#of all the seasons to fuck up a phys release on it just HAD to be 10 😔 the one i want the most

[dennisboobs]

so apparently the official release of the sunny season 10 dvd is in fucking 480p. which explains why the bloopers on FX's YouTube channel look like this.

they literally uploaded a dvd rip

[notsopersonalcharlie]

Dress

Requested by @bii-aan-ckaa : I was just wondering if oi could write one about Jonathan Byers and Y/N and how one day he is tutoring her but she like makes moves on him slowly and he tried to resist her and then just loses it and they have sex but it gets rough and he's talking dirty and like swearing omdfg please

Jonathan Byers x Reader

Warnings: Smut and swearing (lots of dirty talk) it’s also a biiiiiit long

Note: gif isn't mine and SOMEHOW there have been 2 seasons of stranger things but not enough gifs of Jonathan THIS IS BASED ON DRESS BY TAYLOR SWIFT

Jonathan Byers was a genius. You doubted anyone noticed because people only saw him as a freak with a camera, but if anyone had chosen to look deeper they would have seen that he never got below an A- in his whole life, and it wasn’t an A+ because he didn’t have time to do homework. 

So when your test scores started to dropping in chemistry and human physiology, your science teacher had ordered that Jonathan tutor you. He would get full credit for all of his homework and your grades would go up. Mr. Kessler saw it as a win-win.

“Hey, Jonathan.” You let him in and closed the door behind him, leading the way up to your bedroom. You sat at your desk and smiled at Jonathan, which he returned. You had learned, about two weeks into your biweekly meetings, that he was incredibly handsome behind the camera usually covering his face. 

“Hey. What are we doing today?” He seemed tired and distracted, and you pushed your Phys book away to look at him. 

“Are you alright?” He let out something like a sigh and looked at the cover of your textbook. 

“Long night. Will was having nightmares.” You nodded in understanding. 

“That all?” He finally looked at you, his eyes very quickly flickering over your dress, lingering slightly too long on your bare legs. 

“Uh- yeah. Phys?” You nodded and smiled when he looked down at the book intensely. His cheeks were red. 

“Sorry about the dress,” you mentioned, “I have to go to a dinner party with my parents after this.” He was very quick to nod and kept reading. You frowned a little bit. 

“It’s going to be really boring, they do have a son my age though. Maybe we’ll get up to some trouble.” Jonathan visibly flinched and you smirked. Gotcha.

“Uhm - Let’s start with stuff you don’t get,” Jonathan tried, his voice slightly wavering. 

“Why you’re acting like you don’t-”

“About Phys, (Y/N).” Your name came off his tongue so beautifully that you had to clench your fists as to avoid reaching out and kissing him right then.

“Right. Uhm, tendons in the wrist moving fingers.” Jonathan reached out to flip the pages to the concept and you watched his fingers move, the muscles in his arm moving with them. He found the page after doing a number on your brain, which whizzed through all the much better ways he could be using his hands and read carefully for a few minutes before looking at you. 

“(Y/N), you in there.” You blinked and could feel the heat rising in your cheeks.

“Uh-” Your confidence was wearing off now and all you wanted to do was take the stupid dress off. Maybe you could fake a phone call and tell Jonathan dinner had been canceled and you wanted to change. You sucked your bottom lip into your mouth and chewed on it, thinking over the idea.

“I like the dress by the way,” he said, looking away again, “It’s nice.” He paused again for a second and he finally looked right at you. His eyes slid down to your lip and his fingers flexed before he turned all the way towards you, one hand sliding up into your hair. 

“Is it okay if I kiss you?” You nodded, closing your eyes as Jonathan leaned in, his other hand sliding against the silky material of the dress. He tasted like coffee and cinnamon and after a moment of kissing, he pulled back breathing heavily. You smiled a little bit, confidence rushing back to you. 

“If that was your first kiss it was a hell of a way to start.” He smiled shyly and you leaned back in kissing his mouth then leaning back again. 

------

The next three weeks of tutoring ran a little bit longer than expected. It was hard to learn when you were sitting in Jonathan’s lap with your hands in his soft hair.

“Miss (Y/L/N), you have outdone yourself. Mister Byers I’m going have to learn whatever tricks you’re using,” Mr. Kessler said, handing back your test. You laughed and looked at your feet while Jonathan blushed profusely. 

“Thank you, Mister Kessler,” you giggled, grabbing Jonathan’s wrist and tugging him into the hall. It was the last period of the day and you kissed Jonathan goodbye so he could drive Will home. It was a Friday night, and as usual, your parents were out. They did drinks and trivia two towns over with their college friends every Friday night, which left you, the “goody-two-shoes” in charge of your sister, who spent all her Friday nights next door with her best friend, usually stirring up trouble. 

Recently Jonathan had been spending his Friday nights with you, trying to avoid his mom and Bob. He would drop Will off at Mike’s and come over till he had to bring Will back home. 

You pulled into the driveway and your sister dashed into the house just long enough to drop her bag and grab her sleepover stuff. 

“Bye, (Y/N)!” You laughed and walked into the house, leaving the front door unlocked, going up to your room. You slid open the door to your closet and a soft blue dress caught your eye. With a grin you tossed your jeans and sweater into the closet, slipping the dress on. You pulled your hair up and smoothed out the flyaways, trying to get it perfect. It leaned slightly to the left, but you shrugged and clasped a silver necklace around your neck with your initials on it. It rested just above the drop in the neckline of your dress and you smiled to yourself in the mirror. Perfect. 

The front door opened a few minutes later and you tossed your book onto your desk, listening to the latch click. Only Jonathan ever locked the front door. 

“(Y/N)?” You stood up as Jonathan came up the stairs and he stepped into your room. For a moment he just stared at you and then he kicked the door shut behind himself. 

“I know that dress.” You nodded, letting his hands slide against your body, the fabric running through his fingers. 

“I got it for you,” you said, looking down with a grin. 

“Oh?” His head quirked to the side and you bit your lip, watching his gaze travel down your body. 

“I got it just so you could take it off.” 

“That’s more like it,” Jonathan whispered into your ear. The sudden dominance surprised you and Jonathan kissed you, one hand resting on your lower back, the other against the back of your neck. His kisses trailed down your neck and you gasped when Jonathan pushed you backward, your knees buckling at the edge of the bed. You fell back and Jonathan kicked off his shoes. 

“You know, that first day. I wanted nothing more than to see what’s under this dress.” You rolled over and Jonathan’s quick fingers undid the clasp and unzipped the dress, sitting you up so you could slide it off. Once you were finally free of the material Jonathan stood absolutely still for a full minute just looking at you.

“I want to take a picture of this moment,” Jonathan mumbled, his lips back against yours, “But it wouldn’t be right.” You were tempted to scoff, but didn’t, just tugged at the bottom of Jonathan’s shirt. He shook his head, pushing you back down onto the bed. 

“I want you just like this, vulnerable and open. I want to watch you fall apart, (Y/N).” You suppressed a moan and he shook his head. 

“I want to hear you. I want to hear every sound you make when you hear the sound of my voice. I can get everything from a picture except the sound you make when you come.” This time you did moan, head falling back. The sound was natural, primal, and Jonathan’s hand touched your neck, fingers trailing down your bare body before resting on your side.

“I’m going to fuck you.” The words made you gape. It had been weeks of soft touches, then hard kisses, and now, finally, Jonathan was fully out of his shell. 

“Hard,” he added before his lips attached to the hollow of your throat. Just by the stinging from his teeth, you could feel that it would be purple tomorrow. You couldn’t find the mind to care. 

“Please,” you moaned, “Now.” You could feel him grinning as he came back up to kiss you, and as he pulled away he bit your lip before tossing his shirt away and unbuckling his belt. You closed your eyes and listened to the sound of Jonathan trying to keep himself in check, labored breathing giving away his own arousal. You opened your eyes when you heard foil tear and Jonathan paused, his cautious nature taking over for the moment. 

“Are you okay with this?” You almost laughed. 

“Jesus, Jonathan, I was ready for this the first time I put on that goddamn dress. Fuck me.” His eyes flickered for just a moment before he pushed you back down onto the bed and you watched him roll a condom onto his hard length. You didn’t know what to expect with this Jonathan. You’d only gotten so far once and been violently interrupted when your sister entered the house. This time, however, everything was peacefully quiet aside from the sound of Jonathan sucking in a breath when you pulled him down onto you. 

“Ready?” You nodded, and Jonathan pushed into you. Both of you moaned at the feeling, your head lolling back onto the bed and Jonathan’s resting on your shoulder. 

“Fuck, you feel so good.” You put a hand on his hip, cautioning him for a moment while you got used to the feeling of him inside you. You could feel the muscles below his skin full of tension and ready to release it at any time. After a moment you pulled your hand away and Jonathan’s hips pulled back before pushing in again at full force. Your moan had Jonathan grabbing for the sheets to keep himself contained. 

“Jesus, (Y/N), you’re so hot. Fuck.” Jonathan’s hips set a quick pace and your hands traveled up the skin of his back into his hair, pulling his face to yours so you could kiss him. You knew that you would never hold for long, not with the two of you not with the sound of Jonathan's voice. 

"Shit, (Y/N) you feel so good. Fuck, you're so tight and hot. Shit." Jonathan tended to keep swearing for more grueling moments and hearing him swear made you want to let him do whatever he wanted. 

"Jonathan, I'm close. I'm so close. Shit." It took just a moment, two thrusts to just the right spot, and you came, moaning as you threw your head back. Jonathan’s face rested against your neck as he continued to thrust till he came crying out your name. He pulled away from you after a moment of panting and grabbed a dirty shirt off of your floor to clean the both of you up. Before lying back down he pushed open the window, a spring breeze coming through your room. You could hear your sister playing in the yard next door and sighed contently, sliding under the covers with Jonathan. 

“We should get dressed, just in case,” Jonathan said. He was so cautious and sincere, which were just some of the million things you loved about him. 

“Jonathan?” He turned from where he was pulling his shirt over his head. You were standing in the middle of the room wearing a tank top and underwear with a soft smile on your face.

“Wait, wait. Don’t move.” You knew that sound and you didn’t dare shift anything. He grabbed his camera from where he’d left it on the table next to the door and snapped a photo of you, hair messy and skin flushed. 

“Sorry, you looked perfect in that moment, and with the dress on the floor. I just wanted to remember everything about it.” You grinned and took a step forward, wrapping your arms around his neck. His hands found their way to your back, pushing your tank top up so he could rest his fingers on your skin.

“I love you,” both of you said plainly. You burst into giggles and Jonathan laughed. 

“I love you,” he said again, kissing your head.

“I love you too, Jonathan Byers.” 

[titusreno]

titus and reno

new first chapter draft idea

Reno

The sun was in my eyes as Benja launched his elbow into my solar plexus. His mask was sagging down the side of his face with sweat, the nylon snake eyes staring unnervingly at me, hollow with shadows. Behind him, the trees rose up from the swamp that had swallowed the old neighborhoods of Cypress Hills. I could hear the cry of seagulls and the thrum of cicadas. I stumbled backwards, trying to catch myself before I fell against the rough pavement of the road. I wrapped my arms around Benja’s neck and shoved hard with my knee into his stomach. He hadn’t expected it, and he lost his footing enough that I was able to hook my arm under his throat and spin him backward, moving fast enough that my momentum carried him. Benja was bigger than I was, but I had enough leverage that it just barely worked. I kicked him again in the chest as he fell backward, landing on his ass. I followed him down, grabbing for his mask and just barely getting it up over his eyes. I tried to let out the kind of howl that Benja did when he was competing, deep and guttural. I bent over him with my knee in his chest, pressing his face into the pavement. I could feel his breathing, fast and ragged. Benja coughed and looked up at me.

“Okay, fuck, time. Uncle. Whatever.”

Behind me, I heard Pancake laugh. He and Rustler were sitting at the edge of the practice ring, smoking, their legs extended just over the yellow line on the pavement.

“Was that your frog yell, Reno?” Rustler asked.

Benja laughed. “He’s learning from me, he’s gonna yell. I’m gonna teach him to yell. It’s cool.” He sat up, rubbing the blood from under his nose with the back of his hand.

“You aren’t mad that he’s stealing your thing? Your whole trademark?” Rustler let out a long puff of smoke. The smell carried over to me, pungent and green.

“You might wanna work on a kind of loud ribbit,” Pancake said. He snorted and tried to approximate the noise a frog makes.

I helped Benja up.

“I’m gonna get you back next time,” he said, reaching up to yank the frog mask off my head. “But that was pretty fucking good. You stepped it up since last time.”

I laughed. “That’s because you nearly killed me last time. I had to protect myself.” We walked over to where Rustler and Pancake sat. Overhead, the clouds moved faster and faster over the edge of the horizon, leaving the late afternoon sky a thin, dirty blue. The double electric fences at the edge of the facility reflected the light back in large flat gleams of yellow. I had to squint to see anything. “When am I going to fight you, Rustler?” I thumped him on the back as I sat down.

Rustler grinned, in the slow, half-lidded way he has. His eyes are darker than most other people’s at Auxie Mautlin, and his hair is almost as long as mine. He’s strong and about as beautiful as any of us here get. His legs are half the size of my torso. “You may need to wait a little. You get a little bigger or I get a little sicker. One of the two. If you wait about six months you’ll be able to pulverize me.”

“Don’t say that,” Pancake said. “You have at least a couple years.”

“Dude,” Rustler said. “Don’t bullshit. I’m eighteen already.” His voice was still measured, but his tone shifted a little. “You know I don’t have that long.”

“I bet you’re still gonna be the strongest Fore for a little longer, though,” Pancake said.

“Well, let’s hope.” Rustler offered me his joint, avoiding Pancake’s eyes. I took a hit and passed it to Benja, whose nose was still bleeding.

It isn’t a total taboo to bring up the worms when you’re hanging out with friends. Obviously, we all have them. But talking about death is something else. I remembered Rustler’s friend Foz, who was the biggest Fore when I first came to Auxie Mautlin with a selection of other piggos from my work camp. He had won sixteen matches my first year in the dorms, before the boils under his skin got larger and he started having seizures and was removed to the late-term infirmary. We don’t know how long he lasted after that. We aren’t allowed to visit the hospice units—they’re three miles away.

I got infected when I was two or three, which means I probably have longer than Rustler and definitely longer than Pancake, who had the worm in him already when he was born. They take about sixteen years to start affecting your central nervous system in a serious way, though some piggos start getting headaches at age fifteen.

“Do you guys wanna go take some K-po with me in Caldegot?” Benja asked, after a couple minutes of silence where the only noise came from the seagulls and the sound of the distant gymnasium, where the letlets were still having their phys-ed class.

Pancake laid back on the pavement. “Nah, I hate the stuff it makes me see. It’s all like, purple dripping. Like every time. And those weird stars. It makes me feel all weird and out of it.”

Benja looked at me.

“I haven’t ever taken it,” I said, which was true. I’d had hits off joints that Rustler got from the truck driver that brought the cricketbev and frozen chicken, but never anything else. K-Po was newer, rarer. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. “It’s like LSD, right?”

Rustler laughed. “It’s just fertilizer.”

“No, man, it’s real,” Pancake said. “You do really see shit.”

“No, I know,” Rustler said. “But it really is just fertilizer. Potassium, you know. Potash. It only works because potassium makes the worms in our guts release weird chemicals. It does it to anyone with the worm. If we were healthy, it wouldn’t do anything.”

“Is that true?” Pancake said. “I for sure thought it was like, a party drug someone snuck in.”

“Pancake, you’re a dumbass,” Rustler said. I couldn’t tell what his tone meant. Pancake looked a little hurt, but he might have just been out of it.

“I wish I knew where they got it,” Benja said. “I guess it’s from the garden sheds. But those are locked down. It’s some girl in Caldegot. She’s got like a total monopoly.”

“It can’t be Kacky,” Rustler said. “I thought she got sicker.”

“No,” Benja said. “Her name’s Jenny.”

“Huh.” Rustler stretched and stubbed the joint out on the pavement. “Well, you know, whatever. I’ll go over there with you if you’re going. Reno, you wanna see some weird purple stuff with us?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to eat fertilizer. “Does it do anything to like, hurt you? Do you get like hungover or strung out or anything?”

“If you take too much,” Benja said. “But we won’t. You have to stay in top shape if you’re going to be able to beat Fib.” He punched my shoulder hard. I flinched a little, but less than I used to when I first was training with him. Benja tries to act tough and rowdy all the time, like he’s so strong he doesn’t know his own strength. I guess sometimes I do too.

As we walked over to Caldegot, I felt the sweat prickle uncomfortably down my back and run down my face. My hair melted against my ears and the back of my neck with sticky intensity. January isn’t the hottest season, yet. That’s still July and August, when temperatures can get into the middle hundred-forties and we all have to stay in the underground dormitories where the air conditioning gets pumped in through dry metal vents. But January is hotter than it was when I was born. I’ve heard that in the part of the country where Auxie Mautlin is, it used to get down to ten degrees in winter just a hundred and twenty years ago. There would have been snow. In the history classes we take, they show pictures of it. Once Mrs. Y showed us a picture of Queens, New York during a blizzard in 2015, the old cars buried in feet of snow, a bicycle completely cemented onto the sidewalk by mounds of shellacked ice. Now, January is hot, and it gets hotter every year, but they don’t let the older piggos go inside for gym because it is still supposed to be winter. When we ducked into Caldegot through a side door, the rush of cold air made me breathe a heavy sigh of relief.

The old dorms at the edge of Auxie Mautlin are different from the ones on the south side of the facility. The south dorms used to be a community jail, so they’re built with thick, bunkerlike cement and heavy doors. The Caldegot and Armistad dorms are just big brick buildings that used to be warehouses, and are almost three hundred years old. They remodeled them inside with the same fabric walls and florescent lighting as the other dorms, and they still have checkpoints and cameras, but they’re lower security than the Bertol or Musk buildings that the letlets live in. I was lucky to get in Armistad when I moved last year. It’s easier to get out to the roof or sneak to matches. I’ve heard older Fores say that things used to be stricter, but the facility is getting harder to staff and the older minders care less and less what we do. I guess that’s good luck.

Jenny’s room, a triple on the third floor, was already full of people when we got there. At least three of them were girls I knew from class. I hadn’t seen Jenny before except from a distance. She was oddly sinewy and sharp-looking, with long hair plaited into two braids that fell across either collarbone. Her uniform was opened to her belly, and I could see the faint sweat gathered at the top of her stomach. She was wearing one of the regulation bras, but pulled down a little, and I could tell that some of the boys were looking at her chest. She sat on the edge of her bunk bed, counting out small packets of something wrapped in brown paper towel. It felt so shady that I almost left then, but Benja moved to sit down next to one of the younger Caldegot girls and raised his eyebrows at me, so I moved inside the door and stood there.

Jenny looked at me. “You with Benja?” Her eyes were as black as Rustler’s. I figured she must be from the Arizzy worktown. I didn’t know any of those piggos very well.

“Yes,” I said.

Jenny nodded. She looked over her shoulder at the bunk above her and craned her neck. “Titus, get three more sets going,” she said. For the first time I noticed the scrawny boy in the bunk above her. He was hunkered down, portioning powder out into the paper packets. His dark hair was almost as long as Jenny’s, and fell across his face. His uniform shirt was open in the same way Jenny’s was, exposing an expanse of pale brown-pink skin that went down to his belt line. He grunted in response to Jenny’s command. Then, in a single long, lazy motion, he wrapped what looked like three packets of the orange powder. He tore each packet off after pouring the fertilizer—or whatever it was—onto the paper, and folded them into little squares. He licked the edges of the squares to make them stick, then looked up directly at me with a strange, unreadable glare. He was so delicate-looking that for a second I wondered if I was wrong about him being a boy.

“Here,” he said, and tossed one of the packets at me. I caught it and looked to Benja, who reached his hand up for his packet. Rustler, who still stood next to me, laughed, maybe at my expression. He ruffled my hair. I would have bristled if we hadn’t all just smoked together. I knew he was trying to be friendly.

“Reno here is going to be taking K-po for the first time today,” he said to Jenny. “Let him know what to do so he doesn’t make a fool of himself.”

Jenny looked at me closely, then nodded. I felt like I was being assessed. She stood up and brushed off her pants briskly. “Do you know what I do here?” she asked me.

“Um,” I said. “I guess I’m not really sure. You give people fertilizer to eat?”

One of the Caldegot girls snickered. The scrawny boy on the top bunk tensed, and I wondered if I might get myself in trouble if I sounded like I was insulting her business model.

“Well, yes,” Jenny said flippantly. “It’s fertilizer. But it is very important, cool fertilizer, because it lets the worms in our bodies show us things.” She smiled at me. Her canines were sharp, like Rustler’s or Pancake’s. Fighters do that to make themselves scarier. “The hallucinogens that the worms release are remarkably consistent. Right, Pozzlin?” She looked at the girl next to Benja.

“Yeah,” Pozzlin said. “You always see the purple planet.” She turned to me.

“The purple planet,” I said. I had heard people say it in classes. I assumed it was an in-joke in some clique that I wasn’t in on. There were a lot of those kinds of things. Everyone had their groups, their own special language.

“It’s like, a theory, right, that we all see the same waterfalls and birds and stuff—the stars and the sky with two moons and all that. And it’s a theory that that’s because it’s the planet the worm comes from. And it looks like it does because it’s an alien planet. It’s not just an acid trip. And sure it’s all like wavy gravy and you see like paisley and stuff too and colors move and distort, but you always see the same kind of cliffs and oceans and always two moons in the sky.”

Pozzlin let that sink in, smirking smugly at me. Benja was playing with a strand of her hair, and she didn’t seem to mind. I looked around the room for confirmation. People nodded.

“It’s like, maybe crazy,” Benja said, “but it’s like, it is sort of interesting. It’s true that you always see the same stuff. And it looks alien.”

“And we know the worm is alien,” another girl with long tight braids said. “It came here on a UFO.”

“A ship,” Benja corrected her. “A ship with a dead mummified humanoid alien on it. If you’re gonna say it, you gotta say the full crazy thing.” A few people laughed. When the doctors first announced that they were able to confirm the thing about the dead humanoid, back when I was still a letlet, everyone had taken bets on whether or not it was true. It was accepted fact now, but it still sounded crazy. Especially because the pharma companies and the state agencies had been insisting for years that the worm was a mutation of a tapeworm that had been bothering pigs for eons on Earth.

Jenny nodded and looked back to me. “So, it’s fun, right, and it is fun. But the real reason I do this is to get as many people as possible to document, to write down, what they’re seeing. Because I think it really might be the world that the bug came from. And if that’s true, it’s data. Important data.”

“Question,” I said. “How would that work? The hallucinations being like, a message. That’s like. Telepathy, right?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Jenny said.

“Do you think the worms are trying to send it to us?”

Jenny shrugged. “Fuck if I know. That’s why we’re out here. More data the better.”

“Hey Jenny,” a boy I didn’t know said from a corner. “You could get more data if the stuff was free, you know.”

“I have to make a living,” Jenny said. Her voice was mild but firm. “I don’t see you guys sneaking into the garden sheds at night to get this shit, so I can charge whatever I want. And it’s more affordable than it was when Kacky was here.”

I looked over at Benja inquiringly. I didn’t have that much to trade for shit. He shook his head and waved me off as if to say I have this one.

A girl laughed. “Bottoms up for science,” she said, and tipped her orange powder back into her mouth.

“Not yet,” said another girl. She looked at Jenny. “Is it okay to start?” The orange sun filtered down through the window and I felt for the first time how warm the room was. I was sort of thirsty.

“Cheers,” Jenny said. “I’m going to put out the paper and markers in the middle of the floor. When you come back up, draw or write what you saw, okay? Nobody leaves without at least one detail.”

“How long does it last?” I asked.                “Like twenty minutes,” the boy sitting on the top bunk said. I looked over at him and he stared back, unblinking, for a second, before he gave a small grin, as if he had just remembered that it might be a nice thing to do.

I saw Rustler raise his hand and dump the powder into his mouth. After a couple seconds, I did the same. I felt someone watching me and looked up to see the scrawny boy on the top of the bed staring me down. When he caught me looking, he looked away. I noticed that he wasn’t taking any K-po. For a second I thought about saying something to him, to try to ask a question or seem cool. But I wasn’t sure what to say. And then my vision started to swim. It was so instantaneous that I sat down against the door heavily, in shock.

At first it was just colors, and this sense of weird peace bubbling up in my stomach. I felt for a second like looking at the scrawny boy on the top bunk and telling him that I wanted to kiss him—which was weird, though I realized that I sort of did. But then I sank deeper, and the colors started to condense and drip and I started to see real pictures. The room in front of me completely vanished, and my hands and arms felt dense and numb and like they were made of fragile glass.

I saw four figures walking on a moonlit landscape, tall and strangely stretched. I couldn’t see their faces, but I knew they weren’t human or piggo. I felt a cold sensation in my gut at the strange trancelike way they walked, and I tried to turn away, but I couldn’t. I was stuck watching them until they vanished over the edge of the horizon. Then my vision danced again, dissolved into colors, and melted into a new scene. I was on a hill, looking out at a sky of strange stars and a red sun. There were flat plains of weird plants, and spires stretching up that might have been stone or vegetable. I couldn’t tell. Spinning above me were two flat blue moons, and under my feet was an ocean of clear water. When I looked at the ocean, I moved toward it, into it, falling down from the hill so fast that I stretched out my hands to catch myself, sure that I would be dashed against the ground, that the pink rocks at the shore would tear me apart. But they didn’t, and I landed in the water. Worms swam around between my toes, the light shimmering off their opalescent bodies. The sensation was still peaceful, sensual. It took several minutes before occurred to me that these were the worms inside me. The ocean rose up under me and I got cold, as if it were really there. The sky went yellow, blue, deep pink, red. I felt a little nauseous, but somehow was having a really good time.

And then I started to come out of it. The ocean stopped feeling cold and I could feel the hot sweaty dorm room and the bodies on either side of me. The moons above me splintered and vanished, and I felt the floor under me for several minutes before I opened my eyes. As I did, I realized that the boy –Titus—was still staring at me from the top bunk. I felt too dizzy to sit up, and closed my eyes until I felt the world settle. When I sat up again, Titus was gone. Around me, other people were already awake again. They were writing and drawing with the markers that Jenny had provided. As the light stopped hurting my eyes, I looked around and realized they were all drawing basically the same things I had seen—everyone focusing on different aspects of the scenario. Jenny approached me and gave me a pen and a marker and a piece of paper that I realized was someone’s old medical form.

“Draw on the back,” she said. “Emotional woo woo stuff is fine for writing but try to draw as literal as you can.”

I’m not a very good artist, but I tried to draw the hill and the two moons. I tried to describe what I saw. I didn’t want to put any more effort into it than anyone else, but I felt profoundly changed and—I guess disturbed—by the whole thing, and suddenly it felt very important that I be honest and try to actually talk about what it had been like. I thought, well, maybe this is a real thing, a real project.