There is no ultimate truth that will banish the darkness inside me. Sitting on an embroidered pillow, I dig ragged nails into my thighs as our Quest Guides circle around us. Neither their altar crowded with owls, nor the honeyed sunlight flooding into this geodesic dome, has dispelled my doubts so far.
Pathetic, the voice inside me whispers. You seriously think these charlatans will fix you? Just give up. Crawl under your bed and rot.
Some people have an Inner Critic. Mine, apparently, is an Inner Troll.
“With love and light,” Ronan chants, shaking a gourd rattle, “we seal this sacred container for our Wisdom Quest.”
Amantine glides behind him, fanning woodsy Palo Santo smoke onto us with ethically sourced feathers. Bare feet peel out from under her constellation-print dress like delicate white mice.
My friend Meredith has been obsessed with these neo-shamans since her Quest. Claims it helped her face the truth. Cleared her psoriasis overnight, eliminated her cravings for Taco Bell and Tinder hookups. Now she’s manifesting her best life. She insisted on paying for this session. I gave in, mostly to shut her up.
Ronan’s blond handlebar mustache would match a ten gallon hat nicely. But instead of bellying up to a rustic salon bar, he’s swooping around us in a white cloak.
“The Owl is an ancient symbol of wisdom.” He gestures at the altar, filled with wooden statues, kitschy ceramics, and miniature beaded figurines.
Amantine places both hands over her heart. “And our Wisdom Quest connects you to your own divine inner guidance.” Her skin is pale and creamy, like it’s never been exposed to a toxin or microaggression, grown in a vat of nutrients and unconditional love.
I picture a mirror shattering at the sight of my deformed face, the deep slashes of fatigue under my eyes. Ugly beast.
Yeah, I know. I could probably use some therapy. But guess who lost her benefits when she got fired from her job at the garden center? This loser. So I’m not exactly swimming in options. Besides, this woo-woo stuff can’t possibly be worse than Meredith’s juice cleanses or abundance mantras.
Amantine fluffs her copper curls, settling onto a pillow in our floor circle. “Let’s begin by sharing intentions for our Quest.”
Two interchangeable brunettes in harem pants are both seeking a higher purpose likely to fend off any potential guilt over their tech jobs ruining the world. Their sculpted faces beam up at Amantine, who revels in their adulation, anoints them with her good vibes in a three-way energetic love-fest. A few of the bros in our circle seem eager to anoint them, too.
A repeat customer monologues about the life-changing spiritual downloads he received during previous Quests; how he quit his corporate gig, started yoga teacher training. Kept chugging the Kool-Aid, clearly.
“Like ten years of psychotherapy in one afternoon!” Ronan waggles his bushy eyebrows at Kool-Aid Man, whose jitterbug shaking and sweating sets my teeth on edge.
Such magic in the worlds of these believers, eyes gleaming with enchantment. What would it be like to have that kind of hope? I worm one thumb through a hole in my threadbare Bloodflowers T-shirt, trying my hardest to disappear.
Killing the vibe here, as usual. My Inner Edgelord is furiously shitposting at me again. A misshapen lump amongst the transcendental clique.
I could still catch the next bus home. Curl up on my sagging couch and binge-watch reality TV, my favorite drag queens baking cakes shaped like wigs.
My turn. Everyone’s staring, waiting for me to speak. Amantine looks vaguely concerned as if she’s finally noticed the weed invading her cultivated garden.
“Hey.” I glance quickly around the circle, then down at the patterns in the rug. “I’m Beth.” Saying my name out loud makes me itchy, reminds me how it’s been rearranged and twisted.
“Blessings, Beth.” More hands over hearts and meaningful gazes. “What is your intention for this journey?”
Good question.
There’s a date circled in red ink on my calendar when my unemployment runs out. A hopelessly anemic resume. A deep rut in my couch. Dishes in my sink, encrusted with burned cheese.
What if something magically lifted this ten-pound weight from my chest? I could find a new job, maybe get a life. Go on a date. New wardrobe, stylish haircut. A glossy magazine before-and-after, set to a glam rock soundtrack.
A door slams against the seductive montage. Don’t get your hopes up, dumbass.
I’d settle for shutting my Troll up.
Someone coughs. Everyone’s still looking at me. My diaphragm tightens. Shit. What was Meredith always saying?
I blurt out, “I want to learn to love myself.”
Long hums and knowing nods, as if I’ve uttered something profound.
Time for our Flight Instructions. “Remember your mantra: trust the process.” Ronan fixes us with his hyper-lucid unblinking gaze. “If you encounter something disturbing or frightening, ask it what it has to teach you. And—most importantly—if you discover a door or window, summon the courage to pass through, because you will access your inner truth on the other side.”
Courage? You? That’s hilarious.
We spread our mats out over the woven Moroccan rug and build nests beneath blankets. People crowd too close on either side of me, bundled up like preschoolers waiting to be tucked in.
Ronan chants, “Owl Spirit, guide us with your Wisdom.” Amantine closes her eyes and croons a wordless tune, her serpentine arms undulating. Is she…hooting? Meredith is so, so fired.
The harem pants duo sings along, besties holding hands on adjacent mats. Then Kool-Aid Man joins in, improvising some bird calls. How does everyone know this stupid song?
I lie back on my mat, waiting for them to shut up. My chest aches.
Then Ronan hands out pairs of eyeshades. “Please bestow our sacrament, my magnificent Priestess.”
Amantine glides around the circle with a silver chalice. She leans over my mat, enveloping me in her warm apricot scent and copper halo. Whispered blessings fall like pearls from her plump beige lips; she extracts a miniature turquoise egg from the chalice and places it under my tongue. The egg dissolves, leaving hints of almond behind that mingle with her tart essence.
I put on my eyeshades, like I’m about to nap on a plane. Cleared for takeoff, waiting in the darkness. Bells chime. A hand drum thumps, a Tibetan singing bowl pulses. The drone of a didgeridoo confirms that I’ve hit a new personal low.
The others around me sigh and moan, already taxiing down the runway and taking flight, leaving me behind on the tarmac. I feel nothing. Nothing but a slight tingling under my shoulder blades. I’m trapped here, claustrophobic in my disappointing skin.
Told you, didn’t I? Hope is a dangerous thing.
The dimensions of the darkness shift.
Sideways. My body boundaries expand, nervous system stretching across the entire dome.
Down. Dissolving through the floorboards, into the earth, intertwining with redwood roots, my atoms and molecules permeating the strata of shale and stone beneath the forest.
For a single moment, I am utterly disembodied. Only the citrus-wood scent of Palo Santo remains in the void.
What an immense relief, after so many years of dragging this body around, a leaden suitcase stuffed with worthless souvenirs. I’ll never go back. Go ahead and toss it into a ditch. Donate it to science.
Then I spin clockwise, sucked upwards through a gravity well.
Cool, clear air. Like biting into a crisp September apple. The peat of damp fallen leaves. A full moon looms low over the horizon, the constellations of Amantine’s dress scattered across the inky night sky. A grove of colossal Monterey cypress, their wide, flat canopies like fancy umbrellas for giants.
I spot the silhouettes of several owls perched in those trees. A chorus of hoots and screeches as dozens more join the congress. Great Horned, Barn, Snowy. Two matching Pygmy owls.
Electric yellow eyes, all blazing at me through the darkness.
Maybe I’m their prey. A tiny mouse, waiting to be snatched up by razor-edged talons, my bones and teeth coughed up in a pellet hours later.
Instead there’s a stretching, tearing tension where my scapulae used to be. Wings unfold and extend out to each side.
We all flap noiselessly and take flight out of the trees, over the sleeping forest. The air feels silken, luxurious against my feathers. I’m lightweight, yet so powerful. How incredible to see in the dark, to hear rodents scurrying miles away. To flex strong, sharp talons. Who knew that having a body could be like this?
Detouring away from the congress, I swivel my head around, triangulating on a faint grinding and clicking out in the distance. Target acquired.
I follow this compelling sound until I’m soaring over the garden center, my former sanctuary. Where I was finally safe. Where I practically buried myself under the cedar chips and pine bark mulch in my efforts to avoid other humans. Customers, co-workers, whoever. Probably myself.
Until they fired me without warning. My attitude, they claimed. But I knew they were secretly horrified by me. I should sue them for discrimination against the hideous. Or for forcing me out before the dahlias I planted bloomed.
But look—they’re finally blossoming. As I swoop closer to those lavender and burgundy honeycombs, a black hole opens at the center of each flower. A mouth, filled razor-teeth. Their gnashing—the sound I’d been tracking—amplifies as I fly overhead.
A hot, dark, crawling sensation fills me; I recoil. It’s too much. I bank upwards again, then head west, following a quieter noise. Like soft stabbing.
I fly over the bar patio, where Meredith and friends shriek with laughter over glasses of Prosecco and untouched plates of bruschetta. Their hair too lustrous, their teeth excessively straight and white. I spot my human incarnation sulking outside their Good Vibes Only circle, lost in my gloom. Jabbing a fork into my thigh under the table.
They’d offered me their standard mixed assortment of unsolicited advice. Cultivate a gratitude practice. Yoga? Keto! B12 injections, float tanks. My cousin swears her light box totally cured her winter blues. Chocolate-covered platitudes, each with a poison center.
Only now do I understand that I was a project. I was supposed to try their remedies, then perform a total recovery. A good ol’ fashioned conversion in their wellness tent revival. But I hadn’t thrown aside my crutches and walked from their church, saved and reborn. I must not have really wanted to get better. So I was less than useless to them. The ultimate vibe-killer.
The thigh-stabbing intensifies. Is this the truth I’m supposed to face? Because I could’ve stayed home and doomscrolled if I wanted to dwell on my deficiencies and failures, thanks.
I’m done with this realm of human indignities. The stars above twinkle at me, beckoning as I aim my newly majestic form towards the sky.
One star gets closer. Closer. Until it’s a glowing orb that spans my whole field of vision. Brightening from dusky orange, to pale yellow, to pure white light.
I hover, gazing into the orb.
This must be the portal Ronan urged us to pass through to find wisdom on the other side. Sounds like a pretty terrible idea, honestly.
Yup, called it. Coward.
Or I could find out who the hell keeps trolling me. And postpone plummeting down the gravity well, back to my body, that grotesque thing without feathers or talons.
Flapping my wide silent wings, I pass through the portal, then glide over a vast plane. A parched desert, bleached rodent skulls amidst the tumbleweeds. I land on a Joshua tree and watch pooling shadows gather over cracked sand.
Show your face, Edgelord.
He steps forward from the shadows, SWAT armor over full-body black leather, pants tucked into combat boots. His face has the familiar menace of a childhood terror.
That’s right, maggot. It’s me.
What were those Flight Instructions, again? There had to be clues hidden within all that spiritual gibberish. I fluff my feathers up and ask: So what’s your deal, anyhow?
He folks his arms over his Kevlar vest. Just doing my job, maggot.
What do think your job is, exactly?
Smug smirking. Keeping the peace.
You call this peace?
I do what it takes.
So I’ve internalized a fascist, great. How did that happen?
You really want know?
I pause.
Fine, I say, before he can call me a coward again. Show me.
Something rises from my gizzard, filling my throat. Can’t breathe. Gagging. Coughing, spasming. Horking up a soft mass. Whatever it is flies out of my beak and lands on the dusty ground.
The Troll squats down to pick it up, then holds out his hand so I can see the pellet cradled in the palm of his leather glove. With surprising delicacy, he pulls it apart. Fur and feathers, claws and teeth. A miniature jaw bone. He brings the well-preserved skull closer so I can peer into its eyes.
In the emptiness of the left socket is the garden border around my childhood home. And there’s Skip, my older brother, stomping the life out of my sunflower. I’d tucked the seed into a pot on my bedroom windowsill, then transplanted the seedling to the garden myself. Tracked its growth, its bud just about to open. But now his combat boots are crushing its leaves and stems into compost.
I look into the right socket. There I am, cowering down my high school hallway, biology book clutched tight to my chest, barely breathing. The wolf-pack of Skip’s douchebag friends oink and bark as I pass them. Their girlfriends stare at me with cornflower-blue doll eyes, wrinkling their button noses.
I sit outside everyone’s circles in the cafeteria, doodling carnivorous plants and strangling vines in my notebook.
Now the wolves are breaking into my locker. They glue mirror shards inside the door, howl with laughter when I open it to discover my fractured reflection.
Anywhere my name was written—a blackboard, a lunch bag—they’d add and erase letters, transforming BETH into BEAST. Holler that word at me across the schoolyard or kitchen, until it felt like they’d carved it into my forehead with their Leathermans.
Grow a thicker skin, kiddo, my parents said. Don’t give them the satisfaction, the teachers told me. So I bury all that in the garden, where the corpse of my stomped sunflower fertilizes the soil.
No escape. Skip and his friends were at my house every day, ditching community college. Playing Nintendo and sloshing Mountain Dew on our carpet, squealing at me whenever I dared leave my room. Till the day I left home, suitcase stuffed with fermented spite.
I picture the broken body I’ve left behind in the geodesic dome, that word psychically carved into her forehead. She’s still that misshapen lump tiptoeing down her hallways to the bathroom, praying for invisibility.
Oh Beth, laughed the Good Vibes only crew, we all had awkward teenage phases. But we grew out of that just fine, didn’t we?
I blink twice, transparent nictitating membranes sweeping across my corneas.
Here’s Edgelord again, his palm full of desiccated bones and claws, balls of matted fur.
A low growl echoes behind him; he jumps in alarm, pulling weapons from his tactical belt. In the shadows, there’s something chained up in a cage. Something feral and horrid.
The Beast.
It’s like that teeth-filled hole in the center of each dahlia, except without the petals. A bottomless pit, hypnotizing me with its depths. A bitter almond taste coats the roof of my mouth.
Keeping this thing at bay is my one job, the Troll says, so you just had to fuck it up, didn’t you? He jabs the Beast through the bars of its cage with a fire poker, forcing it back.
Stupid, ugly, worthless. He berates it with each prod. Loser, failure, freak.
Hey! Do you really need to torture it like that?
Are you that stupid? This is for everyone’s safety.
I don’t need your protection anymore. So knock it off.
Do you seriously not get it yet? He waves the poker at me. It’s not YOUR safety I’m worried about.
Taking to the air, I hiss: I’m not kidding, asshole.
Louder growling behind him. Beads of sweat drip from his brow as he turns to prod the Beast again. I hover above him and wrench the poker from his grip with my talons. He bellows, lunging for me.
The Beast snaps its chains with a single tug, shattering the bars of its cage into dust. Sharpened claws emerge from the blackness to seize the Troll. It devours him in three juicy, squishing bites.
But now the Beast is unleashed, the teeth-filled pit charging towards me. I cringe, folding my wings around me to await my demise. Maybe he was trying to protect me, after all.
Nothing happens.
I peek out from between two feathers. It’s just sitting there. Waiting.
Ronan’s words echo back: Trust the process. I spread my wings in invitation.
We merge. I’m flooded with dark heat, like fire obsidian, primal energy enervating my feathered being. I’m ancient. Powerful. Deadly.
My prehistoric wingspan extends across the cracked sand, dwarfing the Joshua tree, bearing me aloft; the air icy cold against the heat emanating from my core, billowing up from within. An immense, dusky red cloud, seeping from my maw, blacking out the sun. The desert goes as dark as the inside of an oven.
I cross back through the portal.
My thundering screech ricochets off the city sidewalks. Buildings burst into flames, soot raining onto the streets.
Back over the patio. Meredith with her sad-puppy expression, our friends tagging me in their inspirational memes, getting off on pity-porn. A plume of fire jettisons from my beak, incinerating the bar and all its patrons. Bad Vibes Only, bitches.
When the whole block is blackened and smoking, I turn eastward towards the garden center. One puff, and it’s sizzled to a crisp. My dahlias with their razor-filled mouths stored safely within now, guiding my path.
Plumes of floral-tinged smoke trail behind me as I soar over the forest, swoop across the field, through the grove of cypress trees, the moon high overhead. The tiny blond and copper-haired mice flee in terror through the grass, seeking cover from my extended talons. From the creature about to devour them in a single gulp.
Counterclockwise down the gravity well. Back to the geodesic dome. My nervous system reintegrates, boundaries solidify. The room feels hot and dark.
Here come the guides to tend to me, disturbed by the sounds I’m making. Ronan’s face like he’s about to get 86’d from the saloon, Amantine’s like someone shattered her favorite crystal.
Wellness tent revival time. They want to help, dispense some words of wisdom. Blast love and light out of their assholes till I perform my conversion, so they can siphon some secondhand good vibes. They lean over me, blond and copper hallows back-lit by the skylight above.
Bitter almond floods my mouth as my screech billows up within, a fire obsidian cloud of the truth.