Everything is jumbled up right now. I have one foot in hunting for letters of recommendation for my Brown application and the other in writing a short story for my creative writing class. I’m into portal fantasy stuff. Naturally, at the moment, the only portal fantasy my mind can produce is the kind that sits somewhere between a literal out-of-body experience and a dizzying “I should probably lie down for a second” kind of idea. The idea struck me while I was getting a neck massage last week. Unlike most people, who probably go there to switch off, my mind seemed to switch on. It was there, looking through the face hole of the massage bed while staring at a woman’s mermaid-turquoise toenails, that my brain decided to hand me the entire premise of the story.
Yeah, it goes something like this:
Kai is wondering how long it will take, staring at the massage bed draped in beach towels.
“Tell me a little about you,” the practitioner says. “Any experience with reiki, love?”
“Erm. No. Not really. But I have a very stiff neck, and my chest feels so heavy that breathing is an effort.”
“Blocked energy,” she says, eyes closed now, already touching Kai’s shoulders. “There…”
“And… I needed to redeem the voucher,” Kai adds. “It’s been sitting in my drawer for months.”
“Get comfortable, take off some layers, and lie face down. I’ll take over when you’re ready.”
Face down, Kai looks through the face hole and sees the practitioner’s feet first; long and pale then the mermaid-turquoise toenails, swirling almost into a portal. Somewhere above her, a ritual begins. Hands move in slow arcs, as though an invisible orchestra is being conducted along her spine.
“You may feel heaviness in your chest,” the practitioner says. “Or your throat chakra. If it comes, let it pour. Purge, cough, let it go.”
Kai nods dutifully, but feels nothing. She wishes the woman would just touch her neck instead. This is totally a scam, she thinks. Something is being rubbed together behind her head. She can’t tell what. Somewhere in that repetition, she drifts, as if she has discovered a hidden elevator inside her skull. She pictures a white, round room inside herself, curtained into three states: sleep, waking, and consciousness. At the hem of each one, there is a tiny gap where, if you are lucky, you can slip through into a fourth or fifth state she has no way of perceiving yet. The practitioner’s hand pauses briefly at her base chakra.
“Oh,” she says. “Woah.”
Through the face hole, Kai sees the turquoise toenails opening into a portal.
“What’s happening?” Kai tries to lift her head, but something heavy is already pulling her down.
“Nothing, love. Stay with it, breathe.” The practitioner’s claws press into the base of Kai’s spine, and a hollowness opens inside her, like the second a swing reaches its highest point and begins to fall. Through the turquoise portal, the fall is endless.
Then, she is struck by a momentary dizziness when a woman lifts her upright, a woman who looks nothing like the reiki practitioner. Steam moves thickly between them, making the outlines of their bodies blur.
“You were gone for a moment,” the woman says. “Welcome to Tandrāsandhyāsthāna.”
“Trandasanaya??? Where am I exactly?”
“This is the silent room,” she continues. “You must not speak. You must not think. The eight serenity houses are sensitive zones, so do not fight what happens in your body here. You have to stop trying to control the experience. Time and gravity will bend a little, shifting depending on your mood, and if you let it, it will carry you. You won’t need a map; the rooms are stitched together. You go through each wellness treatment room, and doors only open when you sound well enough. Remember, the only way is through.”
The woman presses her index finger to the bridge of her nose and disappears into the steam. Through a reiki-induced daze, Kai walks around searching for the door. As she moves, essential oil oozes from the architecture and sprays onto her skin. The scent of eucalyptus fills her throat, making her cough slightly as her lungs feel smooth and cool and her pores cleansed. At the window, she wipes a circle into the heavy mist with the sleeve of her robe and sees people gliding along the narrow passageways between the eight treatment houses, their faces blank and serene as they enter the second house: the inferno yoga room. Inside, half a dozen people are holding a crow pose, suspended and unmoving. Crows in inferno, she sees. Her feet feel pinned to the floor, too heavy to lift, let alone balance on her arms. The heat burns through her thoughts one by one, her worries first, then her desires. It occurs to her that she might soon become one of these faceless figures, so she hurries toward the exit, but the door speaks before she can touch it.
“Your treatment has not yet reached serenity. You may return to your mat.”
Note: Imagine the crows in the inferno being the last image on this slippage of consciousness. Tandrāsandhyāsthāna: a Sanskrit compound word that literally means the threshold state between wakefulness and sleep, or so I’ve learned. And then, snap, Kai (also me) is back on the massage bed.
“Ah… You were gone for a second,” the reiki practitioner says, fanning Kai with a thin book. Kai sits upright and knows one thing for sure: the voucher has been redeemed.