16. 34. 17. 47. Mercy. Helm. Beam. Mercy. Helm. Beam. Confessions from the voice. Again.

Havoc. I'm microphone.

Ray thought it's strange to characterize depression as a condition of the mind when it houses itself so noisily inside the body.

Sematic aches that rendered waking life painful and sleep impossible. Headthrobbing until the stomach roiled.

A tightness in the chest that clenched its way up the esophagus, forming a knot at the base of the throat.

The feeling of weeping.

Parade with traumatic memories, depression felt more like a consumptive physical disorder than anything like a mental state.

In the past, Ray had dreamed often of escaping all of it by suicide. Straight razors, pills, a belt around his neck or a tailpipe in his mouth.

Indeed, Ray's sleeping mind used to grace him with absurdly romantic visions of self-destruction.

Of course, this was all before Ray welcomed Habit into his life.

Potsmokh world in the glow of Howard's lava lamp.

Ray squinted at the screen of his roommate's laptop. The link coward had just clicked with a nonsense jumble of seemingly randomized characters.

Okay.

He said he tried it on this shit.

Pot smoke world in the glow of Howard's lava lamp.

Ray squinted at the screen of his roommate's laptop.

Ray squinted at the screen of his roommate's laptop.

Ray squinted at the screen of his roommate's laptop.

Congratulations, Howard, you've discovered YouTube.

That's not a video, my man. It's a live feed.

The setting of the feed was a hazy, gray landscape.

Snarls of something like barbed wire etched against the heatless sky.

...