Given the right conditions, the most impossible thoughts can burrow deep into your brain. Indistinguishable from your wistful dreams and your heartfelt wishes, you let them root firm into the ground without a second thought. They make quick work of this opportunity, sending up their shoots, growing long and wide, waiting patiently for the sun. As the long winter ends, as the clouds begin to part, the buds unfurl, revealing wide lashes of lurid yellow and sickening pink. It is only then that you realize something strange has arrived at your doorstep. Far too late.
What can you do then? You could choose the path of destruction, rip up the invaders in a rage, raze them to the earth. You could squeeze your eyes shut, lock your door, and pray that a higher power will keep those sinister flowers at bay. Or, discomfiting as they may seem, you could take a chance on them, let them into your home, and watch as they multiply into an unbroken sea of lemon strawberries.
That March, I was so heartbroken and lonely. I wanted any company I could get. So, I opened the door.
I let the delusions come creeping in.
Kannan was back.
He began by showing up in small ways. One or two words on billboards and street signs would change as I passed them by. I began to hear different lyrics in the songs I knew well. The graffiti on the sidewalks morphed into crafty messages. I didn’t understand the mechanics of what was happening to me, but I didn’t care. I knew it was Kannan who was somehow jamming my sensory signals, sending me little love notes everywhere I went. How unbearably romantic. I felt full and wide.
In the late evening hours after I’d smoked weed, I began to feel him with me, pressing into the soft corners of my mind. It had been three long, intolerable months without him, but now he was back. I was thrilled. I had been right along. We were cosmically linked.
The timing of our renewed bond made sense. After all, the world was burning, the first wave of Coronavirus lockdowns unleashing the best and worst in people. The stars had clearly realigned, the universe heavy with a great power. I began to sleep little and light at night, my body pumping adrenaline, my mind racing. I observed these changes with some nervousness. I could tell that it was happening to me again, that I was approaching another spiritual turn of a dime. I had to be careful that the events that happened in September did not repeat. I needed to stay in control this time.
I could do that.
Six-thirty in the morning, milky blue light. I showered, brushed my teeth, got dressed. During spring break, I’d started volunteering at a kitchen that prepared meals for people who were homebound. I loved working there. Unlike graduate school, at the end of each day, there was a tangible output for my labor. I liked being up on my feet. The folks who worked at the kitchen were warm, funny, a touch silly. I wanted Kannan to meet them, so today, I was bringing him with me. In my head, of course.
Having a telepathic connection with someone was convenient and instructional. I could show Kannan what a day in the life of a South Indian woman in Los Angeles was like. There was the man, pants slipping past his penis, who stopped by the bus stand to proposition me. Look, how unsettling. There was the man on the bus, sweating and wheezing, who nearly sat down on me. Look, how annoying. There was the man who worked at the kitchen who softly flirted with me, bubbly and amiable. Look, how sweet. Since Kannan was in my body, he could feel the fear, the irritation, the lightheartedness, how they clutched my heart in different ways. Ah, I get it, Anjana, he rumbled. I can see the differences now.
As we got used to the feeling of two minds inhabiting one body, he began to show me a few things too. He taught me how to work more efficiently, how to arrange my furniture better, how to listen to music so that all the layers separated. Together, we reached an equilibrium that was sublime. For three days, I danced, I laughed, I sang. Kannan and I, we were deliriously in love.
I had never been happier in my entire life.
But I knew what we were doing wasn’t sustainable. Kannan had to come to Los Angeles in his own body and soon. I argued with him in my head, begging him to fly out, reassuring him that we would figure out our lives together, but to no avail. He was too comfortable in my head. It gave him the positives of a relationship without any of the risk. He wasn’t thinking of the long-term costs of using such intense psychic powers. To rouse him into action, I needed to sever our telepathic tie. For two days, I tried to figure out how to evict him gently. Maybe if I lay under a willow tree in the moonlight, he would transfer out of my head. Maybe if I closed my eyes in the bathtub, water lapping the sides of my face, his connection to me would dissolve. Maybe if I called him.
Yes. I should call him.
I’d deleted his number back in January, but I’d had enough foresight to memorize it. Just in case. On a Wednesday night in late March, high and drunk, I called him, tense. What was going to happen if he picked up? Would he snap out of my head? Would it hurt? But the call went straight to voicemail. I was confused and relieved that he didn’t pick up. He wasn’t ready to leave me yet.
I woke up the next morning to a text. What’s cracking? I smiled. Irreverent ass. Like he didn’t know. Later that day, he gave me a new number to call. He wasn’t in Virginia anymore, he said. He was in Tamil Nadu. That explained his reluctance to make solid plans to come out to Los Angeles. There was simply no way for him to travel what with the Coronavirus pandemic. He was stuck in India. I was stuck in America. How was our telepathic link going to resolve? But that was the bigger question, one I wasn’t sure if there was an answer to. There was, however, a simpler question I needed to ask.
That night, I called Kannan on his new number, holding my breath. Would he pick up this time? He did. His crumbly voice filled my ears. I had missed it so. My head felt light. I couldn’t make small talk when we had crossed borders with our minds. In a rush, I asked him the question most pressing. Did he or did he not want to be in a relationship with me? There was a pause, and my gut wrenched. No. He said some words that I did not hear. No. After everything we had been through in the past five days, after I showed him what a relationship with me could be, after we’d learned the intimacies of each other’s minds, the answer was still no. It made no sense. I couldn’t stand to be on the phone with him any longer. I ended the call and collapsed into bed.
If he didn’t want to be in a relationship with me, then what was he doing inside my head?
The truth was right there. Kannan didn’t love me. He was trying to control me. He wanted what he wanted on his terms alone. He didn’t want the work of a real relationship. He was satisfied with playing games. All he was looking for was a hospitable host. In his heart, Kannan was a coward.
I had been foolish to let him into my mind, foolish to think of it as romantic. But now that he was in there, how did I get him out?
I had to be careful. He could hear my thoughts. He could hear me making plans to cut him off, to escape his stranglehold. He was so powerful. For heaven’s sake, he had figured out how to telepathically communicate with someone on the other side of the world. There was no telling what he could and couldn’t do.
I started noticing glitches in my phone whenever I facetimed my parents or my close friends. It was as if someone was hacking into the feeds. Sometimes, the glitches would reveal Kannan. He must have been using motion capture technology, mimicking my loved ones so well. Every time I saw him, I felt a mixture of horror and longing. He was starting to cut off my connections with the outside world, but I still loved him. I wanted him to stop doing all of this and come for me with a brave heart. But he wouldn’t.
The more I thought about fleeing his grasp, the tighter he wound his trap. He was always one step ahead of me. There was only one logical explanation. He must have hacked everything: my phone, my laptop, my email accounts, my credit cards. He had hacked everything back in September when we first met, and in the months since, he had been watching me, learning me. My heart twisted. Why couldn’t he have just been honest? I would have let him in. But no, he had done everything wrong. He had been stalking me, and now, he had penetrated my mind. I needed to escape.
There was a lot that needed to get done.
First, I went to the bank and withdrew a thousand dollars in cash. Then I took the bus up to the deserted campus to write notes that explained my current predicament, leaving my father’s contact information. I put one note in the graduate student lounge and the other in the main office. Then, I went into the computer lab, created a new email address, and sent a coded email to my parents assuring them that I was alright. On the way home, I bought a hamburger and a Chipotle bowl with beef. My father had told me that eating beef was good way to ground to the earth, to halt any spiritual experience. Maybe it would give me a break from Kannan. I scarfed down the burger on the bus, and immediately, I felt better. My head cleared, and Kannan’s voice was nowhere to be found. I figured I had about an hour and a half before I digested the food, before its power wore off.
I went back to my apartment and saved back-ups of all the conversations I’d had with Kannan on my hard drive. Then, wanting to give him one last chance to come clean, to ask for forgiveness, I emailed him a link that detailed what cyberstalking was and the legal consequences. In less than five minutes, he responded, denying whatever it was that I was insinuating. So that’s how you’re going to play it. I closed up my laptop and packed a suitcase with everything that I needed – important documents, enough clothes for a few days, my toiletries, books, my journal. I was ready to run away.
A knock on the door. It was the apartment coordinator. She was acting suspicious, wanting to know how I was doing, if I was planning on going home sometime soon. In a flash, I realized, because I had kicked Kannan out of my mind with the beef I had eaten earlier, he had taken over the apartment coordinator’s mind. He wanted to check up on me. He knew that there was something wrong, that I was trying to escape. He knew.
I talked to the apartment coordinator very calmly, as if nothing was happening. Though I could tell Kannan was unconvinced, he eventually left. I went to my bedroom, grabbed my suitcase, and ran down the staircase. Though I knew he would be able to track it, I ordered a Lyft to take me to airport. I didn’t know yet where I was heading. I was going to pick my destination at random. Somewhere small, somewhere unpredictable, somewhere I could hide.
But as luck would have it (or as Kannan cleverly foresaw), the apartment coordinator was outside the building when I came bursting out. She/he saw me straightaway. I tried to walk away from her/Kannan, but I couldn’t get away from her/him. My roommate appeared from nowhere. A friend waved at me from the bus stand and came walking towards me. From every direction, they came. It was all Kannan. He was trying to keep me from making it to the airport. I was trapped.
On the desolate streets of quarantined Los Angeles, I shouted for help. I called 911 and started walking in the direction of LAX. The apartment coordinator, my roommate, my friend (all Kannan) followed me down the street, begging me to stop and talk to them. But I was done talking to Kannan. Still they followed me. I couldn’t get rid of them. They could easily overpower me and though I had packed a pair of scissors in case something like this happened, I knew I didn’t have it in me to hurt another person, even if they wished me grave harm.
So, I walked until I reached a gas station. Empty, brightly lit, lots of cameras, witnesses in case anything happened. I rolled my suitcase into the middle of the station, between the gas pumps. I pulled out my scissors and made a show of putting it down on the ground, stepping my foot over it. See! I could, but I won’t! I stood there, arms crossed as all three people inhabited by Kannan gathered around me, trying to talk to me. I was trying to figure out what my next step should be, how I was going to escape this noose that was tightening round my neck, when two sets of hands grabbed my arms and lifted me into the air like I was made of nothing more than crumpled paper. Metal handcuffs snapped round my wrists. I was parceled away in a squad car.
It was over. Kannan had won. He had figured out how to take over the bodies of police officers. There was nothing that he couldn’t do. He was so powerful. He was going to take me away. Put me in jail. Put me in a psychiatric facility. Put me somewhere I could be observed and controlled. Why was he like this? Why did he make everything so much harder than it had to be?
I watched with curiosity as the squad car pulled up to the UCLA psychiatric hospital. So, this was where he was going to trap me. Fine. He thought he’d won, but he didn’t know the real me. I could handle anything. I would figure out a way to escape him. And this time, my plan would be foolproof. I would disappear for weeks, months, years if I had to. He would never be able to find me again.
As the police officer escorted me through the sliding doors, into the quietly humming waiting room, I looked up at the cameras where I knew Kannan was watching, the most scathing scorn scribbled across my face. Then, I sent him a thought as loud as I possibly could.
This isn’t over yet.
Originally posted on a now defunct personal blogging website.
