The Gateway Experience

“The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room,” his voice menacingly oozes over the metal railing of the alcove as if it were sticking to my now goose-bumped arms.

He dramatically rolls his hand as his upper lip uncontrollably twitches into a smirk. His black leather shoes clink on the metal stairs, that wind in a spiral, down to the bottom floor. His steps echo, bouncing off the concrete warehouse walls. We appear to be in a makeshift apartment.

“Fuck you,” I growl.

Pipes creak. Rats scurry inside the walls. Water drips.

Sweat slides from my forehead, down past my nose, and my right leg tingles, almost asleep. I stamp the floor quickly to wake it up as he continues to languidly glide over to me. I stand near the large window, overlooking the Westside of the city.

He approaches. Tilts head. Crosses arms.

He grins.

“What, you don’t like my writing? I always thought it would be a good line. I’m a writer here, in this dimension,” he now arrives at the bottom step.

“What year is it?” The upper part of my lip quivers.

Outside, Portland is flooded. What dimension is this? The tops of taller sky scrapers peek just above the water while debris clumps on the sides of buildings. Beyond the horizon is… the ocean?

My heart pounds. How do I get out of here?

“Material woes… into your personal energy conversion box…” Robert Monroe’s voice from the audio tapes drifts into my memory.

He steps closer. I feel my pelvis quiver. Red splotches creep up my neck toward my chin. I stretch my hand behind, toward the wall, reaching for the metal pipe to strike him with. It’s no use.

Telekinetically he pulls me to him. My pelvis thrusts forward as my body slaps into his. He holds my waist with one arm. His large hand wraps around my chin and neck, directing my face to look at his. I shut my eyes.

His thumb nudges an eyelid open. His pupils dilate. A vein in his temple pulses.

“Kiss me.”

“What year is it?” I try and pull away from him. His grip tightens behind my head and waist.

“Kiss me,” he angrily shoves my face toward him.

Glass shatters. Water cascades into the room from the outside, gushing into the warehouse apartment. It rapidly races toward our feet.

“Please, tell me the year,” I beg.

He nudges my nose closer to his. Pushing against the force of his hand, I turn my cheek to the right.

Concrete apartment. Radiohead poster taped to the wall over the bed. Black cordless phone sitting in a phone port on the kitchen counter. A large clunky television box, a VCR next to it. Videotapes line a bookshelf.

Starting Sunday Long-Distance Callers Will Have to… Remember 1-503…

The Oregonian article is held by a Donald Duck magnet on the white Energy Start refrigerator.

His thumb and index drill into my temple as I strain to see the date on the article. He presses harder into my face, pushing his lips mere centimeters from mine. Water rumbles around our entangled bodies, almost waist level.

It clicks.

“1996, the Willamette Valley Flood. Except, in this dimension, the entire valley was ocean level; underwater,” I sneer.

The water in the warehouse apartment separates, one wave of water behind each of us as if Moses himself was parting the Red Sea. Our bodies pull apart, we’ve flipped to opposite polarities. I summersault back. I squint my eyes. Hold my breath. Prepare to hurl into the concrete wall behind me.

But I don’t.

I float.

I don’t, feel anything.

Fuck. I’m in the Anywhere. I curse to myself.

I’m no longer in the warehouse apartment. Around me, it’s pitch dark. Black. Nothing but a few speckles, a few dots of white light. He’s gone.

We’ve disconnected.

However, he’s bound to find me.

I can’t breathe, I have no lungs, nostrils, or a physical body in this dimension. One can only think here.

"If you stay stuck here too long, you could cease to exist," Dr. Geeser’s voice immerges from memory. "The Anywhere should only be used as a holding spot until you—"

I think aloud, “Portland Oregon, I must have been twenty-eight!”

I smack into a plastered white wall face first.

My head nearly misses, by only inches, a framed portrait of two women laughing in a park. I stumble back, cradling my nose in between my index finger and thumb. I whip my neck around. Another apartment.

With a throbbing temple, I step away and adjust my footing. Blood starts pooling in my sinus, and I point my nose down. Black high-top converse tucked under light blue high-waisted jeans sight beneath me. A speckle of bright red blood drops onto my white t-shirt.

A smaller living room. Two oversized cream-colored sofas align against the walls. A monstera plant cranes its leaves underneath a window where a bright ray of sun pampers it. Outside, a water tower stands above a green grassed circular park where the Freemont Bridge cascades over the river only blocks away. The sidewalk below looks to be a twenty-story fall. No balcony.

“Downtown Portland. The Pearl District,” I mutter under my breath.

No floods here. At least. No CIA Dimensional Target Agents here. I hope. No creepy men. I pray.

Outside, people stroll along the sidewalk that wraps around the mini park. Squinting, I make out a man with black hair, bouncing a chihuahua, and a thin red-headed woman walking with him, scrolling on her phone. Another woman, likely thirty, damn, hourglass figure with burgundy Pam Anderson locks power walks in a tight pink jogger. Some kids running in the grass. One of them lifts their left shoe in disgust. Stepped on dog waste, I’m certain. An older couple holding hands on a park bench—

The front door rattles. Keys jingle behind the knob. I stumble, nearly tripping on the bohemian-styled coffee table.

The door swings open. A taller woman, with thick coiled locks the shade of a dark blue, almost that of midnight, freezes and drops her Trader Joe’s grocery bags.

“Kit!” Rae rushes toward me, simultaneously kicking the groceries that fell to the floor inside and slamming the door shut.

Tears well-up behind my eyes. She extends her arms and I collapse into her embrace. She rocks me. I fall to my knees; she falls with me. My blood dampens her green plaid button-up. She pushes my face away and kisses my cheek.

Snot dribbles from my nose, “What year?”

Rae’s expression droops. A bowling ball lands in the pit of my stomach. She wipes my tears with her thumbs while cradling my face with her palms.

“You don’t know?”

“I just got here,” she confesses, “I’ve only been here a week.”

“So you know—”

“Yes, it’s 2022, but—”

“What do you mean, but?” I sit back on my knees, blood dripping down from my nostril, “Who’s apartment is this?”

She stands, lunging toward the kitchen counter where the paper towels sit. Ripping a section off, she shoves the wad into my hand, “It’s my apartment, I live in the Pearl District in this dimension too. I’m an influencer here.”

My eyes scan her face, “Then what’s the problem? We’re in our home dimension?”

She shakes her head from left to right, “No, Kit. In this dimension, women are losing their rights. Roe V Wade was overturned. Women in Iran have started a revolution. There’s this woman, she actually lives in the Pearl, she’s starting this insane movement—”

Roe V Wade was codified in our home dimension. Taken care of in the nineties.

“What?” I croak.

“Yeah, this one’s weird, Kit. Seventy percent of leadership in congress are men. Only nine percent of CEOS for fortune five hundred companies are women—”

The urge to vomit rises to my throat. In our home dimension, it was split fifty-fifty. There was still war—

“The Russian and Ukraine conflict is present in this one, like ours, but it’s not as severe here. For some reason. I don’t know,” she extends her hand.

I take it, and pull myself from the floor, “I wonder where the hell I live?”

She nods, “Next door.”

“Next door? Taps?” The image of my fat tuxedo cat jumping into my lap flicks in my mind like a movie reel.

Rae bites her bottom lip with her top teeth. She wobbles her head back and forth to signal ‘no.’

My heart aches. I stand up, “How was I?”

“Before you merged? You were fine. The same. You date men here, though.”

I wrinkle my forehead in disgust, “I’m a fucking lesbian, I will not be bisexual—”

“You got a boyfriend actually; his name is Buster.”

A car honks from outside. The air conditioner in Rae’s apartment turns on.

A bubble of laughter emerges from my lungs and escapes my mouth, “Buster?” I exclaim.

Rae puts her hand over her mouth, giggling.

“Buster?” I repeat again, speechless, “That is the most—”

“I know, I know. I think it’s because this dimension is so anti-women. I think sexualities can get flopped. Or rather, hidden and buried. And you don’t present as bisexual here. You’re straight. Look,” Rae extends her finger toward the mirror on the wall near the door.

I lunge, still holding the paper towel up to my nose. All the colors. The pink, purple, and blue. The half-shaven side. It’s gone. My septum piercing. Gone. Staring before me is a thirty-year-old woman, with blonde wavy locks cut neatly, slightly above her breasts. Injected lips puckered. Eyebrows arched as high as Mount Everest.

I turn to face Rae, whose mouth slightly downturns at the corner, “You can dump Buster and dye your hair, Kit-Kat.”

Heat swells in my chest. I march to the trash and toss the blood-stained paper towel into it. Reaching for another paper towel, I stammer, “Then I’ll leave this one.”

“Kit—”

“No. I’m leaving this one and getting back to our home—”

“Sweetie. The Gateway tapes are in this one too. The method is slightly different here. I’ve been trying every day. We can’t leave without completing these ones in this dimension. We have to go through the exercises again, through all the meditations again.”

Thirty-six hours of dread loomed before me. Thirty-six hours of binaural beats, agitated fidgeting, and staying stuck.

A dangerous timeline to be forced into. For women, at least.

____________________

Message to the Vocal reader:

The Gateway Experience is, in fact, based on the real-life tapes of Robert Monroe and the investigation done by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Their findings have been deemed questionable, but nonetheless, the United States government did take an interest in altered states of consciousness without the use of substances. The characters, events, and plot of my story are fictitious, however, and do not represent real states of consciousness, people, organizations, or events. If you’re interested in learning more about the study, feel free to check out or browse the internet for the Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process report, written and vetted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

This writing piece is in conjunction with the first writing piece I recently placed with. I’ve been using competitions to flesh out my storyline, as I have the plot to still work through. Please see my original posting on my profile titled The Gateway Experience Wave 1: Discovery Orientation for a deeper dive and the initial start of the story.

I appreciate the Vocal community for giving me the nudge and motivation to work on this novel while I finish up other writing endeavors, including my book, another writing piece, which is to be queried soon: Dictateher.

It’s much appreciated!