In Which I Rationalize Like A Madman

I sat down on my bed, breathing too hard. Between the impossible experience of the previous moments and the lingering effects of smoking some seriously potent pot, I was starting to freak out and I knew it. My heart was pounding painfully. I couldn't make sense of what had just happened.

"Calm down, Tyler," I said to myself, out loud. "Calm down. I am not having a heart attack. I am perfectly fine. I am feeling panic as a side effect of the weed, and I am well aware that panic is a common and harmless side effect." I settled into the familiar cadence, trying to give myself the same litany of stoner reassurances I'd gotten so used to giving my friends over the years. I'd always been annoyed that I couldn't get through to people.

And now I couldn't get through to myself. 

Well, of course not! This wasn't about being high, and I knew it. I was just trying to ignore what had happened. I was trying to fight down familiar symptoms to deal with a really goddamn unfamiliar problem. The experience itself had been... jarring, but I'd had some odd feelings before. What bothered me was that I was in my own stupid apartment, when a minute before I'd been at work, reading gibberish out of that weird little-

-wait.

The whisper drifted through my mind again. Yayin. Yayin Aayatana. Meaning danced, just out of reach.

Impossible.

Everyone always says that, have you ever noticed? Every comic book hero, every unsuspecting alien abductee, every kid in King Arthur's Court, they always do that. They finally stumble across what's happening to them and inevitably they mutter, stubbornly, "Impossible!"

We're always watching or reading and we roll our eyes. It's right there in front of you, dipshit! It's clearly not impossible! But it's true, the first thing I thought when I finally put one and one together was, "Impossible!". Boy, did I feel stupid when I realized it. 

I took several deep breaths. "Impossible," I muttered aloud, (again!) shaking my head. "Because that sort of thing doesn't really happen in real life. Clearly I'd just freaked at the store and wandered home, and forgotten. And as for the time difference, or lack thereof... I must have set my clock wrong. Sometimes I unplug things, and it hardly matters if I'm late for work, I always write myself in for the right time anyway. See how good I was at rationalizing?

I stood up, feeling better. "Relax, Trick. Just go back to work." I figured Buck wouldn't have just let me wander out of the shop in such horrible condition, but he'd had some of the same stuff. For all I knew, he'd fallen into a similar fugue and wound up in his own apartment. Or a dumpster, or something. 

I gave myself one last relaxing breath and walked to my door. "S.S.D.D."

Right.

* * *

I felt better and better with each step, all the way to The B Word. It was getting dark, and that autumn chill added a bit of a bite to the air. (I'd left my coat at the shop when I wandered out.) This being Connecticut, the pleasant smell of dried cornstalks and other bizarre things that Connecticut people tie to their porches lent a seasonal aura to the evening. Yes, the walk back to work was quite pleasant and relaxing.

And Buck fucked up everything. 

Sometimes I wonder how different my life could have been if Buck had been sleeping, or in the bathroom, or just really, really stoned when I found that stupid book and stupid yaya mamasan or whatever the hell it was. I still can't remember unless I'm looking right at it. Maybe I could have just gone back to work and been okay with being confused. It wouldn't be the first time.

But nope. Not in this life. S.S.D.D. reared its ugly head and Buck came howling out of the store the second I came around the corner, eyes red and teary, running towards me and sweeping me up into a pungent bear hug. 

"Oof!"

"I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE ALL RIGHT-"

"Put me down! What's the matter with you?"

Buck immediately released me, but stayed close. "Sorry, man. Dude... are you okay? How are you okay?"

I sighed. So something had happened. "What did I do?"

He looked at me, the most earnest expression of relief on his face, and then he ruined my life. "You said some weird stuff that you read in that book, and your voice sounded all weird and echoing... and you blew up, dude."

I think my heart stopped beating. "What are you talking about?"

"You f*****g exploded, dude! Like, bam! It was all misty and crackly and you were just... gone!"

Okay, I thought, that seems to be pretty close to what I'd gone through. So now what? Do we go back to work? Everything was fine. I was safe and whole and back where I belonged. I was kind of hungry. Maybe I could just move on.

But then Beck's face slammed into my mind, with that disdainful scowl I'd seen twisting her beautiful looks, the last time I'd seen her. Shaking her head at the stagnation and day-to-day mediocrity in which I'd reveled. She wouldn't just ignore something so unusual, she'd pounce on it, she'd never sleep until she understood it from every angle. I used to avoid using big words around her, on the off chance that she wouldn't know what I meant. She'd fidget and get irritable until she could get her hands on a dictionary or a search engine, absorb the definition, a sample sentence, the etymology, and correct pronunciation, and then she'd be just fine again. Not understanding something was a state of being she just couldn't abide.

And as annoying as that behavior could be, I loved it. I loved everything about her. I wanted her back, and I wasn't going to make that happen by sticking to my comfort zone of "f**k it".

"Is the book still here?" I asked Buck, who went pale.

"You're not gonna try to do that again, are you?"

"I'm completely fine. Look, I just want to see if it'll work." I took a deep breath and lied through my teeth. "It was actually pretty cool. Trippy, right?"

"I guess."

"It probably won't even happen again. That was probably, like, some insane cosmic coincidence with space rays and parallel dimensions and all that s**t we don't understand." I'm not sure who I was trying to convince.

"You think?" The look of doubt and concern on his face made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

"Yeah, sure. Like you know how they say a book could just fall through a table, if the electrons all lined up just right or something, and it's just really, really unlikely? This was like that. I just got bounced by the Universe. It's weird and we'll never convince anyone, right? So let's just say 'f**k it' and try it again. Can't hurt." 
I sounded like a moron, didn't I? Well, between the lingering haze of a mood-altering chemical, the lingering adrenaline of a mind-breaking surprise, and the lingering misery of a well-deserved breakup, I'd reached the profoundly foolish conclusion that I could earn Beck's approval by investigating this clearly unsafe phenomenon. You'd have done the same thing.

Well.

Maybe you would. 

And if you're that kind of person, who'd look at this bizarre situation and immediately decide you could use it to get your girl back... well, if you ever see a slim leather book with silvery symbology on the cover, turn immediately around and run as fast as you can in the other direction.

It wasn't put there for you.