—Steps to Using the Float System—

* Once you have taken off all of your clothing, put your earplugs in and shower to remove any excess oils in your skin. Do not use the conditioner (don’t worry, you can condition afterwards) but do use the shampoo and bodywash, all of which are hypoallergenic.

* Enter the float tank. Controls for the music volume and the light are on your left. You may close the door to the tank or keep it open. The outer lights will turn off automatically.

* Your session will begin. Just float. Concentrate on your breath as you do so.

* After ninety minutes, the float system will tell you that your session has ended.

* Once your session has ended, carefully get out of the float tank and take another shower. Your skin will feel soft from the Epsom salt. You may now use conditioner.

* After you have toweled off and dressed, please—

I stopped reading the instructions at this point. I got the gist, and had already watched the instructional video the wellness center had emailed me.

Coming here was supposed to be my hail Mary. A friend of mine had let me use his gift card with several ‘floats’ on it, which was what this place called being suspended in a sensory deprivation tank for ninety minutes for restorative purposes and to enhance creativity. This was supposed to be an experience that would spark something for me. Yet here I was, naked as the day I was born, showering in a bathroom a thousand times nicer than any bathroom I’d ever had, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how they had rechristened the sensory deprivation tank to ‘float tank.’

That was probably the fantasy writer in me thinking.

I guess ‘float tank’ does sound a bit nicer, but I think I’ll call you Tanky the Tank…

I turned off the shower, and as water dripped from my skin, I finally opened the hatch. It truly was a hatch, to the point that it almost resembled a cremation oven, the inner surfaces of the tank smooth, white, and oh-so-plastic. The interior of the tank was about eight feet across, and five feet high. As soon as I was in, an indigo light flicked on and a light soundtrack started up, the music somewhere between ambient piano and white noise.

“Weird…”

I lowered into the ninety-four-degree water that was standing at about ten inches high, the bottom surface of the tank quite slick.

You’ve got this. You need this, I reminded myself as I relaxed onto my back, the water laced with Epsom salt aiding in my buoyancy.

Reaching my hand over my head allowed me to close the hatch door behind me, a tinge of claustrophobia coming to me as I tried to adjust to my little wellness oasis. I tried to get comfortable as the music carried through the water and into my plugged ears.

You’re not going to die in here. Tanky the Tank isn’t going to kill you…

Once I was nice and floaty, I pressed my thumb against a button that turned off the light.

My heart jumped at the sudden darkness. I actively stopped myself from turning the light back on. I needed this. I needed to be alone with my thoughts, to work through some shit.

The hint of fear slowly filtered away.

Soon, I was floating comfortably, relaxing even further into the water once it was clear I couldn’t drown.

Just float…

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I was here, everything was in its right place, and I would come out of this float session with an idea that would rebuild my literary career.

At least that was the plan…

****

What? I thought, coming out of my meditative, float tank reverie. Did someone just speak to me? And was she British?

Why am I hearing voices? And what is this about gnomes? Focus, Randy…

I was in this float tank for a reason. I needed a novel idea, something that would keep the royalties coming in and the fantasy writing ship afloat until I stumbled across my next concept, or at least until the crypto I had dumped my savings into would moon, making me rich enough to afford a one-way ticket to outer space.

I quieted my breath yet again, waiting for my muse to finally appear, that clever beauty who had most graciously blessed me with The Mana in the White Castle, War Beast, Mage of Rage, and Kung Fu Fable, my bestselling cultivation series with gaming elements. It was the same dastardly muse who had also shat the bed with my experimental Oh, Great, I Fell in Love with a Demon Mimic and Now I’m Going to Hell to Become a Dungeoncore Farmer, which was some cringe-worthy GameLit erotica I wrote under my pen name Angel Farts that had sold all of seven ebook copies (and one was returned, but I still count it as seven).

Come on, Randy, think…

Forget about your pen name… forget about Angel Farts…

But thinking about thinking had a way of making me feel like I was overthinking. In that case...

Focus on your breath…

Come on, man, focus!

There it was again, my thoughts interrupted by a British lady, a voice I couldn’t quite place.

It should have been easy to blink my eyes open, find the light switch in the float tank, and climb out. After all, I wasn’t suspended in that much water, and the support staff had told me what to do if I started to feel claustrophobic. There was even an intercom system. Yet I brazenly resisted the urge, wondering if this woman was indeed my muse, that she had finally come to me in a dream state and had decided to take a British voice just to shake things up a bit.

< Welcome, Randall Lionheart...>

“—Please, call me Randy, the noun not the adjective…” I told her, which was my go-to introduction that I found funny but usually didn’t get the laugh I wanted.

“Is this a loaded question?” I asked aloud.

There was an echo to my voice now, darkness still enveloping me.

“Sure, um, human,” I said, just ready to get on with it. “Is that what you wanted me to say?”

Wait… what?

Vortex, vacuum, spiraling down the drain, being uploaded, watching the movie Frozen on shrooms, what it must feel like to be lubed up and sucked through a giant straw, Havana syndrome, taking both the red and blue pill at the same time, being waterboarded—all would describe what happened next as I was portaled to another world, my senses on fire and my head spinning.

Suddenly, I was no longer in a darkened float tank alone with my thoughts. I was now in a forest straight out of Narnia, crisp, pine needles beneath my feet, a slight breeze and a bit of birdsong in the air.

Even worse, I wasn’t alone.

A group of what I would describe as ‘tough guy gnomes’ stood across from me, most of the pint-sized bruisers muscled up and wearing dark, skintight leather and tunics, oozing aggression, some with oiled forearms and biceps.

I thought of the old cartoon Hargrim the Gnome, and how nice those gnomes had been in that show. Surely this troupe would be friendly. Surely they would help a bewildered guy who had magically appeared before them.

After all, they weren’t goblins…

“Fellas,” I said, showing them my hands. “Fellas…”

This has to be a dream… I thought as the lead gnome hawked a giant loogie in my direction, one that was yellow enough to lead me to believe that he might actually have an underlying medical condition.

I tried to will myself awake and failed.

“Fellas…”

They all took a collective step closer to me. If this was a nightmare, one that involved a murder of gnomes, I damn sure wasn’t going to let these short little bastards treat me like a communal Fleshlight, not after all the bullshit I’d been through recently.

For once in my life, it was time to kick some serious ass.

It was time to introduce these shifty gnomes to the Mad Lad.