A lot of people called Michael Philips the Guru.

Toby Welsh thought all that self-consciously cool self-mythologisation was bullshit. Michael Philips fashioned himself as a shaman, the wise man of this community that gathered around the broadway after dark. He wore a tiger-print kimono like it was a ceremonial robe, and smoked hash from an ivory pipe. Only those in the know could locate his abode and treat of him for his wisdom. Michael Philips’ wisdom came in little plastic baggies going for thirty-five euro each.

Toby first met Michael Philips by chance a year ago.

Toby Welsh was going to be what the police called a jumper. It had taken him two weeks to decide this was what he wanted to do, and another three days to work up the courage to do it. People were throwing themselves off the apartment blocks on the Indigo Chase estate all the time. The local media kept an annual tally.

The lifts weren’t working. Toby wasn’t surprised. Indigo Chase was about as rundown as they came. As he’d driven into the parking lot between the two towers, he passed countless houses with a boarded up window or two. Most of them still looked lived in. Toby couldn’t really tell. He’d parked the car in an empty spot, and it was nearer one tower than the other. So that’s the one, Toby thought. It was as arbitrary a decision as that. He buttoned up the collar of his coat and headed in.

The tower block had a revolving door. Along the bottom of the various turning planes were black bristles, like horse-hair, but artificial. They swept the floor as Toby pushed through the door. The brushing noise was the only sound he could hear.

The foyer was empty. Toby’s shoes made a clicking sound on the faux marble floor, which echoed sharply, but only once. He moved forward into the reception area, where there was a corridor that went both left and right. Straight in front of him was a window in the wall, with the white letters RE--PTI-N above. The reception desk was abandoned. Dented shutters shielded the gap in the wall. Toby suspected they’d been shut a long time: ‘no poll tax’ was daubed on in red spray paint.

Toby looked both ways down the corridor. There was still no sign of anyone, but at the end of each corridor was an elevator shaft. One stopped only at even-numbered floors; one stopped only at odd-numbered floors. Toby walked up to both; one went up to fourteen, the other to fifteen. He pressed the button for that one.

After a couple of minutes waiting he realised the light behind the floor numbers situated above the elevator doors hadn’t moved. Next to the elevator shaft was a fire escape. Toby pushed open the door and looked up the stairwell.

It took him about five minutes to climb all the way up to the top, by which time Toby’s heart was beating rapidly, and not just because of the exertion.

He pushed through the battered wooden fire door at the top of the stairs and was hit by a cold wind. A shared balcony ran around the entirety of the building, intended mainly for emergency use, but used generally for the dumping of any rubbish Indigo Chase’s inhabitants didn’t dare throw over the edge. Toby stepped around an old television set, the front of which was smashed in.

It was a mild day in March, but up here it felt like January. The wind moaned through the passages and pulled the fire door shut behind Toby with a bang.

Toby headed past the doors of all the apartments. From behind several came noise: pulsing music; shouting voices, perhaps from a television, perhaps not; and from a few, just silence, noticeable only by contrast. Toby kept walking until he was at the corner of the building. There were no apartment doors here.

Taking a deep breath, Toby approached the edge of the balcony and put his hands on the concrete beam. It had a pebble-dashed effect. The stones felt lumpy as a whole but smooth individually. Toby looked over the side.

His heart pounded. I’m not afraid of heights, he’d once quipped. I’m just afraid of falling. He’d considered hanging, but was acutely afraid of messing it up and slowly strangling himself, or if the rope snapped, falling and breaking his legs and lying in agony for days. He hadn’t considered slitting his wrists. He’d heard that never worked, anyway, and if there was one thing Toby couldn’t stomach more than heights it was the sight of blood: his, someone else’s, an animal’s; it didn’t matter.

It was a long way down. He’d been hoping that once he got up and saw how high he was, his vertigo would drive him into some hypermanic frenzy and he’d just throw himself off and not know really what he was doing. But as he stood there, and spotted his car one-hundred-and-seventy feet below, he felt almost serene.

Toby began to hoist himself up onto the beam.

“Don’t bother,” an irritated voice called from behind.

Toby flinched and looked round. The nearest door, about twenty feet away, was open and a man was standing in the doorway, looking at him curiously.

“You jump from here and we’ll have cops crawling all over this building for a week,” the man went on, coming out in only a kimono.

Toby said nothing, but stepped away from the edge. He hadn’t expected to speak to anyone ever again. This was spoiling his concentration.

“You know there was this one guy, jumped a couple of months ago, and they worked out exactly which floor he’d jumped from by the distance he was from the foot of the building and the trauma inflicted to his brain.” The man stopped in front of Toby and sucked in his cheeks as he dragged forcefully on a smouldering pipe.

“I... I’m sorry,” Toby said, flustered.

“Sure you are,” the man said, not audibly snorting but making that expression one would expect someone snorting to make. “Look, man, you want to top yourself, that’s your problem, but at least do it with some consideration, hmm? Some of us round here run businesses of a certain sensitive nature, if you follow me.”

Toby looked into his bloodshot eyes and nodded slowly.

“So, skedaddle.” The man cocked his head.

“I just need a second to think,” said Toby, averting his eyes, starting to feel a slight embarrassed. “I’ll go in a minute.”

The man groaned. “Yeah, right. And the first thing I’ll hear as soon as I’ve shut the door is the thump as you hit the ground. And then the scream of some punk-arse chick finding your bleeding cadaver. And then the sirens. Oh, yeah.”

“I won’t. I promise. You’ve put me off. Really.”

“Well, if it’s all the same, I think I’ll see you out of the building.” Then he gestured with the shaft of his pipe back toward the fire escape door.

Toby didn’t say anything, and didn’t move.

The man sighed. “Thought as much.” He folded his arms.

Toby tried to ignore him and looked out at the other Indigo Chase tower.

“Look, dude, how’d you like if every time someone suicided outside your front door you became a murder suspect?” the man asked, with a stabbing gesture from his pipe. “Especially when that happens on average once every ten days.”

“I guess I wouldn’t like that,” said Toby.

“You guess you wouldn’t like that.”

“T-they won’t think I’ve been murdered, anyway,” Toby stammered. “I’ve left a note in my car. It’s the blue Fiat. It’s right down there.”

The man laughed. “Yeah. Right. They all leave notes. All the cats who piss off their gang bosses and get thrown off the top of here. Shit, it was bad enough when we only used to attract jumpers. Now this place is infamous for suiciding, all the gangs think it’s a suspicion-free way of offing their rats. But the cops, they know.”

“No-one’s throwing me off,” Toby reminded him.

He still wasn’t looking at the man, who was now leaning over the beam.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. He spat over the edge. “Jump or thrown, soon as you hit the tarmac nobody will be able to tell the difference.”

“You can tell them that I jumped, then.”

The man slapped his thigh and laughed. “No way. I am not getting involved. I start inviting nice police officers into my little abode down there and either I’ll get banged up or business will vanish. Either way, it’s not going to happen.”

“Some might say you already are involved,” Toby said.

“No, I’m not. I’m not talking you out of topping yourself. I honestly don’t give a shit if you do or don’t. All I care about is that I don’t get suspected. Getting rid of the likes of you, fucking up my karma though it does, is a hell-load less hassle than getting rid of the cops. ‘Cause they don’t quit.” He paused. “Unlike you.”

Toby glared at him out of the corner of his eyes.

“Don’t say it,” the man said, before Toby could open his mouth. “Because unlike you - obviously - I’ve been here and done this before. Let me guess: I can’t possibly understand what you’re going through. Something like that, right?”

Something like that, Toby thought, but said nothing.

The man sighed. “Look, how much money you got on you?”

“What?” Toby said, turning to look at him again.

He thought the man was planning to rob him or something.

“How much money have you got on you?”

Toby stared at him for a moment, then looked away over the estate. “I don’t have anything. I left my wallet in the glove-box.”

The man sighed again. “Great. So now if I decide to help you it means giving you a freebie. Great. I am a schmuck. Schmuck equals me.”

“What do you mean?” Toby glanced back. “If you help me.”

“Look, you determined to die, man?”

Toby hesitated, then nodded slowly.

“And there’s nothing I can do to talk you down from here?”

Toby shook his head just as slowly.

“Well, I can’t let you jump, I think we’ve established that. But if you’ve made up your mind about shuffling off this mortal coil, dude, there’s a lot easier ways to do it than jumping off buildings or slitting your wrists or whatever.”

For the first time, Toby’s mind opened up to what he was hearing.

“I’m listening,” he said. “How?”

“The only thing you’ve got to promise me is that you won’t do it here.”

“Do what?” Toby asked, genuinely intrigued now.

The man put a palm to his forehead, as if having second thoughts, then let out another sigh and cocked his head toward his apartment. “Come with me.”

He turned round and swaggered away, the tiger-print kimono flapping around his legs in the breeze. He pushed the front door open.

Toby followed with a feeling almost matching trepidation. He wasn’t afraid as such, because what does a man that wants to die have to fear? Instead, it was a curious excitement. Toby sped up to catch the door before it blew shut in the wind.

“Lock the door behind you,” the man said. He didn’t stop. He went straight through a chattering bead curtain into a room at the end of the hall.

Toby hesitated in the doorway whilst his fingers still held the door open. The apartment was dark; the lights were off. The place was warm, but the kind of warmth that comes from never opening the windows. The stale state of the air was to a degree masked by a myriad of subtle yet lingering scents. Toby sniffed deeply. Somehow he didn’t think he was smelling something the man was cooking in the kitchen.

“Go into the parlour,” the man’s voice came from beyond the beads. The last few strands were whipping to a standstill. “I’ll be right with you.”

Toby pulled the door closed, shutting himself in.

The parlour was the first room on his left. Further along the hall there was a second room, presumably a bedroom, just before the bead curtain. The twin towers of Indigo Chase had been built in the Sixties, before the studio flat caught on. Toby proceeded slowly. He’d thought the parlour door was open, but going in he found the door was actually missing. Only the hinges remained. The parlour was darker than the hall, which had received muted lighting through the frosted glass square set into the apartment door. Rays of light cut through the smoke in the parlour from a gap between dark curtains. The walls were also dark, so didn’t help to brighten the room. In what little light there was, Toby saw the wallpaper was a garish pattern of flower prints in primary colours. Very Seventies, he thought. Looking closer he found strips had been torn off the walls. It almost looked like the man had stripped off one layer of wallpaper and found one he liked better beneath.

“You met Brian?” he said, entering the room.

Toby turned, and only then did he notice that what he had assumed to be a big pile of dirty washing heaped on the couch was actually someone curled up, fast asleep. Brian’s face was hidden in the crook of his arm, like a cat.

“Yeah, he’ll be like that for a while,” said the man. “Come over here.”

There were two mismatched armchairs on the other side of the room, in front of which was a broken glass coffee table, one of its four legs replaced by a rolled up, taped up magazine, cut down to size and wedged into place.

“Come on,” said the man, shifting in one chair to get comfortable.

Toby went and sat in the other. The man had a battered black steel box on the coffee table, which looked like a cash tin. It was dripping wet.

“Don’t look so nervous,” the man said.

“You said you were going to help me,” Toby reminded him.

The man nodded as he pulled out a key on a piece of string from around his neck and unlocked the cash tin. He flipped the lid back. It banged the table loudly but Brian didn’t even stir for a moment. Inside the tin was a white carrier bag.

“What’s your name?” the man asked.

“Toby.”

“Mine’s Michael Philips, but don’t ever call me that. I hate Michael, Mike, Mikey, Mick, Mickey. Some people call me Phil. I like that. Some people call me the Guru.” The man grinned. “I like that even more.”

He unwrapped the plastic bag and showed Toby what was inside.

“What is that?” he murmured.

“The best way to die there is,” Michael Philips said.

“You mean, like, an overdose?”

Michael Philips took out one of the musty brown bundles. “This isn’t enough to kill anyone, not even you,” he said, holding it out. “Here.”

Toby drew away from him.

“It won’t bite,” Michael Philips laughed.

Toby slowly held out his hand. Michael Philips dropped it in. Toby rolled it around in his palm. It was almost weightless; it was no larger than a fingertip.

“Is this what he’s on?” Toby asked, nodding at Brian.

Michael Philips nodded. “You got it.” He sat back in his armchair. “He used to be just like you. Wanted to die. Now look at him. Does he look miserable?”

Toby couldn’t honestly tell. “I guess not.”

“If you want to die, but just for a while, try that.”

Toby looked back at the film-wrapped bundle and squeezed it gently.

Michael Philips cleared his throat. “But if you’ve really made up your mind, if you’re really sure, if you really want it to be over, first drink half a dozen double vodkas and then try that. Quick, easy, painless; you won’t feel a thing, I swear.”

“I don’t like vodka,” Toby muttered.

“Whisky, then. Just get pissed. Of course, there’s every chance you’ll fuck up getting that stuff into you, but hey, you wanted to die anyway, right?”

Toby glanced up at him. Michael Philips laughed.

“How do I... you know?” Toby asked.

Michael Philips gave a patronising sigh. “Take the front off the TV.”

Toby frowned, looking round. There was a television set balancing on top of a pile of magazines in the corner. The end of the power cable was snaked around the bottom of the pile like a sleeping boa constrictor. It had no plug.

“Go on,” Michael Philips urged him.

Toby shuffled to the edge of his seat and reached out to the front part of the television set: the part that held the glass over the cathode ray tube. To his surprise, as soon as he’d got so much as a rudimentary grip, it came away in his hands.

On the couch, Brian snuffled and turned over.

The inside of the television set had been stripped and now it was being used as a sort of covert cabinet, with makeshift shelves, and plastic containers on them.

“Grab me the ice cream tub,” Michael Philips said.

Toby reached in and slid out the container that most resembled a litre tub of ice cream. The label on the lid confirmed it. Something inside rattled.

Michael Philips took the tub and peeled off the lid. Inside there were several dozen insulin syringes, all contained within sterile, vacuum-sealed packets, and all topped with a bright orange cap. He took one out and then handed the tub back.

“Here,” Michael Philips said. “This is for you.”

Toby took the syringe and held it delicately in his spare hand.

“It’s actually quite simple,” Michael Philips added, then went on to explain how Toby would first have to dissolve the powder in water and then heat it.

“I don’t know about this,” Toby finally admitted.

Michael Philips gave him a disparaging look. “Balcony still calling to you, Toby?” He cocked his head to one side. “Feel like you’d rather jump?”

Toby shook his head, barely; said nothing.

Michael Philips sighed. “Look, dude, I’m trying to help. If you throw yourself off my building, about ten feet off the ground you’ll probably change your mind. Of course, a fraction of a second later, that’s not going to matter shit. You’ll be dead. I’m not making a judgement about you. Maybe your life is shit, I don’t know. Or maybe it’s just shit now, and maybe you don’t really, honestly, seriously, deep down in your heart, want to stop living, you just want to stop living like you are now.”

Toby looked up at him. “I thought you said you weren’t going to try and talk me out of it,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

“I’m not. I’m just offering you a third way.”

“Third way?”

“A way back.” Michael Philips toyed with one of the bundles. “Wait around a bit and ask Brian what it’s like. He’s quite the poet when he’s not nodding off. He’ll tell you how it’s like dying, and being reborn every time. Going to a place where nothing you feel emotionally or physically or whatever matters anymore, but then getting the chance to come back. But only if you want to.”

Toby looked between the syringe in one hand, the bundle in the other.

“And you will do,” Michael Philips added.

“Will what?” asked Toby.

“Come back.”

Toby looked at him blankly.

Michael Philips chuckled. “But next time, bring some cash. This is the first, the last and the only freebie you will be getting off the Guru, my friend.”

Toby was climbing the fire escape stairs for the third time already this week; over the last year the building had seemed to get progressively taller. Last summer the council had paid to have the elevators in both Indigo Chase towers fixed. That made things easier for a matter of days, until the elevator that stopped at the even-numbered floors of the other tower broke down again. Then some of the residents of the even-numbered floors of the other tower came and trashed the elevator that stopped at the even-numbered floors of this tower. The residents of this tower sought revenge. Now none of the elevators in either of the towers were working anymore.

Halfway up the stairs, Toby had to stop and rest.

“Man, you look strung out,” was the first thing Michael Philips said to him when he opened the door. Toby had had to do the secret knock first.

“Are you gonna let me in or what?” said Toby.

Michael Philips led Toby into the parlour, where Toby flopped onto the couch and closed his eyes. There was nobody else in the apartment.

“You want a coffee, something to drink?”

“Phil, I need to quit,” Toby said.

“Not drinking coffee, surely.”

“I’m serious.” Toby opened his eyes; his vision swam.

Michael Philips chewed his tongue. “Okay. I’ll make that coffee.”

A few minutes later, he returned with two stained mugs that didn’t match and put one down beside the couch. Toby’s ears were ringing and he was sitting forward with his head between his knees, focusing on his breathing.

“You need a bowl?” Michael Philips asked.

Toby didn’t look up, but shook his head.

For a moment, Michael Philips just stood in the middle of the room, one hand tucked into his opposing armpit, the other lifting his mug to his lips.

“How long since you had something?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” said Toby. Even to his own ears he sounded like a child who had been crying. He felt like it, too. His nose was congested; his throat sore.

“You’re withdrawing,” Michael Philips said.

“No shit,” Toby said under his breath.

Michael Philips sighed. “Toby, mate, you know, if this is what you want to do, I’m going to support you, but dude, you really can’t do it here.”

“I need help,” Toby cried, trying to jerk his head up, but finding his neck had stiffened into position. Like rigor mortis has already set in, he thought.

Michael Philips finished his coffee and put the mug down. He picked up the other cup and wrapped one of Toby’s flaccid hands around it.

“Why can’t I stay?” Toby pined.

“Because I have people round all the time. You’re off-putting when you’re like this. People don’t appreciate that it’s just because you’ve overdone it.”

“You mean I hurt your sales.”

Michael Philips ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, Toby.”

“Fuck your sales, man! Fuck them!”

The exertion made him feel dizzy, so he leant forward again. For a while, neither of them said anything. Michael Philips didn’t move.

“How much money have you got on you?”

Toby’s head felt heavy. Maybe it was just his neck still, but he couldn’t lift his face to glare at Michael Philips. So instead he turned his head to the side.

“I might have something for you,” Michael Philips said.

“I don’t want any more!” Toby said, slurred.

“This is something different. Something to take the edge off.”

Toby swallowed; it was hard. “What is it?”

“Something new on the market.” Despite the situation, he suddenly dropped back into the tone of the excited dealer. “I got introduced to it when I was out fishing over Lambeth way. Some guys can’t get enough of it, I can tell you.”

Not what I meant, thought Toby. “What is it?”

“What? You want a chemical formula? I don’t know. It’s not an upper. It’s not a downer. It’s like nothing else on the market. I’ve only tried it a couple of times myself, man. But it’s like… it’s like having temporary schizophrenia, I reckon.”

Toby groaned into his knees; he was unconvinced.

Michael Philips continued unabated: “You see things, and you hear things, but they’re not like hallucinations; they’re so clear it’s like they’re actually there in the room with you for however long you’re tripping out for. And the things you hear, you know, they actually make sense. If you hear voices, you can talk to them; you can have conversations!” He laughed like a child. “You got to try it to understand.”

Toby forced himself to sit up, but slumped into the couch.

“And how is that going to help me?” he sneered.

“Dude, there’s this guy I know, he was just like you, and he wanted to get off the junk, and he started taking this stuff, and he was able to just cut it out completely straight away. It’s like a total mental distraction, just like a downer, but you feel totally elevated, like you’re on a different planet. And the best thing, it’s like totally biologically, medically, physiologically, psychologically, whatever impossible to get addicted to the stuff.” He had started to wave his hands around by this point.

Toby felt like he was going to throw up. He swallowed.

“How much?” he managed to ask.

Michael Philips cocked his head to the side. “How about I give you mate’s rates if you promise to get out of here as soon as you can stand up?”

Toby nodded. “Whatever.”

“Got a fifty?”

“A fifty?” Toby cried.

“This stuff is like nuclear fission for the brain, man!”

“I don’t have a fifty,” Toby lied. Actually, he had two in his wallet, but if Michael Philips was desperate to get rid of him, Michael Philips would take one of the two twenties he also had tucked in his wallet.

“How much you got?”

“A twenty.”

“A twenty?” Michael Philips sounded disappointed. “I’m barely making my money back if I let you have it for a twenty.”

Toby lurched forward, made a retching sound. “A bowl! Quick!”

As predicted, Michael Philips rushed from the room. Rotten though he felt, Toby couldn’t help but smile. This wave of nausea seemed to be passing now.

“Here.” Michael Philips had returned with a plastic bowl.

Toby took it. “I think I’m going to be okay.” Then: “For now.”

Michael Philips stood glaring at him for almost a minute.

Then he sighed. “All right, a twenty, then.”

“Hey, if I like it, I’ll come back for more, won’t I?” Toby said.

“You better,” Michael Philips said under his breath as he left the room.

Whilst he was gone, Toby reached a fumbling hand into his jacket pocket, removed his wallet and then with trembling fingers, plucked out twenty euros. He slid the wallet back inside his coat before Michael Philips got back.

“Here,” he said, holding out a vial.

Toby looked at the liquid sloshing around inside.

“Where’s my money?” said Michael Philips.

“What’s this?” Toby said.

Michael Philips sighed. “You use a dropper and put it in your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“Yes. Your eyes. The money?”

Toby opened the clammy fist with the note inside. Michael Philips swept it away in under a second and dropped the vial into Toby’s palm.

“Thank you,” Michael Philips said sharply, then headed out of the room again.

“How much do I use?” Toby called after him.

He held the vial up to the light coming through the curtains. The vial was made of a hard plastic with a screw-on lid, which suggested to Toby that it contained more than one dose. The liquid itself was black, or perhaps dark blue, and viscous; as he waved the vial in front of him, the liquid evaporated from the inside edges.

“A couple of drops in each eye,” Michael Philips called back.

Toby felt his stomach muscles start to spasm again, sickness rising in his throat. He twisted the lid off the vial and took a sniff. It smelt rancid, like decaying fruit seasoned with a triple distilled methylated spirit. He threw up on the floor.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Michael Philips said, returning.

“Sorry,” Toby mumbled. “Sorry.”

Michael Philips sighed and left for a third time.

“I have better uses for my bleach, Toby,” he called from the kitchen.

“God,” Toby said to himself, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He actually felt a bit better now, wondered if vomiting again would help.

Deciding against it, he held the vial up to the light. I don’t need a dropper, he thought. He sat up straight and tipped his head back over the top of the couch. With his spare hand, he pulled his lower eyelid down, then slowly tipped the vial toward his face. A few delicate taps and he landed a couple of drops on his eyeball.

Toby sat bolt upright, the pain was so excruciating.

“Jesus Christ!” he said through gritted teeth.

It felt like he’d just poured boiling acid into his eye. At once the pain spread around the entire surface of his eyeball, round the back, where no manner of gouging at his eye socket with his fingers could cause it to abate. In fact, it intensified.

“Move your legs,” said Michael Philips’s voice.

Toby hadn’t heard him come back in. He opened his eyes. He could barely see Michael Philips out of his good eye; his tear-ducts were welling uncontrollably. The other eye was completely blind. Toby saw only black.

“What the fuck is this?” he cried.

“Do the other one, then you’ll see,” Michael Philips said calmly as he squatted beside the couch and scrubbed the spot where Toby had thrown up with a pad.

“Fuck that! I’m blind!” He flailed with his legs, trying to get up. Instead he kicked over the bottle of bleach Michael Philips was using to clean the floor.

He heard Michael Philips sigh, then leave the room again.

After a few more seconds, Toby realised the eye had stopped hurting. It now felt cool, numb, like it was under the effect of menthol. Moving it around felt slippery, free and unrestricted. And now his sight was beginning to return too.

He looked around the room, squeezing his unaffected eye shut, but everything was masked by a foggy grey; a bit like cataracts, he imagined. Things were getting brighter and clearer all the time, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Michael Philips came back in with a couple of scrunched up rags that had clearly been allowed to dry whilst screwed up. He began to mop up the bleach.

“Now do your other eye,” he told Toby.

Toby was unsure if he wanted to go through all that again, but weighing up the promises Michael Philips had made about this drug against the expanding aches of withdrawal spreading out from his belly again, he decided: why not?

This time he knew what to expect. He sat back calmly, tapped a few drops into his other eye, then put the ball of his wrist over the socket and concentrated on his breathing until the searing pain reached its peak, and began to subside again.

After about a minute, Toby wiped the tears from his lids.

“Phil?” he called. Michael Philips had disappeared again, leaving one of the rags to soak up the puddle of bleach. Toby had spilt almost half a bottle.

Michael Philips didn’t respond. Toby sat on the couch for a while, waiting for his second eye to become as clear as the first, but if anything, that first eye was still getting clearer. It was almost like the curtains were open now. Toby could see the dark room as if the lights were on. So this is what Phil meant, he thought.

“Phil?” he called again. But again: no response.

Toby shifted to the edge of the couch and placed a surprised hand over his belly. No spasms, no aches, no pains, no nausea. No withdrawal symptoms.

“Phil?” Toby called again, louder, more cheerful now.

When Michael Philips didn’t respond a third time, Toby got to his feet. He felt light on his toes, almost like his eyes felt in their sockets: slippery; free. “Phil?” he called, walking out into the hall.

He could hear a sound from beyond the bead curtain. It was very quiet. Toby didn’t think he was attentive enough to pick up on it normally, but his hearing felt all of a sudden more acute. He could pick out individual beads colliding as he headed toward the kitchen. From somewhere a breeze was swaying the curtain.

“Phil? You there?” Toby called ahead.

Still nothing, but Toby wasn’t anxious. He felt too elated to worry. He walked all the way down the hall and parted the bead curtain with both hands.

What he saw beyond, he didn’t comprehend.

He didn’t have time to.

NOTES:
Despite initial appearances (all 5500 words of them), this is not now, was never intended to be and, if I write any more, won't become, a drugs story. This is like the pre-credits sequence of your favourite TV show - most of it's a teaser for what I envisage happening next. I'm envisioning some near-future equivalent to "CSI", just without the technobabble and with a line of paranoia and mysteriousness more akin to "The X-Files". In a nutshell, Toby gets autopsied in the next chapter and the coroner discovers a strange image seemingly burnt onto his retina. She seeks the help of an eye specialist, who's specialty is not just the physiological but psychological process of sight. Did Toby's hallucination really imprint itself on his eyeball, or is the coroner just seeing butterflies in ink blotches? There's some big subplot about pharmaceutical conspiracies and unexpected discoveries unleashing the untapped potential of the human brain. Yeah, so whilst I started writing this off the cuff, a la "The Rabbits Of Roadkill Turnpike", it would actually need some pretty specific research to make some of this outrageous stuff even remotely plausible. We'll see.