When Jonathan woke up, the first thing he heard was an assertive voice, coming, he supposed, from another out-cropping or gable off of the house of light, piercing the darkness by just a cosmic millimeter. Jonathan first beheld a popping noise from someone's mouth, onomatopoeically priming the listener for the full sentence: "Popped a molly; I'm sweating. Popped a molly; I'm sweating." Trinidad James, Jonathan thought, identifying the voice's source, I know that man from somewhere. But whence?
A brief guttural noise (force of habit, Jonathan thought) transitioned smoothly into his terrified one-word response of surprise: "WHAT?" Jonathan was of course responding with genuine confusion, both to Trinidad James' unusual articulation and to the strange background noise Jonathan had suddenly become attuned to, background noise seeming to Jonathan rather like a combination of desert-heavy sitars and synthesized strings from an unknown, unseen system of speakers and cables.
James repeats his description. "Popped a molly; I'm sweating. Popped a molly; I'm sweating.!"
So Jon cupped his hand to his ear to absorb and combine any possible noises that could possibly shed more light than what Trinidad was able to shed with his mystifying words. "WHAT?" Jonathan repeated with the same guttural inflection.
And without hesitation, James repeated (with identical inflection) his previous statement. "Popped a molly; I'm sweating."
"OKAYYYY." Jonathan responded in rhythm with guttural enthusiasm. But in truth, this apparent enthusiasm by the diminutive Jonathan was insincere. James had simply repeated his description, maddening from the first, once again. A clockwork orange, Jonathan supposed. Jonathan began to wonder just where in God's name he was, really. And was there some sort of relation between his James' aforementioned actions? Was it "I popped a molly, therefore I am sweating?" Was there no relation between the statements except their proximity in time and space to this Trinidad James? Or had (and Jonathan shuddered at this) James passed into some state of anterograde amnesia, in which case James could honestly be saying these statements independently as he mechanicistically turned his head from one side to the other, commenting on one ("Popped a molly") and the other ("I'm sweating") with no apparent knowledge of their correlated nature, with no knowledge that he was simply stuck in a time loop? Was Jonathan the next to undergo this terrifying transformation?
Whatever the case, Jonathan would find out. Testing his limbs (he was still very much alive and mobile), Jonathan beheld with his eyes a single pill in this empty room of erstwhile darkness, the pill lit exceptionally as if by spotlight, as if it were separate from the rest of the room. This pill - Jonathan supposed as he took it in his hand - would take him to the land of Trinidad, where no one suffered because no one felt. Jonathan sincerely felt (perhaps his last impression here on Earth or wherever he was) that there was no way out, that this world was just a clockwork world anyway, that no one really feels that deeply, that there really wasn't much of a difference between life and death, between the ability to respond intelligently to situations and the ability to mimick and repeat selected phrases mechanistically. So he took that pill, and found a glass of water nearby. My last hope of escape, Jonathan thought.
As Jonathan swallowed the pill, now weeping, he noticed that - through the door - Trinidad James was bursting through the door, a stream of light behind him. "Popped a molly; I'm sweating! Popped a molly; I'm sweating!" James noted with enthusiasm.
There is balm in Gilead, Jonathan supposed.
"How are you, Lil Jon?" James said with socially-constructive inflection. "How are you enjoying the party? I see you'd fallen asleep? Were you enjoying yourself, Jon?"
"WHAT?" The dread god himself had entered and would sing me to sleep with his mercy, Jonathan thought.
"I said, are you enjoying yourself at the party?"
"WHAT?" Jonathan was insensible at this point, responding with guttural rote. Sensory overload, he supposed when he could think, Where am I, this lighted candle-world with the opaque curtains into infinite shore?
"Oh, here let me get the curtains! Haha, it is quite dark in this room," James opened the window in response to Jonathan' disorientation, revealing past the curtains a beautiful ocean-side view, "I see that you still managed to find that molly, Lil Jon! Haha! You have popped a molly!"
What? Jonathan thought with betrayal. "WHAT?" Jonathan managed to put into words. I had thought I was tasting oblivion, but now, cruellest of irony, I had instead tasted transformation. I would become this James soon enough, replacing the dread god or else joining with him in his ventures from the land of the dead.
"Indeed, you have popped a molly, Lil Jon. Soon you'll be sweating. Then you will join the party again, won't you?"
Room for one more. That dance of death? Yes, of course I would. After all, I had ceded life and this dance of death was merely the continuation of an inevitability. I would indulge this dance, and "live" in it as fully as I could.
"Lil Jon? You alright?"
"YEAHHHH. POPPED A MOLLY; I'M SWEATING! OKAYYYY!" Finally, my great journey is consummated.
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