On an Axis
content warning: death, trauma, NSFW mentions
I. Magic Eye
hello, greetings, and welcome
Doctor Oliver Mark awoke to a buzzing that rattled his skull. It immediately dispensed of any dreams he may have had and flushed the sleep from his eyes. Nudging the arm of last night’s hookup away, the caprine creaked his way up onto the edge of the bed, reaching out just enough to peek behind the curtains, and nearly doubled back onto the sleeping ram behind him. It was blindingly bright, and the power lines just beyond his apartment window were glowing with violent fury. The radiant aura pierced directly through his brain and down his spine like the face of God, searing every neuron it came across with unfathomable loads of information and that god-awful, incessant hum. He buried his head in his hooves, sticking his hooftips into his ears until the noise became somewhat tolerable and he stopped vibrating like a tuning fork thrown against a wall.
Soon, Ollie realized, it wasn’t just the cables outside-- everything felt unbearably hyper-there, like the dial on his sensitivity was cranked all the way up. The sheets below him made every fiber known. The carpet grazing his feet felt like sandpaper. Every low, deep snore from the man in his bed rumbled through his core like stadium acoustics. The air, damp with the night before, felt like trying to inhale a solar flare, and he found himself heaving for something more breathable. Every single minor movement in the air caressed his skin like winds blowing away at sand dunes. Even then, though, he only realized the true intensity of his condition when he shakily tried standing up.
Holy fuck, did he feel hollow. Not from hunger- whatever typical morning achiness he felt after nights like that was replaced by the overbearing feeling of being utterly emptied out. He could barely stand without his legs giving out, quaking like The Big One had hit and the ground was rapidly liquifying underneath his feet. He needed to get to the bathroom, pronto, before his sensory organs imploded. Frantically sweeping his arm around in front of him, he grabbed a pair of underwear that he was reasonably certain was his and a sweater that may as well have been, if only to spare his dignity in front of the large, open window in his living room. They dragged like knives along his fur as he pulled them over his frame. Tumbling out of the bedroom, he looked back at the man who had destroyed him, his chest slowly rising and falling as he slept. Phantom sensory inputs of being held, pinned, scratched and manhandled washed over him like a wave, a dozen weighted blankets crushing his chest and legs all over again.
Grabbing whatever surfaces he could find, Ollie made the long trek from the bedroom door to his bathroom. His hooves grazed shelves with books he couldn’t bear to translate and the edges of frames holding images he could not dare to comprehend. Below, he stumbled over mismatched shoes and the rest of the discarded clothing from the night before. Finally, he arrived at the bathroom door, opening it only to reveal a solid surface instead of the promised toilet, sink and shower. A single, solitary fuck escaped his lips as he ran his eyes up and down the wall which had now denied him entry.
Ollie ran his hooves along the new wall, tracing the patterns. It was a purplish blue, with long, thin, snaky patterns running from lavender purple to scarlet, with bright gold-orange highlights. It felt like through. He leaned forward, butting his head against it, tapping it, confirming that, indeed, it felt like come on in. His horns made contact, returning a sound that his audio processing nodes took in and promptly sent to his language generation center with nothing but a sticky note saying it’s open. But it was not open. It was simply a solid wall, and all feeble attempts by Ollie in his ruined and overstimulated state to open it were met with failure. He was considering begging his neighbors to use their shower when something came to him from beyond the static ruling his neural pathways. It was something about the pattern.
There was something in how it clipped into itself, abruptly ending at some points and gliding smoothly in others. Something that came out when he focused on it- or, well, when he didn’t. It brought him back to those old books he’d always forgotten to remove from the waiting room outside of his office. Those dusty Magic Eye puzzles, buried underneath ancient editions of Better Homes & Gardens and Martha Stewart Living, inviting the viewer to deliberately defocus on their colorful images to reveal the hidden object underneath. It was an autostereogram.
With nothing else to try, Ollie shakily stepped back, trying to aim his eyesight past the doorframe. He imagined focusing in on the bathroom that should be there, allowing his sight to drift until he was wall-eyed. He could feel it more than he saw it, there was something beyond, he just needed to adjust his distance, and…
Thank you for purchasing this audio cassette tape. I hope it brings you some relaxation and enjoyment.
It came to him. He drifted in closer, and it emerged. He was through.
We’re going to try some deep reflection and guided meditation exercises. I invite you to find a place where you are comfortable, preferably sitting or laying down, close your eyes, and follow along completely. Utilize the full extent of your imagination. Now, imagine yourself walking down an old path…
The kitchenette disappeared behind Ollie as he tumbled out into a hydrangea-blue forest. The leaves above him glistened, the canopy so thick it blocked out the sky. Dense vines of bright pink dog roses covered orange-streaked trunks and broken fences. Platycodon and silverswords rose up from tall grass to greet him. His breath, shuddery and hesitant, calmed. It was humid, dew and rain dripping from branches above, but cool. Quiet.
And as you walk along that road, just leave all those old thoughts and feelings behind you. Gently pull them from your head, from your body, and cast them away into the bushes. Don’t worry, you’re not littering. The bugs will eat them. Just keep walking, deeper and deeper…
The fuzzy feedback of the powerlines was gone, the ghosts of the night before dissipated, the nausea and emptiness drifted away. Ollie was surrounded by color, but it didn’t blind him, it simply was. He reached out for a fence post, feeling the crumbling, mildewed, saturated wood, scraping and peeling away with his hoof at the darkened outer layers to reveal gold leaf underneath.
Eventually, you come across a small brook. It trickles through the forest, curving around the roots of a tree with a great burl in its center, away and out of sight. A small bridge is there for you to cross. As you lean over the edge, those things that drag you down droop over, just above the surface of the water, where the salmon leap up and bite away at them, each one lightening the load, bit by little bit…
Fording the creek, Ollie found himself on the porch of a ranch house covered like kudzu with flowers. Though the paint was almost invisible, the numbers along the doorframe submerged in flora, he knew it well, greeting it with the reverence of an old friend. His house, before anything else was his. The family home, somewhere in a tiny town in Central-West Texas, was brought before him. He felt the wave of nostalgia gently flood his brain like the aroma of a rosebush, letting the door creak open, experiencing again all the senses he thought to be lost forever. Matted carpet, linoleum, shag couches and popcorn ceilings. Everything shimmering a brilliant iridescent blue. It was entirely unreal but, God, was it so comfortably familiar. On impulse, he pantomimed shedding an invisible backpack, letting it slump against the loveseat, deeply inhaling artificial lemon scent and lavender air freshener. Nobody was here but him, and like all days when he was home alone, he drifted to his bedroom.
Ollie creaked open the door to see that familiar bed, almost as big as he remembered, with the comforter so massive it just about swallowed him up every night. The desk, too, and all the overhanging shelves. He peeked his head inside, turning towards the wall with his old TV, and saw… Him. The sudden intrusion rocked Ollie, and his relaxed state shattered, his impulses slamming into fight-or-flight mode. He tried to give a reassuring smile and extended arms, something to present Ollie with a vision of calm, but it was too late. Something crashed into the woods, and the world began to collapse in on itself. Ollie’s breath hiked, swiftly shifting into pure hyperventilation, and the floorboards began to creak and the walls cracked open, dust falling from the ceiling as the treeline warped and the flowers withered. He ran for Ollie, to pull him away from his panic, but the world got to him first. Ollie felt his neck split open as a chain rammed into it from behind, dragging him out the front door and into the forest.
Now that you’ve reunited with that special someone, return to the bridge. Holding their hands in yours, you turn your eyes back to the horizon above the treeline. Look above, and you see