You're a dust bunny, Katie drawls, her lips murky with smoke. I'm half-liquid on the floor, the dead ends of my fingers beginning to buzz with reignited blood. I shiver like an electric razor. Katie's breathing curls out of her, the gray of her words dancing upwards only to burst against the ceiling. The paint is cream as a grand and terrible desert.

Elaborate, I enunciate with difficulty. A jellylike ache has begun to spread under my skin, as if to glue me together.

You keep coming back, she replies. The bathroom seems to have no ceiling light; a lamp sits haphazardly beside her on the sink's counter. The shade is as thin as a hymen. It casts a strange net over the depths of her face.

I snort, watching the sudden, gleeful jump of my reanimated chest.Whose fault is that?

Katie grins, doesn't answer. Tell me what you saw.

An air vent crouches on the wall next to me, giving the shouting beyond a metallic coating. Someone clatters their fingers against the door.

I was in oblivion's pocket, I begin. This is our own ritual, penciled in the margins of the ancient instructions in ambitious cursive. It's a great field. The table was set, as if I were the messiah of the Otherworld. The deer around me were loveless. They brought me cherries, lush and dark as the juicy inside of eyeballs.  Everywhere, there was a wet grind of motors. The world was a wind-up toy. They only let me puke once.  My sick sang.

Katie hums. She kills me just for this, for these fantastic stories of ammonia and spit.

The sky buzzed, all faulty wires and disuse.  It spoke in a pungent language, the syllables round as bleach. There was no god, or God, to pass me a Pepto. I held my illness like a lake holds a corpse. It was the most solid I had ever been.  Still, I was held in infinity's non-dominant hand. I look up at her, my line of sight crooked. She's got a constellation of acne prodding under her skin; her eyelids dance with purple glitter. You took me back easily.

Her smile is loose as her mother's bracelet, a fine gold band that can slip as far as her elbow if she's not careful. Don't think too high of yourself. I needed a designated driver.

I scoff, and my head tosses back. Something deep in my nape pops with the sudden movement, my rigor mortis vanishing. Katie claps her hands, hops off the counter. Her cigarette, covered in more gloss than her lips, bounces in bright orange.

Come on, somebody will mutiny if we're not out soon.

I sit up in hiccups of movement. A bit of kohl has willowed down my cheek in our struggle, in those brief moments where I forgot that I'm the ashtray Katie extinguishes her rage in. I smear the other, for symmetry's sake. She's nearly out of the house by the time I push past the line for our spot.

My bike is unchained and eager. We split the seat—she gets the back, of course. The night is cool as glass as I pedal away, Katie hollering something with convoluted vowels. Above, death peers down at me through the holes the stars have made. I will do this for the rest of the year. I will do this for the rest of my life.