If You’re Playing Me, Quit

My toilet is gone. Not broken. Not clogged. Gone. The hole isn’t even there. Just a clean, square void where it used to be. The toilet. And the hole. There’s not even a pipe or the evidence of pipes, and, though I’m not a plumber, I know pipes are involved. I’m pretty sure pipes are involved. This wouldn’t be a problem, except I really have to pee, and the only other options in my apartment—my usually spotless, millennial grey-and-green, catalog-perfect, everything-in-its-place apartment—are the sinks and my fiddle-leaf fig tree. I don’t make a habit of peeing where I cook. But if I even look at the fig wrong, it’ll keel over right then and there. I stand over the blank space where my toilet once was, blinking at its absence, like it might reappear if I squint hard enough. I do. It doesn’t. Maybe this is a dream. It does feel off. It could be a dream. This is certainly dream-like. But the longer I hold my pee, the more it becomes nightmare-esque.

I clean the sink like it’s a ritual. Like maybe if I scrub hard enough, the universe will put things back where they belong. Toilet returns. Balance restored. Somewhere between the seventeenth spritz of vinegar spray and the twelfth paper towel, I catch my reflection in the microwave door. I look… normal. Not as happy as the little smiley face on the microwave screen, but who can be? Sure, I’ll admit something in my eyes is not exactly happy, but that’s beside the point, I lie. In that instant, there’s a twitch, a flicker. A kind of distant shimmer, like a heat mirage or bad compression. And then the lights dim. Not all the way, just a pulse. A flicker. But a different flicker. Like someone tabbed out. And that’s when I realize the background music has stopped. Which is when I realize that there’d been background music playing all along. I just hadn’t noticed there was background music until it wasn’t there. Which it now isn’t. Now it’s just me and a silence like I’ve never known. The reflection in the microwave suddenly changes, like real-time edits to a show already in progress. The cabinets around me, the window behind me, the appliances and tile all shift and switch and change. But I keep cleaning. The sink stays the same.

And then the floor disappears.

Not all of it. Just the tile under my left foot, which drops out from under me like a trapdoor gag. My foot plunges into nothing—not darkness, not space, not really, not even air, but literal nothingness, like a missing texture, like nothing had ever been there or would ever be there again. And with it, my leg vanishes up to the knee. Before the world (I guess?) hiccups and re-forms, making itself whole again. I’m back in the kitchen. Both feet on solid ground. Sink absolutely gleaming, by the way. Solid ground that I now know is anything but, by the way… 

Everything is exactly where it was. Nope. Almost everything. My left shoe is gone. And my foot is wet. Not pee-wet. (Though I wouldn’t have judged. All things considered. And, when it comes to me, I’m usually ruthless.) Rain-wet. I look down. There’s a leaf stuck to my sock. Not a fiddle-leaf fig leaf. An oak leaf. Brown. Veined. Crisp with early rot. I haven’t been outside in three days. Now that I’m hearing that out loud, I admit it doesn’t sound great. But I haven’t seen an oak tree in… I don’t know. I can’t remember. I mean, I’ve read about oak trees, seen them in pictures, but I’ve never seen one in real life. And now that I’m hearing that out loud, that also doesn’t sound quite, uh, normal. My stomach lurches like I missed a stair that wasn’t there, and the silence gets louder, denser, like it’s pressurizing. Like the composition of the air is changing.

I look for a door, but there are none.

I am suddenly, completely sure that I am not alone. That feeling you get when someone’s staring at you from behind. That prickling heat on your neck, the tightening at the base of your spine. Like your body knows before your brain does or something even deeper knows before your body. This is worse. Sharper. Universal. Omnipresent. I can’t tell where behind is. The corners of the room feel warped. The air has that charged, electric hush, like a stage before the curtain rises. Except I don’t know if I’m the actor or the audience. Or the punchline. Or getting punched. Every molecule of me is being perceived. Like I’m not being watched, I’m being monitored.

I walk from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room. The carpet feels good. I squeeze it with my toes. 

I walk to the window. Not fast. Not slow. I walk like I’m trying not to spook a bear I can’t see. The curtains are closed. My hand reaches for them like it already knows what’s waiting outside. I pause. Breathe. The leaf crinkles under my heel. I fling the curtains open.

Outside, there’s no city. No street. No sky. Just an endless, blinding-white expanse. Flat, depthless, all-encompassing, impossibly still. Like someone forgot to finish painting the world. There’s no weather, no wind, no birds, no sun. Just light from nowhere that shines everywhere. The music is gone, still. I miss the music most, I think. And far off in the distance or maybe right in front of me, it’s hard to tell… there’s a shape. A faint silhouette. Tall. Thin. Watching. 

I blink. 

It doesn’t. 

My breath catches in my throat and holds there, suspended. Not from fear exactly. From recognition. Some buried instinct stirs, ancient and certain. I know that shape. I’ve never seen it before. But I know it. I’ve always known it.

It knows me, too.

I step back. The curtain doesn’t move because the curtains are gone. Maybe they never were there at all. The edges of my apartment begin to blur like they’re unsure of themselves. Like they’ve given up. The walls buckle softly inward, breathing like a sleeping animal. Or a dying one. My bookshelf flickers. The titles on the spines reshuffle. My microwave briefly turns into a blender, then back again into a convection oven, as it always had been. Its smiley face is gone. I think about screaming, but the silence has weight now. The only weight that keeps me on the ground. Though I know that it would flatten the sound before it left my mouth, too, just the same.

I suddenly feel something shifting inside me. Not panic, not pain, but a kind of opening. A yawning. An absence growing. Like a space in my chest being cut into shape. 

Something cold looks through it from the other side.

All of a sudden, I’m not sure I’ve ever made a decision in my life. I step back from the window. My heel catches on the rug, but I don’t fall. The room adjusts for me. I feel queasy. 

I don’t remember having a rug. A long runner. Forest green, of course. My toes search for carpet to squeeze. My toenails rake hardwood. In the span of time it takes me to look down at the wood floor and back to the rug, suddenly, I do remember having a rug. That rug. My rug. I’ve stepped over it a thousand times, vacuumed it weekly, cursed it twice for curling at the corners.

I walk back to the kitchen. I need a drink. I’m suddenly thirstier than I’ve ever been before. 

My footsteps don’t echo. Maybe this is what it’s always sounded like? 

I open the fridge. There are three apples. Two are red. One is shiny. One is bruised. The third is… pixelated. Then it turns shiny and green. I close the fridge.

My fiddle-leaf fig tree is gone.

There’s a void where it stood, the exact dimensions of the planter, but nothing inside. No dirt. No dust. Just absence. Never-ness. The shape and feeling of neglect. The kind of gap you only notice when you try to love something, then forget to. I move my hand toward the space. Stop. The hairs on my arm lift like I’ve crossed into something I wasn’t meant to touch. It’s not cold. It’s not anything. It’s unrendered. I don’t know what that means, but I know it’s true. My brain tells my body to take a step back. My body waits for permission. That’s when it hits me. That something deeper. Not fear. Not shock. It’s doubt. A deep, settling doubt in my bones. Like I’ve never actually chosen anything. Like I’ve never known anything. Like I never was and never will be. Like I’ve been nudged along. Lead, pushed, coaxed, curated. Given some illusion of input, like a marionette told to improvise. Hoping I’m doing enough to stay interesting, to keep going.

I reach forward.

My hand disappears into the absence.

Not vanishes, not exactly. It slips, it’s caught. Like my skin remembers how to pass through somewhere it’s never been. (An oddly familiar unfamiliar feeling, now.) It doesn’t hurt. It’s not cold. It’s not warm, either. It’s right. Like the feeling of the right word finally surfacing after hours on the tip of your tongue. The surface of the absence ripples like nothing I’ve never seen before. A shimmer that shouldn’t exist, bending softly around my wrist like a gentle current.

I take a breath and pull myself forward.

First the arm, then the shoulder, then my head. The world behind me hums, pixelates, holds its breath, too. My torso slips through the way a thought leaves your mind. Sudden, irreversible. 

The light changes. It’s not brighter, nor is it dimmer, but it’s different. Heavier. Curious. Like color was a lie the whole time and now I finally know the truth. A new gravity takes hold. Maybe not even gravity. Maybe something new, something more. I feel it in my teeth. In my soul. (!)

It pulls me through gently. With certainty.

Just before my heel leaves the floor, I glance back.

The oak tree leaf falls and floats, frozen, perfect. My apartment is folding in on itself. Not violently. Not like destruction or implosion. Like a tent being packed up after a long stay. Like a map being refolded perfectly, every crease finding its place. Like the simulation has no one left to simulate. The convection oven-that-was-my-microwave blinks once. Not the time or an error code, but with its little smiley face that means done. Something closer to goodbye. With a wink. 

The bookshelf exhales. The sink gleams, still.

And then it’s gone. 

And then I’m gone, too.