It’s my second time in the floatation tank and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel this time around. Before arriving, I let go of some extra baggage that I was carrying around by meditating. I found that this ritual helps in aiding a smoother transition into a deeper, lucid state in the tank. After all, that was the sensation that I became addicted to. It was the same pod that I went into the last time in the same black and gold room, and I wasted no time in entering it. I went inside the pod, manually shut the lid on myself, turned off the blue fluorescent light, and let go. That brief, first moment of silence followed by the sound of my heavy breathing as I floated is euphoric. The ocean sounds soundtrack played and my body whirled around, down the drain I go.

I woke up in the pod.

I was in a wooden box, still floating. I saw a small window that looked like a basement window that curved around at the front of the box, with a view of a dark blue sea.

I could feel that my eyes were still closed but I can see everything.

A voice was speaking to me and it wasn’t an unfamiliar voice. It was my own.

I kept asking questions and it felt as though we were using some form of telepathy to communicate and whoever it was was communicating through me.

“Where am I? Where am I where am I where am I?”

“You are not on earth.” he answered. Or, I, answered.

“Why did I come here?”

“You didn’t. We came for you. We received your distress signal.”

“Am I dead?”

“Not permanently. There is a way out if you wish to return.”

“Why am I still afloat?”

“You were drowning.”

Out of the window I saw creatures as tall as me, even taller, and they were winged, they had human sized upper and lower extremities, and they had webbed feet.

“Why do they have beaks?”

“I made them this way.”

They weren’t as frightening as they sound. I just watched them as they descended down to grab another meal.

I opened my eyes, unsure if I had truly gone to another dimension or not. The ocean sounds soundtrack is back on again.

“It’s time to go. Your journey just started.”