ropes. He was breathing far harder than his heart rate suggested he should have been. Janna seemed almost merciless in her lack of noticing, surely he must have been obvious.

At the very least, his sexless outfit was comfortable. The fabric was soft as a pillow against his skin, it let in air without being cold, the range of motion and the flexibility of it was perfect. If he was going to be wearing a bed sheet, they had at least given him a very nice bed sheet to wear. Even the laceless slippers held to his feet seemingly without slip or pinch. When they passed through the tall doors of the main hall out into the slightly chilly main lawn, Jack didn't shiver or feel the dampness of the grass through his shoes. They passed several other men milling about, working with Tara, or engaging in some other activity. All of their faces plastered with benign, thoughtless smiles. It seemed too idyllic to be real, he was going to turn down any offers of kool-aid.

They made their way down to the meditation studio, stopping at the door to let out a few stragglers. Audrey greeted them as soon as they came in. She had changed into the exact same robes as everybody else, so his first day they had either put on a show for him, or he'd come on their equivalent of casual friday. The studio itself had been mostly cleared out aside from three yoga mats in close proximity, one facing the other two. Audrey sat down at the head, Janna sat down across from her and patted for Jack to sit down next to her.

"Have you ever meditated before, Jack?" Audrey asked with nauseating friendliness.

"Not really," Jack replied.

"Well, there's no wrong way to do it, so long as you achieve what you're trying to!" Audrey seemed to have a little trouble sitting with her legs folded in the way Janna had, so she sat in a sort of loose criss-cross. Her thighs were simply too pudgy to let her make the movements she was intended to.

"The lotus pose is preferrable, but not everyone can achieve it," Janna pointed to her legs to demonstrate. She had pulled her legs in to the point where her feet were tucked up on her thighs, near her hips. Just looking at it made Jack's legs hurt. He settled into a similar position to Audrey, not even bothering to try what Janna was doing.

"Alright Jack," Audrey closed her eyes, Janna followed suit and Jack closed his if only to avoid it being awkward. "Janna has a different way of doing this, a lot of people arrive at their own specific method, so just try all of them out until you find the one that works for you, kay?"

"Mmm-hmm," Jack wasn't sure how he was going to keep from falling asleep. Maybe that's why you were supposed to sit in an uncomfortable pose.

"I want you to picture a big maple tree, you know how those look? Where the leaves are shaped kinda like a star? Picture a big maple tree all covered in autumn leaves, all reds and browns and yellows almost like a pool of lava. Can you picture it?"

"Sure," Jack half-lied. He was finding he was having a hard time really making it stick in his mind. There was no telling when the last time was that he'd really tried to just fantasize something into a tangible image. Probably since he was a kid. As you got older, you didn't picture an apple, you thought of the taste, the smell, the texture. He could make the tree appear fuzzily for a few seconds, but he'd quickly get distracted either thinking about the specific leaves or something else.

"Now I want you to picture a strong wind coming along and taking a bunch of those leaves off of that tree, follow the leaves, not the tree." Audrey sighed. "Picture those leaves, red and brown and yellow, red and brown and yellow. Watch them move along in the air, making little swirls and zig-zags. Maybe they look like a flock of birds, maybe like a dragon."

He could hear Audrey leaning over - the wooden floor did the heavier woman no favors - and pressing some button or switch on a remote she had sitting on her mat. There was a deep, distant chime that sounded almost like it was supernatural, like it came less from a different room and more from a different dimension. It was discordant, ominous, it seemed to cut through the noise of his brain and strike him right between the ears more centrally than any other sound had ever hit. As it faded out, Jack had a full-body shiver that he couldn't suppress, then the low drone of soft rain filled the room. He could definitely feel himself relaxing, though that just made him more worried he was about to doze off.

"Jack," Audrey asked softly. "What shape is the wind?"

"Huh?" Jack grunted. "I guess whatever shape the leaves are taking."

"That makes sense, but it isn't right," Audrey chuckled very slightly.

"Wind is force, not form." Janna corrected. "If you push a rock and it moves, you are not shaped like a push. Wind is empty, it has no form."

"Okay?" Jack responded annoyedly.

"But emptiness is itself a form," Audrey followed-up almost like she was debating Janna.

"Yes, but form is itself an emptiness." Janna countered. "If the leaves form a dragon, they do so both by the space they occupy and the space they do not. Form is emptiness."

"But emptiness is also form," Audrey agreed.

Jack frowned, trying to get lost in the sound of the rain and trying to keep the image of the leaves in his mind. They kept breaking apart, spreading out, some dropping from the formation. The more he tried, the more he found he had to picture something holding them together to keep them that way. Some kind of string like a marionette show, or some lines of emphasis like a comic-book panel on which they could sway along and shift their shape. And the more he pictured it like that, the more it took him out of it. He was getting irritated, his legs stiffening up, his headache worsening. Finally, he could take it no longer and opened his eyes. Only to find both Janna and Audrey looking at him expectantly.

"You seem troubled," Janna sounded amused.

"I don't think I get it," Jack shrugged.

"That's okay-" Audrey started sweetly.

"You will have plenty of time to 'get it'." Janna cut her off.

She unfolded her legs and stood up without a problem, Audrey herself popped up far more spryly than Jack would have guessed. He could feel himself creaking and struggling to get up, and Janna had to give him a hand. Audrey bowed to him and Janna, pressing her fist into the palm of her hand and dipping her head below her shoulders without much motion of the hips or knees. Janna repeated the gesture back to her and Jack, then had Jack do it to both of them.

"One final thing, before we move on," Janna put her hand on Jack's shoulder. "We normally start and end each meditation with the recitation of our mantra."

"And we didn't start with it because?" Jack asked impatiently. He was starting to let off a cold sweat, he was feeling worse in almost every way.

"I have a personal superstition," Janna waved his concern off. "You're likely to get it wrong the first couple of times, ending poorly is fine, starting poorly is an ill omen."

"An ill omen for meditation?" Jack groaned.

Janna grabbed him by the shoulders and look him very intensely in the eye, then started to speak slowly, nodding to suggest he repeated after her.

"O ke ʻano he mea ʻole." She put so much force behind the K that it was like a blow, each O was a deep 'oo' like she was being awed.

Jack did his best to repeat it, but Janna's expression suggested he'd gotten it wrong.

"Mahalo no ka paʻani ʻana," She drew out the As until most of them became more of an 'uh' than an 'ah'. Most of the emphasis came from the spacing of the M and N sounds.

"What does it mean?" Jack asked.

"There is no meaning-" Audrey started.

"Similar to an Om, the power is in the saying, not in the meaning. It's a semiotic repetition, not a linguistic one. A sign, not a sentence." Janna patted him on the shoulder. "Hence why it's so important to get it right."

"Sure, whatever," Jack wanted out of the room. He wasn't sure anywhere else was going to make him feel better, but the artificial rain sound was almost... sharp. Like teeth.

Janna gestured to Audrey, who pressed another button on the remote and cut off the rain with another deep, clangorous ringing of that weird, cursed bell. That one genuinely made him feel like he was about to faint, but at the very least it was an invitation for both of them to leave. Jack lurched out of the little gymnasium ahead of Janna and bent forward, hands on his knees. The chilly air hit his face in a way that made it feel too small for his skull, but he felt like he was back on planet earth at least. Even if the ground was spinning under his feet, he was under the impression that there actually was ground. Standing on those creaking wood floors in the close humidity had made him feel like he was on a tightrope.

"Are you very sure you're okay?" Janna patted him gently on the back. "It isn't uncommon to vomit during withdrawal."

Jack didn't feel like he was going to vomit, more like the ground was going to come rushing up toward him. He swallowed with some effort and straightened up, he was still sweating, the cool air was doing nothing to lessen it. In fact, he felt a full-body, teeth-chattering shiver run through his body, even as he sweated.

"I'm fine-" He barely gasped out.

"I don't find that very convincing," Janna continued to rub between his shoulder blades.

"I said-" Jack caught himself, unable to force the words out. For a moment, he gagged on the air, his vision growing narrower, greener. The grass was coming up to meet him. He wondered, lucidly, if he was dying. Then he stopped thinking altogether.

***

It felt like he blinked. There was no space in time between closing his eyes and opening them, no fitful, erratic sleep. No dreams, no nightmares. One moment his vision was a green blur, the next he was only dragging them open again with great difficulty. Even when he managed to get them open, it took another couple seconds for them to focus, aided by a blink that threatened to send him right back to whatever timeless, dark place he had just been.

He was in Ohemaa's ward - something he'd rather specifically wanted to avoid. The light coming through the windows was still very bright. It was the strangest thing, his mind was sharp, almost too sharp compared to how dulled his body and his senses were. Like he was locked in. He could see Janna and Ohemaa in what looked like a heated exchange, but their words were too fast, too muddled. Though, the more he listened, the more he picked up.

"How many times have you done this?" Ohemaa sounded cruelly vindicated.

"I should have been more careful, but he got through his grooming fine." Janna, for the first time Jack had ever heard, was on the defensive. "Regardless, it's on me, it shouldn't have happened like this."

"No, it shouldn't have," Ohemaa let the venom slip out of her voice, though when she turned to face Jack, her face was still drawn in a taut, frustrated glare.

She sat down in a chair next to Jack's bed, leaning over slightly and pulling a pen light from her coat pocket. When she bent forward, opening his mouth and shining it inside, Jack grunted and squirmed. There was a shiny golden ring on her right hand decorated with a large gemstone, and a completely plain silver right on her left hand. As well, a chain necklace dangled from around her neck decorated with more rings, mostly simple brass bands. The inside of each was marked with a different set of initials; EF, AW, and AV were the only ones he could make out from where he was.

"The good news is that the worst danger is likely behind us," Ohemaa let Jack's mouth close. "Nothing was brought up by his gagging to clog his throat, he didn't swallow his tongue. You said he wasn't seizing or frothing, so most likely it was ataxia. Even still, an episode that far from my clinic could have been fatal."

"I should have erred on the side of caution and left him under your direct care for the first few days," Janna clasped her hands and bobbed her head. "But it's a special occasion, our special client-"

"I'm sure him hearing that fills him with warmth and happiness," Ohemaa said very pointedly with a soft gesture toward Jack. Perhaps Janna hadn't realized he was semi-lucid. "However, I am going to rectify your mistake and keep him in my care for the time being. Regardless of his importance."

"Of course," Janna frowned and pulled up another chair across his cot from Ohemaa.

Jack kept trying to wrap his lips around words, but mostly just drooled and ground his teeth. Janna took his hand and clasped it softly. Ohemaa flashed the pen light in his eyes - which hit like a knife.

"Oh, I'm sorry Jack." Janna stroked the back of the hand she was holding. "It really shouldn't have happened this way. Audrey thinks she's responsible and she's downright inconsolable."

Jack managed to croak out a syllable or two, but Ohemaa shot him a nasty glare and pushed one of the buttons on the side of his cot. It slid down until he was laying down more, suddenly he could feel his pulse thundering in his head.

"Do not try to speak, you had an episode of ataxia less than half an hour ago and collapsed on our lawn." Ohemaa lectured mercilessly as she took a few notes on her clipboard. "You are currently entering the first phase of serious withdrawal. We did not take your level of addiction seriously enough."

"I carried you as fast as I could-" Janna started.

"I am not going to sugarcoat this," Ohemaa ignored her. She leaned down and looked Jack in the eye. "The next few days are going to be the worst of your life, bar none. I have very little I can do to make them better, blink twice if you understand me."

Without anything else to do, really, Jack blinked twice.

"Never in my career have I lost a patient to withdrawal, and you will not be the first." Her dark lips pulled back in something like pride. Her brown eyes were intense with what bordered on passion. "I will do what I can - without opiates or other addictive anesthetics - to keep your pain as low as I can. It will suck. You have my assurance that it will suck. But you also have my assurance that you will live."

"Water." Jack finally managed to croak.

"I can't give you that," Ohemaa looked at him seemingly without pity. "You'd be unlikely to keep it down, but even if you did, several areas of your brain are currently swollen like a balloon. I can put you on an IV, but that's all I can offer. At least for now."

A moment later, Ohemaa pressed a needle into his skin. Jack registered the fact that he didn't feel any pain from the jab as a sort of dull concern. His throat remained dry and tight, but slowly, moving outward from the injection spot on his arm, Jack felt a sort of full-body relief. A steady fading of his thirst as an actual need, if not as a desire.

In its absence, he started to feel every single part of him individually and as if each new sensation was being discovered as the part reawakened. The first was a steady, throbbing headache that seemed to be coming from his skull more than his brain. It felt too small for what was inside of it, and too large for what was outside. His vision appeared to ripple and twitch with each thudding beat of what must have been his heart, which seemed to have moved between his eyes. There was a ringing in his ears, his tongue felt thick and swollen, one nostril was clogged and the other clear. He might have mistaken it for a bad flu if not for the horrible, full-body deadness of it. Instead of pain, true pain at least, it felt like there was a great dark pit of oil inside of his body. On the surface a small fire burned, pouring thick black fumes up and out through his limbs and into his head. Choking, paralyzing smog, the kind that killed birds as they flew over. The kind that came down as rain that washed dead fish ashore. And just below the fire on the surface, the rest of the oil bubbled, boiling and spitting like bacon fat. He was searing before he cooked, it burned before it choked. By the time any impulse made the way out from his caged brain down to his hands or feet, it was so delayed and deafened that it might has well have been dragged along behind a boat across an ocean.

But as the IV kept working, Jack felt his body relax. Not voluntarily, not in any kind of actually reassuring way. More the shutoff of engines that have been burning, the unplugging of frozen computers. Slowly, his distant faculties became even more distant, almost like they slowly faded. Reducing him to nothing but a throbbing, wrong-sized brain in a too-tight skull wrapped in not enough skin. He could feel a tear trickling down the side of his face, but he wasn't crying, not consciously. As he closed his eyes to blink it away, the world moved without him noticing. The light shifted, Janna was gone. Ohemaa was sitting at the foot of his bed, working her hands foamy white with some mixture she had in a bowl. The sheet was rolled off of his bare feet, which looked pale, shriveled and spotted like an old man's. As she brought her hands up and started massaging his feet, a strong smell rolled up toward his nose. The distinct smell of lime and a muddled, sharp mixture of pepper and menthol. It was so strong it made his eyes water, Jack blinked.

And when his eyes opened again the light had changed once more. The smell was gone. When he tried kicking his feet, they didn't stick to the sheets or seem any different. Shadowy figures danced at the edge of his vision, black cats, the shadows of stands and racks perfectly person-height. Had he dreamt? Was he dreaming still? Ohemaa worked quietly at her desk, head slowly twisting side to side like a housecat musing as it groomed. Her bark-colored lips pulled back in just enough of a smile to show the bright pink skin at the bottom of the top, the top of the bottom. After a moment, she glanced at him, seemed to see him staring, and smiled deeper. White teeth poking paler between pale pink.

He blinked again, a sort of sleep paralysis kept moving through him. A full-body shudder turned into a spasm, his body twitching and pulling at his sheets without him moving it. Jack's jaw was grinding, his teeth clenched tight. When his eyes came open again it was paired with a nose-only gasp. His lips seemed dried out completely. The bed under him was soaked with sweat.

Night had fallen, or at least most of the way. It was dim on the border of dark and the pooled shadows that had formed around the furniture had swollen to eat swathes of the room. Like a ganglion-ridden checkerboard. Ohemaa was walking up and down the way, seeming to clean and hum as she went. She had abandoned her lab coat, giving full exposure to the dark turtleneck and the loose skirt underneath. It was built of overlapping patterns as if it bloomed into flowers every few inches down toward the floor, sprouting wider and more extravagant as it flowed outward. The narrow top hugged wide, feminine hips. When she turned and started sweeping the other direction, he got a better look at just how much chest she was stuffing into her top as well. A lab coat really did her no justice. She was well-endowed as a fertility idol.

As if she could feel his eyes eating her up, Ohemaa froze. A second later, Jack realized why. He could hear footsteps approaching the ward. Urgent, but not fast. With a sort of arrhythmic missed beat. A one-two thump four.

The sliding door popped open with a desperate sound, a gray-robed staff member was helping along an identically-clothed man with her arm around his shoulder. He was pale-skinned as a ghost, dark-haired, not somebody Jack recognized. And he was favoring one ankle badly, the other was already visibly swollen where it peeked from under his beige pants. There were tears streaking from his eyes. Ohemaa rushed over and took his other arm, the two staff members helping him over to a cot and sitting him on the edge.

"He twisted the leg and fell on it badly trying to keep up with Tara," The staff member explained, not waiting for Ohemaa to ask. "Basketball, he said."

"That damn woman," Ohemaa didn't sound angry, despite her choice in words. "She is responsible for most of the people who come in here."

"It was my fault," The man gasped between tears. "Tara was just playing."

"Like a dog whose play involves teeth," Ohemaa countered him with far more annoyance than before. Then she turned to the aide who had brought him in and flashed a smile that seemed to scare her out of the room.

Jack blinked. He was out on the balcony of his mansion. His eyes were cast out over the water, or they had been, as soon as he really got his bearings he bent forward and was sick down into the water. An effuse that spilled out toward the placid, eternally peaceful shore. It was black as coffee hitting the crystal blue water, and it seemed to seep outward with the ripples. A surface of oil on a man-made lake. And from each of the other mansions on each of the other shores the same darkness crawled slowly toward the center of the water. He kicked a bottle down, a handful of wrappers, he giggled.

"Does this hurt?" Ohemaa asked. Jack managed to focus his eyes again. The injured rehabber was sitting on the bed and Ohemaa had pulled her chair up to put his foot in her lap. She felt briskly up his uninjured leg, then more slowly down his wounded one. His ankle had swollen up like a softball, and when she squeezed at the tapered top of the swelling, the man cried out.

Ohemaa's face became unreadable, locked in a sort of frozen, smiling professionalism. Her dark, intense eyes moved up from her hands to the face of the man, then she squeezed just as firmly as before, but closer to the heart of the swelling. The injured man gave less of a cry and more of a snuffling, sobbing whimper. Ohemaa shuddered, fidgeting in her seat. Her face seemed to warm up, she bent closer to the wound but kept her eyes pointed up.

"And here," She asked almost breathlessly, "How does this feel?"

He blinked again. It was still light out, though fading. The long shadows had pulled back like lips curled back to reveal fangs of pale cedar, knots and whorls that made it seem like the room was breathing, shifting. Ohemaa sat at her desk, humming and tapping her foot. Every time she finished a line of whatever she was writing she lifted and reset her hand, clacking the large gem on her ring against the desk with the steady monotony of a typewriter. The bed seemed to fall away under him, Jack was washed over with waves of the worst vertigo he'd felt in his life. Like he was a ship at sea. His face seemed to better fit his skull, but now his brain was even more constricted by the bone around it. No part of his body was the right size, the right shape.

There was a roiling, seething discomfort in his stomach that he realized was hunger, it just took the form of powerful, groaning nausea. He shifted very slightly in the bed, a sort of full-torso twitch that didn't reach the limbs but made his guts make a sound akin to a car failing to turn over. Sweat was plastering him to the sheets, he realized somebody had undressed him at some point.

Regardless of what Ohemaa had promised, he was certain he was dying.

He blinked again, the man was back on the table, Ohemaa had crossed the room and was rifling through one of the drawers of a cabinet. After a few long moments of the man's sniffling, she pulled out a small phial and a large needle. She strode back over toward the man on the cot. The look on her face was sadistic, there was no ambiguity about it.

"You'll want this, for the pain," She gave the phial a little shake.

The man nodded pathetically, Ohemaa broke the seal of the bottle with the needle and drew just a tiny bit out with the plunger before turning the needle up and pushing until the tiniest of drips came trailing down. Jack watched with a sense of out-of-body clarity. He could see the pores on her face, the low light gleam off the drop of liquid, the quivering, sweat-soaked intensity of the discomfort on the man's face. Ohemaa's grin widened.

"But this is contraband, young man," Ohemaa's voice was a breathy whisper. "Only for emergencies. You haven't broken anything, I don't think you're having an emergency."

"It hurts!" The man mewled, his voice surprisingly high and girly with pain.

"Of course it hurts, you twisted it very badly," Ohemaa kept standing over the man, his head about breast-height as he sat on the cot. She was already multiple heads taller than him when they were both standing, but like this she could really look down on him with the sort of animal cruelty she seemed to crave. "But scrapes and bruises aren't emergencies. I think you're just an addict making a fuss to get his fix."

"Please!" The young man fidgeted desperately. His ankle had swollen rather tremendously, it was the color of an autumn leaf. "I'll do anything!"

"Oho?" Ohemaa gently lifted the man's ankle toward her stomach. Even that slight movement made him suck in his breath and start tearing up. "You really, truly are a junkie."

"Fine, I'm a junkie!" The man grimaced and tried to hold perfectly still. "Whatever you want!"

"That's a rather damning promise, I only hope you don't get cold feet" Ohemaa leaned forward, clearly causing the man some discomfort. She planted a surprisingly tender kiss on his forehead, then slowly pushed the needle into his swollen ankle and injected it.

The man gave a sniffling, pathetic sound of relief. Ohemaa set the needle down on the table next to his cot and pocketed the phial, then leaned forward again and took his cheeks in her hands. She tilted his head up enough that when she brought her lips to him again, it was to wrap them around his. Between the difference in height and just how filled out her form was, she seemed to envelop him like a shroud. Lips not just covering but enclosing his, hands gripping his jaw like she was sucking the face off of his skull. But the man swooned all the same, his good leg fidgeted and his arms moved from the sheets of his cot to Ohemaa's sides. After a moment's embrace, he started seeking out her breasts, but she moved her hands from his face to grab his wrists.

"Those are bold hands," She whispered with a deep growl.

As the man started to whisper out an apology, Ohemaa released his wrists and straightened up, reaching her hands down to untie the knot on the side of her floral skirt. It came loose and fell around her ankles, revealing long, shapely dark legs with kneecaps and feet so utterly blueish-black that it was hard to tell where she began and the room's shadows ended. The lighter skin of her round ass bounced with her movements.

But between her legs... Jack saw it as if he was staring down the barrel of it himself. A pair of heavy-looking balls hung down just past her mid-thigh like dark yams, covered in little coiling pitch-black springs of hairs. Above them, her cock was already hardening, a single large vein running riverlike along the right-hand side. It was thick and long as a forearm, obsidian-black head peeking just slightly from the copper-brown skin which was pulling back slowly to reveal more of it. It felt like Jack and the man who was close enough to touch it gasped in unison. The only other dick Jack had seen than his own would have been in porn, and this one wouldn't have looked remotely out of place. As Ohemaa brushed her hand through the thick forest of hair extending out from it, up her stomach and down her thighs, she wrapped her hand around the base and gave it a little shake in front of the injured man's face. As if to reassure him what he was seeing was real. The mixed smell of coconuts and sweat seemed to come off it in such intense waves that they reached Jack across the room.

"Even a dirty little junkie has to keep his promises, right?" Ohemaa whispered greedily as she set one of the injured man's hands on her shaft. Jack swore he could feel the heat of it, the pulse of her heartbeat, himself.

He blinked again and the ward was gone. His body burned, his breaths only came slowly and with tremendous effort. When Jack realized his eyes were still closed, he tried to force them open. They opened slowly, he thought for a moment the wrong way, but he realized he was looking up through a long narrow slit reaching from his feet to his face. A squat, multicolored body was plopped on top of his chest and was bent down. It stuck a needle into whatever the soft material was on one side of the cocoon wrapping up around their mutual sides. As the skin flapped and pulled together, Jack could see scales on it like an alligator's. Then the stubby arm wove the needle out and back into the other side, pulling the two together with a long, shining silvery thread. As his tomb-mate worked, they snuffled and snorted like a dog. His whole body looked like one big, lumpy old bruise, each of his little fingers ended in a grubby nail narrowed to a vicious point.

Jack tried to squirm, to speak up or get out from under whatever it was on his chest. But the fat little thing kept merrily sewing them in. Finally, Jack managed to push his lips open and let out a choking, phlegmy cough. The thing on his chest froze and turned slowly toward him. Jack tried to scream when he saw its face. Pulled up in sharp cheeks and a drooping chin like a kabuki mask, beady little eyes wild like an animal's, black tongue poking from a mouth of yellowed teeth. But when he shouted, the noise came from the creature instead. It let out a sound like a gurgling screech, then clenched a grubby fist around the needle and plunged it down into Jack's eye.

Back on the cot in Ohemaa's ward. His body burned, his sheets were soaked and turning cold. He realized that his cracked lips were parted and letting out a volumeless cry. Ohemaa remained seated at her desk, chin in one hand, legs folded. The gemstone of her ring tapping like a metronome. The dull ache and non-feeling had turned into sharp pains. A splitting headache seemed to climb up through one pupil where he'd been stabbed. His arms and legs were tight and cramping like he'd been holding them tensed for hours. Perhaps he had. And perhaps it had only been a few minutes since Janna left. He had no way of knowing.