After Josh and Kyle left the party at Josh’s parent’s house, they were both drunk and confused. The drunkenness was far easier to explain than the confusion. After all, the drunkenness was a direct result of the alcohol they had consumed at the party. The confusion, on the other hand, did not have near as crisp an explanation.

That is, they knew why they were confused. They could not, however, explain or understand it in any meaningful way. On the drive away from the house, they had started the conversation several times. Each time it seemed to stop abruptly as they couldn’t articulate their own feelings and confusion.

As their drive approached the section of road where the incident had happened on the drive in, they both became visibly agitated, manic, and super aware. Josh slowed during the short portion of relevant road. They both peered ahead of them, behind them, and at the area on both sides of the road around them. But it was all blackness in all directions, except for the reflective lines on the road ahead of them.

Instinctively, they both checked their watches and the time on the car radio.

All seemed in order. They continued in this hyper-attentive state for about a mile past the area, and then both started to relax a little. They allowed their attention to subside, and made a few innocuous comments to each other. Just at that moment, a car’s headlights appeared in the distance coming toward them. Their bodies tensed again, but within moments, the nondescript traveler passed them, and all was back to normal.

——

Alex James sat alone in his apartment. His own bottle of whiskey, bearing hardly an inch of resolve, cast a small shadow across his counter and his own small, cheap, whiskey glass. Fortunately, his glass still bore at least a finger and a half, and it was probably his sixth or seventh since he had returned home from the pub.

The room around him was silent.

His phone had been face down since he opened the bottle. His mind wandered aimlessly from dark topic to dark topic. “What is happening? What is going on? Am I going mad?”, he asked himself, repeatedly.

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The alcohol had numbed so many of his senses, and his focus was blurred beyond accomplishment. All he could do was spiral downward further.

His own confusion was inexplicable. His day had been not just off, but catastrophic. He couldn’t even decipher the events in a way that made any sense. This continued to reinforce his feeling of downward spiral into some invisible, emotional, abyss.

Alex’s double-loop belt had become uncomfortable, and he extracted it from his jeans. He stared at it, with a hazy recollection of when he had purchased it. The color was something like a faded greenish-gray color, which he appreciated for its visual flexibility. His waist and belly felt more relaxed once the belt was out of the loops. His mind, however, was still processing, still trying to assemble the experiences of the day in a way that made sense to him.

The gist of the day was this: somehow, people around him seemed to be living in, or able to recall a past, that was foreign to him. Rational explanations? He didn’t know. Had he missed something essential in school? Or in his own conspiracy research? No. There was no way he had missed something as substantial as this. But what did that leave? Either he was going mad, or something in the universe had shifted around him. Both explanations were terrifying.

He stared at the belt. He poured the last of the whiskey into his glass. His fingers massaged the metal double loop buckle. He slid the other end of the woven belt through the buckle to form a loop. He pulled it in to create a circle which had a circumference a little larger than his head. The remaining tail was 2 to 3 feet in length. He held the belt from the tail... and let the loop fall around his head. After pulling the tail more taught, it created pressure on his throat. As his eyes closed, he wondered how long it would take to completely cut off his air. He wondered if he would just pass out.

In the tail of the belt, he tied a small knot. He walked to the bathroom, wearing the belt more like a tie now. After relieving his bladder, he glanced at himself in the mirror - but only briefly as he turned toward the door to leave. He pushed the door nearly shut. He took the knot end of the belt, and placed it over the top of the door, catching it between the top of the door and the frame. He pushed the door closed so that the knot would be caught and unable to slip.

With his back against the door, he closed his eyes. Slowly, Alex bent his knees, which had the effect of lowering his head, and his throat, tighter onto the belt. His thoughts were empty. His focus was on escape from this confusion. The incomprehensibleness of it all had sent him over the edge, beyond control. It had spiraled so quickly, and he just wanted the mental suffering to end. The emotional suffering, to end.