A door in a landscape I wouldn’t have chosen — a flat patch of grass, a nonspecific tree that could easily grow across the street from where I live.

I am petulant: Am I not in charge of where I go? I tell the scene to change. It obliges by taking a gigantic bite off the top of the wooden door. Is it matching my pettiness, or did a dinosaur leave that bite mark?

If I cannot speak to Shame, I want to speak to Not Shame.

Nothing arrives.

The scene doesn’t last. I try to see the karsts, but they’re too … used, perhaps.

I am perched on an rock overhang above a pool of stingless jellyfish. There are two places on Earth where they live, both closed to tourists.

I lay on my belly, my arms hanging off the ledge, and watch the pink ripples of movement in the water, watching for Not Shame. I look for someone swimming with the translucent masses below, and imagine what it must be like. I wish I could do that.

Well, why can’t I?

I’m in the water, each pass and whoosh of a jello-scrubbing-bubble leaving a slick slip slip on my skin. I’m here, but I’m not, because I don’t believe it, I won’t accept it, even though they’re practically flinging themselves at me. I can’t stay present enough to enjoy it, and too soon, I’m dragging myself onto shore, dripping, exhaling.

A jellyfish slimes up onto shore next to me, heaving.

Are you Not Shame?

It is not, or at least it doesn’t say yes. Instead, it expands upwards and outwards, now a fluorescent pink mushroom, tall and wide as a house. I sit up and lean against it. I feel ginormous. My hands, my arms, my body, all too big. Psychotropic jellyfish? I feel out of control and I don’t like it.

A man no bigger than my thumbnail scurries by, head down, a typewriter slash leaning into its hurry-hurry. He has identical tufts of hair sproinging from the sides of his head above his ears. He is a cartoon man.

Are you Not Shame?

He doesn’t slow his speedy exit, but I already know he is not.

I return my gaze to the lake of blobs, their pink echoing the pink of the mad mushroom. 

I am here and listening. Where are you?

A person crawls up from the blob onto shore. Followed by another. Then another. An army of them. The lake shrinks and shrinks and I feel a shout caught in my throat: Don’t! They continue transforming anyway, until there is only a puddle, which gets sucked into the dry earth, leaving a pit like a crusted bellybutton that hasn’t seen a washcloth its entire life.

The army of crawlers take to their feet, hunched over by the weight of their drenched clothes. I can’t see their faces, but we’re on a pilgrimage now. No one says anything, no destination is declared.

There are too many of them to ask for conversation. They are not Not Shame, I don’t think. I follow them anyway.

When I try to get a better look at them, they melt into the ground, blurry lines and smears of primary colors where they stood.

I don’t understand.

Now in the mouth of a dormant volcano. Not so dormant that the floor of black lava doesn’t sear my feet through my shoes. The heat … I soak it up into my bones. I sit cross-legged, more surface area for the fire.

A face emerges from the rock wall. His expression is pure fury, his maw pried open in an unending scream.

Before he can let loose the noise he’s been shaped to make, I ask him.

Are you Not Shame?

YOU HAVE COME TO THE WRONG PLACE.

Something about his face is too aggressive. It’s a deterrent in the extreme. I get a strong me-doth-think-thou-protest-too-much vibe.

Two thoughts hit me at the same time: 

I don’t believe you.

+

He could use a hug.

He folds into himself when I squeeze my arms around him.

I feel a sob coming on, but I sneeze instead, waking up the house panther, who meows his disapproval and the vanishing of volcano man both.