"Hello, Matthew. I'm Doctor Veronica Sullivan. It's nice to meet you. Would you like to tell me a little about yourself so we can get acquainted?"

Matt Elliot inspected his therapist. The spindly woman leaned back in her chair. Her arms, hands, and clasped fingers were bones wrapped in sheet-thin skin. Veins popped out to an alarming extent. Curly black hair framed a bony face beset with blush and lipstick that didn't quite match the red horn-rimmed glasses resting on a sharp, once-broken nose.

He offered her the basics that any business card or driver's license might contain. Name, age, major descriptors. Aged seventeen. Brown, curly, unkempt hair. Pale skin.

“I'm more interested in your personality, Matt. Would you prefer that I call you Matt?”

“My IQ is high. I listen to metal and independent music. I have few friends. My shoe size is eleven. I am a Virgo, which my mother tells me is a sure sign that I am creative, sensitive, and humanitarian, but that is all raving lunacy."

"Okay, so-"

"I live alone with my mother. That's probably psychologically significant, right?”

Madeline Elliot, a successful heart surgeon and self-proclaimed psychic. Her and Matt never saw each other due to his schooling and her working hours and business-related trips.

“I have no dreams for my future," Matt added after a pause.

The woman cleared her throat.

"Alright, Matt, so tell me why you think you are here."

His mother had decided that therapy was the logical course of action after he had a "goddamn nervous breakdown" early that summer.

"I feel like I'm living in a world of idiots and psychos," he said, mimicking her posture in his cushioned leather chair.

It had been a hot day; he had taken refuge in the crowded but air-conditioned mall with his small group of friends. They joked with each other. One of them, Mike, made lewd hip movements toward a group of passing girls and earned a few kicks from the rest. The crowd swarmed and eddied around them, and at some point Matt's hands started sweating and his vision blurred. The Starbucks and Hot Topic on either side and the sea of people in front of them blended together. He panicked, thinking that he was suffocating, or drowning, or something. He yelled with frightening abandon. His friends drove him home.

"Is that feeling what brought you here, seeking help?" The woman said this in a disengaged, placating voice, her eyes fixated on Matt. They looked bugged out through her glasses.

His solution to what was revealed to be a recurring problem was to become a shut-in. His mother's was to find the cheapest therapist with a verifiable license, insisting all the way that medication was not necessary. Though her salary was certainly not lacking, she happened to be fiscally prude. Matt drove himself to his first appointment.

"Does there need to be anything else? Being the only sane man can be stressful, you know. Terribly stressful. Imagine trying to play the violin in a room full of frenzied chickens. It's like that," he said, kicking his feet up onto her table; a small cloud of dirt rained down from his tennis shoes to its polished surface. She cleared her throat. There was a small twitch at the side of her mouth, as if she was restraining herself from pursing her lips. "Eventually, the violinist is going to snap." He wasn't trying to be humorous; he just wanted a normal human reaction of annoyance out of her.

Matt's gaze wandered around the room. The walls were tinged a calming light purple. The couch was an inoffensive light red. The floor was a uniform dark gray. The small table and cluttered bookshelf were both a dark red polished wood. It was all complimentary; straight out of a color wheel. The picture on the wall behind him was a washed-out scene of a peaceful sunrise. A sunny garden, yard, and wall of trees were visible through the half-closed window blinds. The lamps weren't too bright. It was all aggravatingly neutral to him, though the familiar tingling of anxiety clutched at his heart, driving it to beat faster.

"When did you first start feeling this way?" Her speech patterns were monotone.

A couple of strange New Age-esque tiki masks, disheveled files, and several rows of therapy-related books were all that occupied her bookcase. Psychological diagnostic manuals. Dream interpretation. Anatomy. A dated GRE test guide. There was a feeling close to suffocation in Matt's chest, creeping up into his esophagus, that promised to go away once he left this vastly uninteresting room.

"I would have to check my journal," he said, stroking his chin in a thoughtful fashion, "I'm fairly certain there was an entry labeled 'The Day I Began to Feel Like a Musician with an Audience of Distempered Fowl.' How convenient that I decided to write it down."

The therapist's mouth gave another twitch. "Is there any specific incident that you can remember that contributed to this feeling?" she said in that same tone.

"Are you stupid? Or like, an android unfamiliar with the ways of humans? I'm lying to you."

"Is there something you do want to talk about?" she said, readjusting her glasses with one spindly finger.

Matt sighed and rubbed his eyes, then ran his hands through his uncombed hair. It needed to be cut before it got too wild again, according to his mother. He was on the verge of falling into a stupor. Recent insomnia had finally begun to catch up with him.

"Look, woman," he said with a yawn, dropping his feet to the floor again, "I don't have any psychological problems, but I might develop some if you keep questioning me like this."

"I was told that you were here on account of alleged social anxiety. Would you call that a 'psychological problem'?" There was the slightest hint of a smirk in the shape of her mouth.

Matt massaged his temples.

"I would call that the delusion of an overprotective mother with a neurotic edge. So... sort of?"

After a willfully unproductive meeting with the spindly therapist, Matt drove home, collapsed on the floor in the living room, and let out a relieved sigh. The ceiling fan spun in lazy circles. The phone rang until the answering machine caught it and recorded his mother telling him that she would be home late, gone early, and to cook his own dinner.

He was tired.

Lately, sleep had been slow to come and quick to go, or, as with the last couple of days, absent completely. When he laid down, his mind had been fixated on today's appointment. His body would be chilled, as if he had a cold, and full of restless energy. Something would squeeze his chest, making him force himself to breath. When he closed his eyes, it would feel like he was spinning and about to lift off, out of control.

Now, sprawled across the living room floor, he was similarly reeling. It was the feeling of stepping off the elevator and finding that his body still thought it was moving up or down. Exhaustion conquered his senses, eventually; the world sank into a shaky but calming blackness. It was a dreamless night, eventually punctured by the light of the rising sun that always, invariably poured in through the large, curtainless windows. Matt wondered, as he gathered the will to move and make his waking official, why he didn't sleep somewhere out of the sun's reach.

"Cause I'm stupid," he decided, sitting up.

The early part of the day began and passed quietly. Only the ticking of the clunky analog clock and his picking at the strings of his father's old guitar raised voice over the delicate silence. White floor. Off-white walls. White ceiling. Gray couch facing a blank wall. For a long while, it seemed, reverberations of the guitar at each strum were sent into his body, rooted firmly on the carpet, leaning against the side of the couch. The doorbell sent a real jolt through him.

It was Sam, a friend. Matt let open the door after a few deep breaths.

"You look awful," Sam said.

"Are you referring to my unwashed appearance, or do you mean in comparison to your angelic face?"

"Mostly the first. Can I come in?"

"Watch the angst. It pools up in the corners, but you can avoid it if you're vigilant," Matt said with a lazy beckoning motion, and retreated back to the comfort of the couch.

Sam was in a plaid button-up shirt. He must have finally gotten a date with the nerdy girl he had been lusting after all summer, Matt deduced. Sam's blond hair had been completely shaved recently and his light acne covered in makeup. Despite how formal he looked at the moment, there was still a giddiness that never left Sam; his heel tapped up and down in an antsy way whenever his weight was not on it, and little distractions caught his gaze easily. Every time Matt saw him, he got the feeling his friend was just grinding his teeth, chomping at the bit inside, waiting for someone to challenge him to a footrace.

A puff of air whooshed out of the cushion when Sam dropped down next to Matt on the leather couch. They stared at the wall.

"So?" Matt offered, to kill the long silence.

"It's like a normal couch, really."

"Your date."

"It was like a normal date, really." Sam continued his deep stare into the off-white wall.

"Complete failure?"

"Mmm." A detached nod.

"You're a killer," Matt said, nudging Sam's arm with a fist. "Thinking about turning to the all-male team if you can't catch any chicks?"

"No."

"It can always be a last resort."

"I came over to cheer you up," said Sam, massaging his eyes with his palms.

"Your unhappiness does bring a smile to my-"

"Shut up, Matt."

"Okay."

They laid their heads back and stared at the ceiling, jaws hanging open. A minute ticked past, painfully slow.

"No wonder you're like this. This place is depressing," Sam said with a groan. He poked at Matt's ribs. "And you're emaciated." His foot was tapping excitedly again. Matt knew and dreaded the next suggestion.

"Sam..."

"Let's head out somewhere!"

"I'm n-"

"Yes, you are. Get yourself presentable."

Matt dragged his feet, but soon was in Sam's car, clean-shaven and wearing fresh jeans and an only slightly wrinkled t-shirt.

"I'm proud of you," Sam shouted over the sound of his car's offensively loud engine, the air whipping in through the open windows, and the Pink Floyd blasting out of the stereo.

"The least irritating way to deal with you," Matt shouted back, "is to humor you."

Distinctly summer heat closed in on the two when the car stopped, like a hot tub turned up just too high. Sweat, which before had only been threatening to bead up, began dripping almost immediately from every pore.

"How many synonyms are there for 'sweltering' and 'suffocating', do you think " Matt said to Sam, already yawning from heat-induced lethargy, "because I'll bet they all apply to this weather."

"You should be thankful for this opportunity to bond with our mother star. Get up."

The rest of the gang was there, strewn across the lawn. Mike had apparently flopped himself down hours ago in the shade of the giant dead birch tree that marked Sam's house on the block. A trail of thoroughly flattened grass was left behind as the tree's moving shadow forced him to roll over every now and then to avoid the sun. His latest roll-over had left him face-down with his shirt draped over his head. Mike was far less fat than Matt remembered. He was still the heftiest of the bunch, but instead of being round, he was now packed all the way around with visible traces of muscle.

The skinnier and far less in-shape Victor was somehow still dressed in long pants and a t-shirt with a few buttons at the top to look more formal. Grass was interwoven with short, perfectly combed black hair that he was always checking in every reflective surface with dead seriousness. He appeared to have been laying in the shade as well, but hadn't had the wherewithal to avoid the sun after it found him; his arms were flung straight out to his sides and his legs were together, with one knee slightly crooked.

"Looks like he's been shot," Sam remarked as he pulled Matt out of the car by the arm.

"Or crucified. Leggo."

"You're coming over here and being social." Sam continued to drag Matt, who followed begrudgingly, walking just slow enough to grate on Sam's nerves. "You're a glacier."

"Define 'being social.' Are we going to snuggle with them?"

"Oy! Wake up!" Sam called.

The two stirred for a couple of seconds, then went limp again.

“Let's start a rock band!” Sam said some time later, his voice tired but still excited.

After some futile attempts to rouse the three into organized action, he had surrendered to their laziness.

“Seris'ly?” slurred Matt through the wet blue towel draped over his face. The cloth which clung to his contours and draped in his eye sockets and mouth; when he talked it wrinkled, deformed and emoted in an uncanny fashion.

Sam and Mike lay prone on either side of him, likewise stripped to their shorts, mirroring each other in posture; each with one arm flopped over their eyes, heads turned away from each other, one knee slightly bent. A small house fan, powered by an extension cord running from their small patch of shade in the grassy lawn to the empty house, slowly turned at their heads, blowing warm and muggy air over each of the three in turn before stopping with a clack and reversing directions after a pause. Victor stood, pacing back and forth, following its stream of air.

“I still think the center has the longest exposure time,” said Victor, referring to the fan, in a tone that at the same time as being nonchalant, held an ill-masked argumentative quality.

“Shuddup,” Matt moaned, tired of listening to the quasi-mathematical and heated discussion about which position yielded the most time in the air stream of the fan, and, when attempting to resign himself to the worst spot to solve the problem, being accused of faking disinterest in order to steal the better position, and being forced to move. He resented the motivation he had been able to muster up to bring the fan out in the first place.

Sam, continuing his train of thought, made an uncoordinated and unintelligible gesture with his free arm and said “yeah, we could do songs. I'm the guitarist, or bassist, or something. You could sing,” he nudged Matt with his elbow, “that one's the trianglist,” he waved his hand in Mike's direction without looking “if he can learn how to do it. Vic, you could be a sound man or something.”

“A sound man?”

“You know, the guys with all the dials and the board. They're really important.”

“I play the drums, you know. And isn't Mike a great guitar player? And singer?”

Mike was silent except for his slow and heavy breathing, suggesting he was either asleep or vastly uninterested.

“You play the drums?” Sam said after a beat, then continuing as Victor began his answer by exclaiming “perfect! I'll write songs.”

Victor made some sort of grunt that might have been approval.

“The heat's messin' with yer brains,” Matt groaned, wrinkling his cloth face with an indiscernible expression.

Silence followed, punctuated by the slow, rhythmic clack of the fan.

“We should go to the pool,” said Sam, snapping his fingers, as if doing so would spark a sudden outpouring of interest and agreement.

“Too crowded,” said the Matt's blue mask after a grotesque yawn.

“Let's see a movie, then.”

“Too expensive,” the towel puffed up with an exhale, and Matt made as if to turn on to his side, facing the mountainous mass that was Mike, but seemed to think better of it and settled on his back again with a sigh.

“Then let's get ice cream,” Sam insisted.

“Too hot,” came Mike's groan.

“Too hot?”

“Too hot to move.”

“I know a place,” Victor announced, pausing his pacing and turning on his heel to face the other three sprawled out in front of him. Hearing no sign of protest, and evidently taking their lifelessness to be anticipation, he waited another dramatic beat before continuing; “my family's private property. It has a forest and stream running through it.”

“Too expensive,” Mike said without moving.

“But it's private property. We just have to ask my grandmother.”

“She's still kicking? Thought you said she'd checked out,” Matt interjected, with a spark of cognizance in his voice.

Victor nodded. “We thought so, but it turns out we were mistaken.”

“'Mistaken'?”

“The territory has been in the family for generations,” Victor resumed. He picked up his pacing again in the fan's wind, “it dates back to our shamanic roots. Actually-”

“So, free swimming?” Matt raised his head and fixated his mask's gaze on Victor for a second before pulling the towel off.

***

As Victor's truck - its engine and other various alarming clangings coming from underneath it loud enough to drown out all hope of conversation - made its way off the main roads and onto what Victor claimed was a "sort of long driveway," Matt had the unfamiliar but very distinct feeling that he was being taken back in time. Paved roads, guard rails, and street signs made of metal, sporting modern destinations, had given way to their ancient counterparts. Street turned to dirt driveway, which turned to a pot hole-ridden dirt path that seemed to have been designed for a vehicle six inches shorter than the truck on either side. "A horse-drawn carriage," Sam mouthed to Matt. They were forced to sit in the center, facing backward, so the upper part of the truck sheltered them from the snagging branches. Victor claimed he was the only one qualified to drive his parents' vehicle, and Mike took the remaining inside seat without a word, leaving the other two to sit in the back.

There seemed to be a drop-off hidden beneath the ferns and thorns on the sides of the path, visible only in small gaps, but enough to bring about an acute sense of teetering on the tip of a ridge, the rotted wooden fences giving none of the sense of security that a guardrail might. Every now and then a rotted, lopsided wooden sign, or sometimes just a sign post, whizzed past uncomfortably close, bringing Matt to wonder if the missing ones had been taken off by a side mirror in the past. Eventually the battering of the branches and high-growing thorns on either side came to a sudden halt, and a small sunny clearing was revealed.

Victor parked slowly and carefully in the driveway, having to navigate around the wildly sprawling thorn bushes, old rusted kitchen appliances, and what appeared to be parts of the house possibly taken off in storms. Similar decorations covered what may have been the yard, back when life was sustainable in this area. "The seventeen-hundreds," Sam mouthed. All three passengers hopped out before Victor stopped the truck, causing him to squawk in protest and enter into an indignant diatribe at their retreating backs about what Matt presumed was vehicle safety. Matt made no effort to contain a snort of laughter when he took in the sight of the house. It was tall and skinny. One too many shutters was falling off and far too many wall boards missing for the place to be considered safely livable from even a squatter's perspective. No lights were visible. Matt squinted through the beating sunlight, not sure if the right side of the house was leaning or if the effect was simply a trick of his eyes.

"Imagine this place at night," he said, nudging Sam with an elbow.

"I'm scared shitless and it's the middle of the day."

"Pussies," Mike growled, taking the first step on the porch, but at the sudden creaking and small snapping sounds, he jerked back with a yelp.

Victor turned to the others at the door, raising his hands in preemptive apology. “Grandmother dislikes strangers in her house, so just wait here,” he said in a rush, then swooped down to snatch a dirt-encrusted key from under the woven welcome mat. There was a click as the door was locked behind him.

Matt seated himself on the steps of the front porch with a yawn while Mike and Sam tried to peer through the unusually heavy black curtains blocking the view through the cracked front windows.

“Do you think she does occult stuff?” Sam asked, his hands cupped around his eyes, face plastered to the window pane, “And like, exorcisms and all that? This might be the coven's hideout.”

“Look at the state of this place. It's probably more of a one-ghoul show,” said Matt, tossing a rock at the heat waves billowing up around him.

Victor returned a minute later, carefully placing the key back in its original position with both a reproving and suspicious glance at Sam and Mike.

“Grandmother is asleep,” he said, “so I left a note.”

“'Asleep'?” Matt said quietly, flinging another rock down the driveway and watching it skitter to a stop between a rusted dryer and a contraption he was beginning to suspect was a torture device from the Inquisition.

“We'll have to stop by on our way out and thank her if she's awake,” Victor said, snatching the next rock out of Matt's hand as he raised it up.

As soon as they set out, the decrepit feel of the old woman's house faded away. It was only in the immediate area that there were mazes of dead thorns, and halves of signs that might have said "KEEP OUT" nailed to trees that had been struck by lightning ages ago. At one point, Sam pointed out deep gouges through the dirt that could have been made by a giant claw.

"There's gotta be something to that," Matt said, suddenly realizing the contrast to the peaceful-looking nature the forest had taken on. No answer from Victor. There were very few batches of thorns visible now; mostly it was bunches of young ferns around evergreens, healthy sallow berry bushes, and a cushy bed of moss covering the entire ground. "It's like her house is a black hole sucking the life-"

"That's enough," Victor snapped from behind him.

Mike's steps grew larger as time passed, and he pulled ahead of the others. He shot conspicuous glances at Sam, who fixed his own gaze straight forward with a strained expression, pretending not to notice, but quickening his own pace to keep up.

"Hey," Victor called. They ignored him. He hopped into a jog for a second but fell back into a walking pace when Matt didn't follow suit. They strolled along behind the other two and took in the scene around them. Redwood and fir trees were spacing out now, and the fresh smell of the moss and bark became sharper and wetter, suggesting their approach to the stream.

"You trying to race me?" Mike's voice drifted back to them. He shoved Sam with one hand, who tripped with a yell.

"This is my normal walking speed! You're trying to race me!" Sam lifted his nose a little higher, straightened his back a little more, and took up even bigger strides. The two were all but running when the sound of trickling water reached the ears of the party.

"Me first!" Mike yelled. His considerable weight was committed to a tackle that sent Sam's smaller body flying. Mike took off at a sprint, tearing up the moss in clouds of dirt with his feet. Sam was soon in pursuit, catching Mike as he was clumsily trying to pull off his clothes with a return tackle. A small smile played onto Matt's lips as the two fell out of sight; a small rise in the ground between them blocked all vision except for an occasional limb being flung up or a shoe soaring away from the fight.

When they made it to the stream as well, Victor excused himself to go get changed into his swimming suit behind a screen of trees and bushes, glancing backward repeatedly with a look of suspicion on his face, as if to make sure no one was watching him. Mike and Sam were both half-undressed and wrestling with each other, grunting and yelling. Matt raised his eyebrows at the sight but let them continue without harassing them with the many homo eroticism-related jabs that came to mind, instead pulling off his shirt and shoes leisurely. He didn't particularly mind getting his shorts - baggy khaki ones he had borrowed from Sam at some point far in the past - muddy and wet.

Slick and spongy clay edged the stream gave Matt the impulse to slide across it in a surfing fashion. He lost his footing immediately, and, with a yelp that was half surprise and half laughter, struck the smooth clay with his whole body and slipped down into the cool stream water, which swallowed him up with a small splash.

The others laughed. Sam broke free from Mike's wrestling hold and scrambled toward the water. He was stopped short when a small, dark-haired, teenage girl pulled herself out of the stream, the water draining like silk sheets from her naked skin- naked except for baggy khaki shorts. She wiped the water from her eyes and stared at them with an inquisitive look. Sam and Mike stepped forward to scan the clear, knee-deep water for Matt, but it was more than obvious that the stream, and the surrounding area, was otherwise empty.

The two watched with a horrid fascination as the girl flinched, seeming to suffer from several consecutive physical blows of shock as she first pulled her long hair away from her face to inspect it, then tried to speak, but grabbed her throat at the sound of her voice, and then caught sight of her own bare body, screamed, and fell back into the stream with another splash.

"Was that... Matt?" Sam asked, stupefied.

Mike grunted, just as stunned.

"Hmm. Might have been."