The Basement was indifferent. Nothing there wanted anything from me.

I didn’t remember the stairs. One moment, I was just somewhere else, and then I was on all fours. The cement already under my hands, as if gravity had lost patience and set me down where I belonged. The floor was cold, damp, and faintly alive in a way floors shouldn’t be.

The furnace inhaled.  Everything moved, clicked, or hummed on a system that would have run the same whether I was there or not.

But suddenly, when the furnace exhaled, the room shifted. Not dramatically or violently, just enough. The lightbulb flickered and broke the air into narrow strips of brightness that slid across the walls like panes of glass falling to the side. A pressure built, thin and rising. It was as if the room were stretching past where it had been.

The sound was more like a tension. Something climbed through my chest, pulling tight, unfamiliar but exact. Not pain or fear. Just the body deciding, without consulting me, that it had reached its familiar threshold and was crossing into an unknown.

The floor began to vibrate at a level just below the threshold of hearing. A tremor. A warning. A pulse running through the cement. The oil stains on the workbench legs seemed to lift slightly, tugged upward by the pressure, almost forming shapes before the light stuttered again.

Then the tension dropped all at once.

The release emptied the room the way lungs empty when they’ve been holding air too long. I felt it in my stomach. It wasn’t the punch that had landed there minutes before, though it seemed like days ago now. This was different. It was the echo of a blow that never quite landed. The body’s emergency brake slamming down and refusing to lift.

The basement returned to being a basement.
The workbench was just wood.
The concrete stopped shifting.
The light steadied.

But something stayed.
Somewhere behind the sternum.
A quiet, electrical residue.
A scar without a story.

Another cut.
Another small boy standing up again in a world that didn’t bother to explain itself.

II Mr. George

They pull me from class the same way they always do. Mid-lesson. Mid-page. Continuity didn’t matter now, but I would miss something that would matter later.  

Mr. George appears in the doorway without knocking. He smiles at the teacher, nods once, and waits. He doesn’t need to say my name. I’m already standing. A few kids look up. A few don’t. This isn’t new.

I follow him down the hallway. The fluorescent lights hum with that same low, nauseous tone.  

His office is already staged when we walk in.

He immediately turns on a tape deck on the desk, which plays a song too cheerful to trust:

It’s all about knowing and showing,
Caring and sharing,
Living and giving,
That’s where it’s at,
That’s what it’s all about…

He gives that half-smile, not unkind, just certain. I sit in the chair opposite him. The song keeps going. I don’t look at him. I don’t look at anything. I’m waiting for the part where he explains why I’m here.

Then I spot them.

Duso the dolphin and Koho the walrus, propped on his desk like witnesses who’ve already been sworn in. Felt mouths parted. Eyes wide. Stitched expressions of permanent concern.

Of course. These fucking puppets again. 

The song fades, but the syrup of it hangs in the room like the aftertaste of penicillin.

Mr. George clears his throat. He doesn’t speak, not as himself, anyway. His hand disappears behind Duso and lifts the dolphin into the air. The puppet tips toward me, mouth opening in a perfect O.

DUSO (bright falsetto): Oooh dear, Koho… Jamie looks a little sad today.

He turns his body so Koho can rise beside him, heavy and solemn.

KOHO (deep cartoon baritone): Maaaybe he needs to talk about his feeeeelings, Duso…”

They look at each other. Their heads wobble.

I breathe out slowly.
“Can you… Just talk to me. Not the puppets?”

Mr. George doesn’t answer. Duso does, however.
“Oh, Koho, Jamie doesn’t want to share with us… boo-hoo…”

KOHO: That hurts my feelings, Duso. Caring and sharing is how we grow…”

 I can feel the words stacking behind my forehead.

The room tilts,  not like the basement, not that darkness, not that falling. It was an echo of it all, like being pulled into someone else’s dream against your will.

I straighten in my chair.
“I asked you to talk to me. Not the puppets.”

Mr. George doubles down. I could see the decision happen. He believed the resistance meant the puppets were working as if Duso and Koho had achieved a breakthrough.

KOHO: Jamie… it sounds like you’re having trouble expressing yourself. 

The air goes thin, and something very calm, very simple settles in.

I sit up and look them both in their blank, felted faces.                                                                      “Fuck you, Duso.”

Everything stops. Even the hum of the lights seems to catch its breath.

I gesture toward the walrus, polite as a lawyer addressing the next defendant.
“And eat shit, you fat fucking Walrus.

Mr. George blinks.
Once.
Slowly.

I lean back, cross my arms, and stare at the wall, the expressionless, resolute stare of someone invoking their right to remain silent.

I don’t say another word.

And no one in that room. Not the man, the dolphin, or the walrus knows what to do with me.

III The Berry Bush

The bus doors fold open, and the game starts before my feet hit the ground. It’s not a game so much as an order. 

Someone body-checks me from the side. It wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t playful either. Just enough to register. Laughter follows, already moving.

“Smear the queer.” That’s what we called it in the eighties. No pause to examine the words. It was just physics: bodies accelerating toward the smallest one.

I take one step toward them, but the math turns against me.

So I run down the road, past the mailbox, and the basketball hoop. Sneakers slap pavement, then gravel, then dirt. I hear them for a second, voices, momentum. But the chase dissolves quickly. It always does. The point isn’t to catch. It’s to remind. 

I cut off the road and dive into the brush at the end of the dead end, pushing through thorns and leaves until the world seals shut behind me.

The bush takes me in.

It’s a wild berry bush. Thick, tangled, older than it looks. Branches hook my clothes and skin, testing me, then letting go. I crouch, then fold lower, knees to chest, until my body fits the shape it’s being offered.

Inside, the air is cooler. Damp. Green. Berries press against my arms and neck, round and firm and unfamiliar. I’ve always believed bears eat from bushes like this. I don’t know where I learned that. There are no bears here.

I am still.

At first, I’m listening for them, the footsteps, laughter, or my name, but nothing comes. The road beyond the leaves goes quiet. Time loosens.

My breathing slows, and thoughts stop trying to finish themselves.

The bush doesn’t react to me. It doesn’t watch. It doesn’t wait.

I close my eyes.

I wake with my cheek pressed to the dirt, and for a moment I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed. Everything is the same color. A deep, throbbing red that pulses like a heartbeat. The air tastes metallic, and the whole bush is breathing around me.

The branches swell and collapse in slow motion, as if the entire plant is one lung trying to remember how to work. Each berry glows from within, tiny red suns flickering behind thin skins. Light leaks through the leaves in veins, as if the world has briefly revealed its wiring.

I try to sit up, and the sky tilts to the side as if the angle of reality is adjusting.

The sun is enormous now, low enough to touch, a swollen orange orb sinking into itself. Each blink knocks it lower, stuttering through its descent.

The hum returns, not from lights, not from wires, but from inside the bones. It’s low and warm, the frequency of something vast.

When I open my mouth, the air tastes like dust.

Something shifts beside me, a shadow, or maybe my own outline, becoming weary of staying attached. It stretches away, then slides back when I breathe, as if it wants my consent to exist.

The berries above me change color, from red to orange to a liquid gold that feels almost earned. One pulse in time with the hum. Another warps slightly, like heat bending it without heat.

I reach for one, and the branch moves away, not afraid but like it had a different intent.

The air ripples. Sound bends.

For one suspended second, I think I’ve woken inside a memory I’m not old enough to have, a place before beings,  before time was nailed down—a place where nothing needs explanation.

I blink.

Clouds streak too fast now, smeared across the sky like someone trying to erase them. Light breaks into bands. Pink, violet, and electric blue slide over one another like oil on water.

Gravity hesitates.

My body lags a fraction of a second behind intention, like the world is buffering. A breeze moves through the bush, but instead of sound it makes shapes, visible ripples that fold space the way a photograph bends when you press it too hard.

I don’t recognize the road beyond the leaves. It looks longer and a little slanted. Empty in a way I’ve never seen.

The part of the world that people have arranged has paused. The part that remained untouched is having a turn.

My heart slows from absorption. 

A berry drops beside me. Not falling, descending. It lands without sound.

I realize I’m not scared.

Time loses interest in me.

When I finally crawl out, the colors snap back into their usual places. The sky at dusk settles into slate. The road becomes a road again. The hum releases me gently.

I stand there scratched and dirty. 

The world feels smaller again.

I still can’t explain it. 

Something stayed in the berry bush, and something came out with me.