I lie belly down on my bedroom floor, my tired cheek resting in the woodchipper carpet. My nose curves into its years. I lie here for the soft negation in lying; I do not think or feel. All I have to do is breathe and lie. It is in this where the sublime something emerges. Many things rush back to me then, like sand screaming to the bottom of an overturned hourglass. Often they are amorphous things, what I see: shapes and shadows and lights and lines. But sometimes, on rare occasions like tonight, my lying transcends me.
Tonight I am turned into a baby. I don’t know if I am supposed to be me as a baby or if I am just the archetypal idea of a baby but I am a baby. In my new skin I feel so infinitely small. I wonder where I am. I look down at the red carpet. I brush my fingers through it and feel its softness. I look ahead and find myself in this interminable hall. I look up, squinting, at the bright lights overhead. I decide to crawl down the hall. I crawl and crawl and crawl and crawl until I realize I will never get to the end. My little heart beats like hummingbird wings. I am alone and I am crawling to nothing, I realize. My baby brain cannot handle it. I stop to cry. They are whimpers at first, like all cries. Then it evolves to ugly snot snobs and heaving thunderstorms. Then to body writhing and sucking air. Then to disgusting drowning gurgles. Then to ugly animal shrieks. And then I am laughing. I am laughing and crying and screaming and shrieking and clawing and scratching at the carpet thinking I could tunnel out of here but…
My head slams against the carpet. I feel its roughness with my tired cheek. I reach out with my now much larger hand to verify. It, too, feels the scraggly wires of my real carpet. I am safe, I tell myself, and I start to breathe. I sit up against the wall and stare up at the ceiling light, squinting.
— Connor Davis is a college student. He writes short stories and becomes distraught when they don’t read like Hubert Selby. He has a Twitter account.