"Del...can I come in?" Okay, maybe I wasn't feeling so good anymore. Running that long might not have been the best idea. Sweat poured down my back, each breath was a gasp, and my legs felt like rubber. This all should have happened nine-and-a-half kilometres ago – hell, before I even left my street – but my body was going into full shutdown on Del's front step. "Del...please...you have to come get me...Del..."
I slid down to the floor, everything shuddering and shaking as my body rejected the hard work. My heart pounded in my chest, and I could hear the blood rushing through my veins. Del burst through his front door and put my arm around his shoulders as he helped me up to his apartment.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Del huffed. "Did you fucking run all the way here?"
"I have...I think...it's been a weird night...day...what the fuck day is it?" I wheezed. 
Del got us into his place and plopped me down on the couch. He bustled around for a few minutes, getting me comfortable and handing me a glass of water. I guzzled it back like my life depended on it (which ultimately it did – I never drink enough water) and slowly caught my breath. 
"What the hell were you thinking?" Del didn't have an angry bone in his body, but he looked plenty pissed off. "What's so important you couldn't wait until morning?"
"Like I said, Del, it's been a weird night." I downed the last of the water and briefly entertained the idea of asking for more. 
"Why's your face all covered in blood?" Del disappeared for a second and came back with a towel. 
I wiped the towel across my face and grimaced once I caught a look at it. There was more blood on there than I thought there would be. No wonder I was a bit dizzy. All the blood in my head had drained out through my nostrils. 
"Okay," I said. "You know how I said I had a weird night?"
"Yeah, you said it like three minutes ago." Del paced back and forth in front of the couch.
"Right. Sorry. Sorry," I said, apologizing for apologizing. "Fuck. Sorry. Shit. Right. Okay. My weird night. Okay. So, I got mugged last night. Two nights ago. That part you knew."
"That part I knew."
"Yes. So, there was something weird in my closet."
Del paused his pacing and stopped to stare at me for a while. I saw a hundred thoughts cloud his eyes as he processed what 'weird in my closet' could mean. 
"Tell me you didn't go to see what the weird thing was."
"I can't, Del. If I said that, I'd be lying, and you're the only person in the world I've never lied to."
Del resumed his pacing and waited for me to continue. I took that to mean he knew I was telling the truth.
"I checked out the weird thing. It's impossible to describe, except it felt like my heartbeat was on the outside. Like the universe had my pulse and was trying to tell me, 'go check out the weird thing.' I know that doesn't make any sense."
"Don't worry about making sense, Mac. Just keep telling me what happened. We'll try to work out what the fuck is going on after."
What a good friend. You tell anyone else you could 'feel your pulse' in your apartment, they're kicking you to the curb and blocking you from their phone. 
"Okay. Closet. Pulse. Right. I opened the closet, and there was a big-ass hole in the floor."
Del shook his head. "This is when I say, 'you didn't check out the hole, did you?' And this is when you say – "
"It more pulled me in than I checked it out – like it had a whole 'nother gravitational pull above what the Earth was doing. Stronger. I don't think I could have not gone in. It had decided to take me down."
Del paused his pacing and just stared at me. "You make it sound like it knew what it was doing. Like it was alive."
"I'm not saying it was alive, Del." I sucked back the rest of my water. "But I'm not saying it wasn't alive, either. It pulled me in, and I wasn't there anymore. I was in this whole different world. It was like being born, maybe. My body was broken down, pulled apart down to my cells."
"What do you mean?" Del asked. He sat down on the couch and put a hand on my shoulder. "That sounds awful."
"It was, dude. I can't even describe how much it hurt – like every cell was pulled off, scrubbed with something, and then put back all at once. I could have been in there forever or three seconds. That place had no time, nothing to let you know where or when the hell you were. I slept for a whole day once it let me out."
Del leaned back and took a deep breath. "At least it let you out."
I can't tell you how much I appreciated this man believing me. It helped me realize that what had happened was real, that I had actually experienced what I thought I experienced. Was it his D&D-trained mind, or was he more like me than he realized – and knew there were layers to this world that nobody ever talked about – and we were finally peeling back the curtain to see what the fuck was actually going on?
"What about all the blood?" Del asked. "Was that from the closet?"
I shook my head. "No. That was after. I woke up and..."
Moving the mug with my mind was still almost too unbelievable for me, and I had gone through it. Was it real? Had that happened? Why else would I have blood caked onto my face? Was it a nosebleed from the mugging – a very delayed reaction nosebleed? I looked at Del, and something in his eyes told me to just keep talking – telling him the truth, even if I wasn't quite sure what to make of it myself.
"Yeah?" Del said.
"I felt weird. I didn't know what to believe at first, but there was something different about me. Something...powerful."
I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. 
"I moved a mug without touching it."
Del stared at me for a long, long time.
"Like with your mind?" he asked.
I just nodded. 
"Okay, here's the thing." Del got up and took another turn pacing. "My logical brain is firing on overload. It thinks this is crazy. It's telling me you're nuts, I'm nuts for even listening to you, and that we should both just tuck in for the night and see how we are in the morning."
"Right there with you, Del," I said. "But this happened."
"That's the other thing. I believe you. I don't know why, I don't know how, but I believe you. Probably has a lot to do with the fact that you're my best friend, but I believe you. I believe that something weird is the fuck going on, and you've had the last couple of days from Hell."
I could have kissed him right then, in a non-sexual, sensory-overload kind of way.
"But I need proof."
I pointed to my face. "That wasn't proof enough?"
Del laughed. "We'll call that Exhibit A, like in a trial. We need real, in-the-moment proof."
"How?" I shrugged. "I didn't record it or anything."
Del grinned. "We need to see it in action. Test it out."
"How?" I asked. "Where?"
Del headed for the door and marched out. "Come on! I know just the place!"
And for some insane reason, I followed him.