The Cipher

by Kathe Koja

Not what you would think, no, not suction or even a true sensation, but if you could touch an insubstantiality, a fever dream, rub hallucinations on your skin, if you could cradle your own mind when you dream, trace the hills and gutters of the brain’s landscape—there really is no explaining it, I’m sorry but it’s so. Even they, who were there, even Nakota who was in all senses closest to me, well. They didn’t really get it either. I didn’t get it all, but what I got, going into it with empty eyes open and empty hands at the ready, was horrifyingly intense, not so much empowering but the sensation of such, I heard my own voice howling as if I was in pain but I wasn’t, you see, I really didn’t feel anything bad at all even when I looked down between my open orbiting knees and saw the steel of Randy’s sculpture running over the skin of my knuckles, dripping down to fall not into the Funhole as one would think (and one would think) but flying off in a strange arc as if repelled, dropping somewhere to the right but my vision didn’t go, didn’t really go that far. Nakota was trying to touch me, I could see that much, but she wasn’t making contact or if she was I wasn’t feeling it. I had my other hand, my right hand, out of the hole now, some other part of me was inside, or maybe not because I was falling, losing altitude we call that, God damn sometimes this was funny. Sometimes I was funny. But apparently not now because I heard voices, they sounded scared or screaming or somet...