Synopsis: The writer of the story suffers from an existential crisis as she realizes she wrote this exact same chapter in Allison's Pledge. She becomes even more disillusioned when she realizes that both times, she was stoned out of her ever loving mind. She still might be.

It was 1:30 PM by the time we got done with the caves and I made an excuse to head off on my own. I just didn’t feel like sitting in the dorm room playing Dark Pantheon. I can’t really explain it; usually I loved the game but now I just couldn’t keep my mind on it. I was thinking about something else, particularly the GAT house.

I wandered off into the park and walked one of the trails, though to be honest, I was never really much of a ‘nature’ person. I just did a lot of walking and thinking. It was quiet here, I liked that. I don’t know how long I walked, it had to be a least a mile, but finally I came onto a brick structure, practically grown into the side of an embankment for all the years it had been there. It was an old bathroom, one of those that didn’t even have flushable toilets – just holes in the ground. So, given that I didn’t have to pee, and it was a completely bad decision, why wouldn’t I explore the thing?

Across the threshold I could hear the atmosphere around me change. My footsteps echoed and the air was noticeably moist. I ran my fingers along the old cinderblock walls, feeling the moss beneath them. I smiled a little; I’d always loved exploring old buildings like this even if it was just a bathroom. The most interesting thing about old structures was the amount of history they held, even though it was never recorded. Who had been in here? What had they done, besides the obvious? Sometimes I used to look through old picture books and stare at the people, especially those from like the 40’s and 50’s wondering what their lives must have been like, what they were thinking in that moment. What were their hopes and fears? Were their lives similar to mine? That was all I was thinking of really as I pressed on through the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

Walking around, I peeked through one of the open doors and recoiled at the smell. Clearly those toilets hadn’t been pumped in a while. I reeled backwards, gripping the concrete wall for support. The cinderblock was cold beneath my hand. As I started to turn, I felt an impact in the small of my back, and suddenly, I flew forward, slamming into the wall in front of me. My face hit the cinderblock and I could feel the skin shred from my nose and forehead. I screamed, but out here, no one could have possibly heard me.

“You know how long I’ve been waiting to get you alone?” I heard the familiar voice of Mike Jones say from behind me. I rolled over, my back against the wall as I stared up at him. He was still wearing that stupid letter jacket. I wondered if he ever took it off. “You’ve been hanging around the Gamma house, and you know what? That’s going to stop.”

“You have this all wrong Mik—” I started to say, but a work boot impacted the side of my face. I couldn’t believe how badly it hurt. Before I could even recover, he’d grabbed me by the back of my shirt and dragged me further into the bathroom. He hit me again, this time on the fleshy part of my shoulder and dropped me onto the floor. I laid there, against the putrid concrete, arms folded against my stomach as the pain radiated from the front of my stomach all the way to my spine. Every time I attempted to speak, I simply choked. I saw purplish red blood seeping onto the floor. Was that mine? I vaguely heard the sound of a sink being filled, and then, I was being lifted. I caught a glimpse of my face in the cracked, filthy mirror just before my head was dunked into the filthy water. I struggled. I felt my lungs burn. I struggled against his grip, but I couldn’t get my head to break the surface of the water. It seemed like forever. I knew that the human body could withstand up to three minutes without air; how long did I have here? Before I could wonder any further, he tore my head from the sink and I gasped for air. My lungs felt like they were on fire and my chest burned with the expansion of my lungs. I wanted to say something, but what?

As soon as I took a breath, he dunked my head again. I tried to take a breath this time, but only managed to get a lung full of water. He held me under again, I don’t know for how long, but soon I found myself looking at my face in the mirror again. I was bruised, battered. My left eye was swollen, I could see blood on my lip.

“Now you listen to me, you little shit,” Mike said. “The Gamma house is off limits to you. If I see you there again, it’s going to be worse next time. Got it?”

I couldn’t do much other than moan.

He responded by dragging me toward one of the holes in the ground. The toilet.

“Gotta teach you a lesson,” He said, almost happily.

“Mike, don’t,” I gasped as I realized what he was about to do.

“You couldn’t have picked a better place,” He said proudly as he held my head over the open hole. The smell of shit and untold other substances floated upward, invading my nostrils as I hyperventilated and struggled against his grip. It was hopeless. “because, if I find you at Gamma again, I’m going to throw you in there, and it’s deep enough that you won’t get out, and NO ONE will find you here.”

With that, he slammed me into the ground. I would have screamed but I no longer had the energy or even the willpower. I don’t know long I laid there after he left. I could feel my blood, sticky against my face, and the horrid smell from the toilet crept into my nostrils. I must have vomited a few times, I could see a pool of it in front of me. I blacked out a few times, that I’m sure of, and when I finally came to for the last time, it was dark outside, and pitch black inside the concrete bathroom. I slowly peeled myself off of the floor; every inch of me ached and burned. I finally managed to pull myself upright and dragged myself to the wall to sit upright. I coughed and sputtered, wheezing with every single breath. There was no way I was going to walk out of here; I couldn’t even remember how far I was from the start of the trail.

“What the hell,” muttered. I reached an aching hand into my left pocket and pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked, but with a few presses of the ‘home’ button, I managed to bring it to life. It took me a long moment to comprehend the icons scattered across the display, but I finally found the message button, pressed it, and brought up the menu. I saw a dozen texts from Tiffany and Aleah, most of them simply saying “Where are you?”. I wanted to answer so badly. I wanted to ask them for help. I’d never wanted anything so bad in my entire life, and I don’t know why. Instead, I scrolled until I found Mason’s message box. I sent two words: “Help me” and shared my location. My hand weakened, the phone stopped and clattered against the ground and my vision blurred. I felt myself getting weaker and weaker. Finally, I faded out of reality, or at least I thought.

“Well, you’ve gotten yourself into it, haven’t you?” I heard Mason say. I opened my eyes a bit and saw him squatting in front of me, arms crossed atop his kneecaps, and wearing that red leather jacket the he had on all the time. He wasn’t here, of course; he couldn’t have shown up that quickly.

“Mason,” I muttered. “Are you really here?”

“Either that or you have an active imagination,” He said, standing up and striding toward the other side of the bathroom. He stopped in front of the opposite row of sinks and examined himself in one of the busted mirrors. “You mind telling me what you’ve been up to?”

“I messed up, Mason,” I confessed. “You know I just –”

“You just like getting all dolled up and pretending you’re a girl, is that it?”

“Okay, now I know you’re not really here,” I said. “Mason wouldn’t know that.”

“You’re probably right,” He said, turning around and making eye contact with me. “You’re always so damn secretive, you don’t let anyone in, why is that?”

“You know why.”

“Right,” Mason said, walking toward me. He didn’t stop until he was a few feet from me, and suddenly dropped down, until his face was just a few inches from mine. “Because YOU don’t want them to learn your dirty little secret.”

“Of all the freaking hallucinations I could have had right now, why did it have to be you?”

“It’s your nightmare,” Mason said as he shifted into Tiffany. “Can be anyone you want.”

“Okay, that’s a little better.”

“You’re probably dying on a bathroom floor,” Tiffany said. “I don’t see how it’s better.”

“That’s just me escalating things, like Mason said,” I shrugged, or at least I tried to shrug. It felt like knives were digging into my shoulders.
“Let’s just cut to the chase here,” She said, standing with her arms crossed, as the real Tiffany often would. “You don’t let people in, because you haven’t let yourself in yet. You’re still walking around in that stupid male body, pretending to be a guy. You hate yourself, so why would you want people to like you, or even know you?”

“I think you’re full of shit,” I said angrily, my head rolling to the side.

There was probably more to that whole exchange, that fight raging inside my head, but I never got to see much more of it. The scene simply faded into lights and colors as I let myself go. I remembered once, well maybe more than once, my dad had said to me “Todd, if you think you have a concussion, don’t go to sleep.”. I don’t know if I had a concussion, but I was definitely sleepy. I just couldn’t --