Oobe [upd] May 2026

Not painfully. More like a rubber band letting go. I shot up through the roof, past the satellite dish, past the low clouds that felt like wet cotton against my face. The town shrank to a circuit board. Rivers became silver zippers. The curve of the Earth appeared, blue and brutal. I kept rising.

At fifty miles up, I met the others.

I fell through every layer, screaming without a throat, and slammed back into myself so hard I bit my tongue. Blood on the pillow. My mother never stopped knitting. The fever broke an hour later. Not painfully

The Earth was a dime. My house was less than dust. My feverish body, that little animal pinned to a mattress, was already being forgotten by the universe. And that was the real terror. Not death. Scale . The absolute, hilarious indifference of altitude.

Then the tether snapped.

I’m the one who did.

Now I’m an adult with a mortgage and a pill for my thyroid. I stand in grocery lines. I return library books. I attend meetings where we discuss “synergy.” And every few months, without warning, I’ll be washing dishes or sitting at a red light, and the floor will go soft. My hands will look like someone else’s hands. And I’ll remember: The town shrank to a circuit board

Don’t look back .