Lab C: Chapter 2 - A Day on the Outside

Earlier that same day, our dude John lies in a comfortable bed, in a 2 bed room apartment. His alarm goes off at 5am, and he does yoga. He meditates. He eats blue berries, yogurt, and espresso granola while stretching as he reads a leather bound grimoire filled with sharp, other worldly text and energetic diagrams of reality.

On his book shelf are some other extremely esoteric texts, and then some lesser esoteric texts like some Terrance Mckenna, Robert Monroe, Samuel Liddell. There’s also movie coffee table books about Miyazaki, Kubrick and Kurosawa. His collection of comics is healthy and well spread. A few romance novels like “The Hating Game” are spread out in there. His collection is as eclectic as it is esoteric.

The other bedroom is his work library. There’s incense, occult paraphernalia, a comfy meditation pillow on a mandala in the center of a complex, 8 pointed star in a 20 sided shape on the floor. The walls are all book shelves with scrolls, scrawls, and some kind of horror movie hauls.

The large sized, yet skinny, white fluffy dog wakes up with him, and immediately finds a spot to lay down and watch him run his morning. He stops intermittently to pet her , and she is for it, but like a cat, is not desperate for the attention. She pushes him away when she’s had enough, and he loves that she can set boundaries.

He dons a loose button up, and slacks, then smiles at the dog. “I’ll be back soon Lily, watch the door.” Lily sighs to the affirmative. She knows her duty. John closes the door, and a few seconds later he pops back and blows her a kiss. She doesn’t react. He smiles again, “You’re a good dog, Lily.” Then leaves.

Walking down a main street, he smiles at everyone and makes casual eye contact with everyone willing. He gets a few quick smiles back, and doesn’t even note the ones who ignore him. At a coffee shop, everyone knows him by name and are excited to tell him about stuff. He smiles and knows what they’re talking about, and asks questions.

He arrives at a large hospital and switches into scrubs. His badge reads, “Volunteer Non-orthodox Chaplain”. All day he goes from room to room and sits and talks with people in crisis. Primarily he listens, except when he shares details about himself that comfort the people enough to let them express more deeply what they are struggling with.

“It’s my fault you know,” a woman who takes care of herself, with long well-brushed hair, in her 40s says, “I brought this on myself.” She’s hooked up to far too many machines to be considered “okay”. Though, in the midday sun light, there’s a glow to her that’s hard to look away from.

John smiles with a furrowed brow, tilts his head.

“It’s… no, it’s silly.” She looks out the window. “At the end of my rope and I’m just looking for something blame for bad luck.”

John lets it hang in the air for a moment, “You know,” he says, giving her time to look back to him, “sometimes, I let tarot cards decide what I’m going to wear.”

She cracks a smile, “What?”

“Tower? Gotta go blacks and greys, ward against on coming worries. Lovers? Red, obviously.”

“And…” she thinks to what she can remember about tarot, “what about the fool?”

He smirks, and motions to his scrubs and winks. “What ever this is.”

She giggles, then looks down into her lap. Her face drops and she thinks. He gives her the space and waits patiently, looking out the window to orange leaves on an oak tree blowing in the wind.

“I, uhm…” She starts. “I did something dumb.”

“What did you do?”

She sighs, and looks to him, “When I was about to turn thirty, I wasn’t happy and really lost. I wanted a new life, wanted prosperity. Money.” She says with a childish smile, “I ended up finding this… thing online. A ritual to a…uh…” she’s already admitted more than she ever had before, “guy. Someone was holding me back but I couldn’t let them go. I got his help.”

“And you had to sacrifice something to make it happen?”

She looks to him surprised, “Yeah, how’d you…” then looks at her hands as she picks at her cuticles, “It doesn’t matter now. I did it. Burned something. Swore I would do something in exchange for a better life, but I couldn’t keep it up. I couldn’t do what I said I would. And now I’m here. If I had just kept it up, maybe…”

“That sounds like a tumultuous time.” He says with seriousness and consideration. “I read a lot of weird books so this will be pretty up front to ask,” she looks at him worried, “but was it like, a physical guy? Or like, a “vibes you could feel” guy?”

She smirks, “Vibes.”

John shrugs, “Unless he actually showed up and told you, and warned you that you weren’t upholding your end of the deal, then that’s just not how vibes guys work. At least, not in any of the spooky old leather bound books I’ve read.”

“So you’re saying it was all fake?”

John sits back and looks up at the ceiling, he ponders it, “Sometimes, we hold onto things so long we think they’ve grown into us, like they’re a part of us, whether its a relationship that used to define us, or a chair we’ve had since college or whatever. If you just let that stuff go without an intentional moment, a decision, marked by…” he hunts for it then shakes his head and lets go of the need to be specific, “something memorable, then the ambiguity of where we’re at will just keep sucking energy off us from the threads we allow to hold root.” He looks to her, “It sounds like you knew this relationship was holding you back from something you wanted but it held enough weight that you need something concrete to let it go.”

“Following a stupid ritual alone in a room isn’t concrete.”

“Yet here you are over a decade later and I bet you could tell me what was on the walls of the room you did it in. Sounds like it worked too, didn’t it?”

She takes that in, then nods.

“Some things were gonna happen no matter what. Some things you had to make happen. Some times, those are the same thing. If you weren’t here, facing death, would you regret it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I hate to tell you but every time you walked out your front door you were facing death, and you didn’t regret it then. Now you’re just a lot more sure of the odds.” He puts his hands on her. “But they’re still odds, and you’ve got time. You’ve got right now, you can decide how to feel about it. Maybe if you figure out exactly what you’re thinking about,” he reaches down and produces a journal and a pen, he presents it to her. “Then you can figure out what threads you want to hold onto. And which to let go.”

He waves it at her.

“I’ve done my share of candles and chanting at 3am to speak with things that we have to give names. I find this more consistent.”

She rolls her eyes and takes it. “Thanks John.”

“No worries.” He stands up and starts to walk out, “By the way, you remember what the vibes guy’s name was?”

“Oh, uh, Shavey or something. It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah it was. Be well friend. I’ll see you later, I promise.”

She smiles and he leaves. Outside the door, he pulls out his own pocket journal, whispers to himself, “Shavey, that’s a new one.”

The journal is packed with jots of various gods, religions, stories “no one would ever believe.” He closes it up, and moves onto the next person who just wants to tell him about how they much they wish they could see Rome one more time. He is just as engaged in that conversation as well.

After work he walks around a park for a while, smiling at every single person he passes and saying “hello”. A few strangers strike up a conversation, and some how he learns about the worst and best parts of their day. He asks a stranger for advice on something he could have googled, and the stranger is excited to share their nerdom. He asks another stranger for advice, and they tell him to google it.

As he opens the door to his place, Lily is already up and giving a big stretch. He gets on the floor to pet her and she loves it, until she’s had enough and moves back to her pillow.

John cooks a complex meal in which he uses too much anchovy. He notes it out loud, “Well god damn it, this has too much anchovy.”

He thinks about how, to most people, any amount of anchovy is too much anchovy. He accepts that this is what he has made himself, and though he wishes he could eat something else, he sets the bowl down to grab a beverage. He turns weird, and hits a bowl that he forgot was there. It crashes to the floor.

He takes a deep breath in his nose, and lets it out his mouth.

“I am going to put on something comfortable, god damn it.” He leaves and returns in a comfy, fuzzy, red robe. “Alright! Let’s! Sleep! In! The bed we made!”

Lily is there sniffing at the disaster. He scratches her head as she investigates. When he crouches down to clean, she turns to him and gives him a lick. He smiles at her, “Too much anchovy for you too huh?” As if answering him, she pulls away and hops on the couch this time, ready to watch TV with him whenever he gets his act together.

As he sweeps up mess with a dust pan, the chain lock on his front door slides open of its own accord. Then the deadbolt turns itself. The door opens up, and a large, conspicuous man in a nice suit looms in the doorway.

John clocks this, but wants to finish cleaning first.

“Hey John, we’ve got a thing for ya.”

John nods, “Let me get this.” The conspicuous man nods, and admires the book shelf.

John dumps the stuff, goes to his occult room and grabs a large back pack. He’s about to walk out, then does a 180 and grabs a large scroll and stuffs it in the top so that its’ still sticking out.

“Felt right.”

“I’m sure John. Ready?”

John nods, then pats his leg and Lily follows. The conspicuous man raises an eyebrow, “Thought you got better John”

John smirks back, “Force of habit, I’m better than ever.” as he walks out.

The conspicuous man locks up John’s door and looks over to see John walking away all by his lonesome.