The worst part of living alone is that every day without buying and installing a bidet is a psychological struggle. You go through your day, fly across the supermarket alleys, and you wonder: do I have enough toilet paper to keep my tushy all coruscant and (free of) shit? And then you carry your plastic basket and grab several rolls, because you know. You know past you is an asshole. You know past-you hates present-you. That he spends it all and then forgets to note it down somewhere. So you buy an excess, and add it to the little family of forgotten rolls you have living in the bathroom closet. They are this close from discovering reproduction, I swear.

  And then there’s those instances where you buy cheap toilet paper and it installs ransomware in your liver. It can happen if you are attacked by an illusionist. It happened to Saon Ladius in an occasion where he got unwillingly attacked by Saon Ladius.

  Now, there’s something to be said about having vital organs seemingly locked out of function while a giraffe holds you at catpoint and demands crypto for her and her pulpous partner in crime: it’s a never-in-a-lifetime experience most of the time and you wish it stayed like that. And that’s not the worse, the worse is that, even if you are not seeing it, you know that the one speaking to the giraffe through her pink in-ear monitor is a raccoon that lost a hand and got a cactus as a prosthesis. Now, was the hand he lost his in the first place? Who knows. Not the cactus for sure.

  “You motherfuckers look so real.” I said, and the giraffe cocked her feline’s tail. She was not to be trifled with.

  The sentient roll of toilet paper bounced around the dark room. A couple birds screamed in the distance. He started speaking in a language I didn’t speak, and was probably a rehash of how I thought certain foreigners —or a combination of several of them— sounded. Sweat dripped up my back, thick as molasses. My tongue hair caught fire. My ears felt like they were elongating each second. I felt the slow trickle of mucus down my nasal conducts that were crawling somewhere inside my shins. My tail swished form side to side, and the only thing I thought in that moment was “Manslaughtered gods, I already began hallucinating furriness”.

  The Giraffe spoke for the first time. “Lay all your mythochondria on the floor and , if you still can, get your hands where I can see them.”

  “She’s blind.” The cat added, and his voice sounded like a kakapo suffering castration without anesthesia. “And I am a gun that talks. And a tabby. And fluffy.” The cat’s neck extended, his eyes growing larger, not opening further, literally growing. “Touch me.”

  Aconessi’s voice sounded distant and somehow like a waterfall. I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  “I am having a great time, worry not bro!” I tried to thumbs up. My hand had turned into a tambourine, with the metal discs and all. “The re-percussions of this misfire are some solid nonsense.”

  “I will shoot, don’t move!” Said the giraffe, whose eyes and hooves had changed places.

  “yeah, no, I feel the illusion growing weaker, so bye fuckers.” I saluted and began falling, and falling, and falling. I landed on a pool of rubber duckies, that then melted into mayonnaise, thick and tepid, an absolute culinary disgrace. I saw myself from three different angles at once, struggling for air as I sank in the sauce. Then, cold air, Aconessi’s voice, and the roof of central slowly settling under my feet.

  “It’s over, I think.”

  Aconessi scratched his arm, uninterested, he was lying against the supporting structure of the water tanks. Poor steel had never been so overworked in its life. “And, what did you learn?”

  “I will never need to buy psychedelic drugs unless it is for redistribution at a nearby school.” Yes, I repeat my jokes. Sue me.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Any evident pattern besides it feeling like a bad trip?”

  “Peculiarities with my body, not yours to know. With all due respect, of course.”

  He scratched his sparse beard. “Good. We will keep forcing your sacromotor to misfire until our time is out. You still have an hour and twenty minutes to try, Saon.”

  One hour and twenty minutes weren’t much to get things done. But to fail? It was an eternity. Sometimes, during my misfires, time seems to run slower, probably a result of the brain getting overstimulated. I traveled through landscapes you wouldn’t believe, all without moving from the roof of central. My body got turned into so many substances, reshaped into more forms than I can count or describe. The cat is a recurring character and a registered sexual offender, seemingly, and thus I avoid touching him every chance I have. The giraffe, which I lovingly named Mia, honored her name since and hasn’t been seen again. The roll of toilet paper and the cat rarely coincide in a vision but whenever they do, they are allies, and the roll of toilet paper and organ ransomware are inseparable. Whenever it targets the heart, ho boy, that’s when things get interesting.

  By the end of our lesson I was exhausted, giggling like a, psychiatric patient, teeth rattling and grinding. My hands were curled like claws, my eye twitching. Generally, my grasp on reality is strong, but after so much self-torture it was slowly slipping.

  “Who do you have class with now?” Aconessi asked, not quite ignoring my condition but surely expecting me to push through it.

  “The healer. I need to go to the hospital of Eneripa.”

  And so, checking the hour in my phone, I began walking absentmindedly towards the stairs. “Saon, wait! The children hospital? They will let you go into a hospital full of dying children?”

  “Hey, I am not a heartless psychopath.” I said the truth and nothing but the truth. “I regularly visit the cardiology wing.”

  Then I ran away and down, because if there was something that could beat my legendary instructor, that was a flight of stairs.

  Truth is I hurried to the hospital to arrive early and pretend to seduce the receptionist into letting me have a tour of the place. To my misfortune, the receptionist was a man of about my age and thrice my body hair and mass, mostly muscle. His hairline was as unreceding as his stare.

  “Hello sir, how may I help you?”

  “As you can see from the uniform, I am a member of the Retrievers. Saon Ladius.” I handed him my identifying booklet. “I am supposed to meet Hoffal Demias, field medic, somewhere in this hospital., for healing module training.” I leaned on the desk and flashed him a smile. “I am also supposed to meet the local coffee machine, handsome.” I winked, revealing the true extent of my powers to the poor employee. “Could you point me in her direction?”

  “Doctor Hoffal is a man,” he informed as he checked the information of my booklet against their database, or something else that needed his eyes on the computer screen. His deep hazel eyes full of dreams that ignited more than a woman’s fantasy.

  “I know that, but I haven’t seen the coffee machine producing motile gametes, and I know for a fact that she can pour drinks that contain milk. This tells me the coffee machine is both female, and a mammal. Now, is she placentarian, marsupial, or maybe… have you seen her lay eggs?” I retracted my upper lip, revealing my teeth as I tilted my head and looked at him up close. “Are we dealing with a caffeinating monotreme?”

  “Dude, are you trying to bother me or are you an asylum escapee?”

  “Apologies if I weirded you out. I am completely sound of mind, only but a nerd with a weird sense of humor. Could I acquaint myself with the patients while I wait for my instructor to arrive?” I asked in demurer way, keeping a serene fa?ade on and so softly tapping the fingers of one hand against those of the other.

  “I am sorry but I cannot let you see the patients if you are neither a family member, accompanied by a doctor, or a physician yourself. I am not allowed to grant such permission nor supposed to.” He said, feeling himself superior because he wore that stupid nurse hat despite being in charge of the reception, and that stupid sexy blonde hair despite being male. It had to be illegal to look that good and work face-to-face with that abhorrent behemoth and chimaera of nightmare stuff we call “the public”.

  He tapped his fingers on his desk as he regarded me. I could swear he squinted whenever I looked at my cellphone. “It’s fine, I won’t strong-arm my way like other Retrievers do. Coffee machine and bathrooms?”

  “The cafeteria, turn to your left, then to your right. Impossible to miss.”

  “Alrighty then. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Derek.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Derek.” I said, stuffing my hands into my pockets and avoiding addressing the pachyderm in the premises: Derek was a weird-ass name to have.