Ultrahigh in the Metaverse: Series 1: The Behavioural Architect

Ultrahigh: and the devil died screaming - Season 1:  The Behavioural Architect: Chapter 3

I pulled into the drive. Smoke, thick and gray, poured from my own chimney—a surprise. I hadn’t bothered lighting a fire since the bans came down. Not a slip or lapse, just a quiet compliance. Which was precisely why leaving the shotgun inside felt like wishful thinking. Instead, when I got out of the car, I reached for the crowbar lingering in the back seat. A comforting heft, cold metal in my palm, the sort of thing you bring inside when you expect trouble.

Tom yelled through the Bose, the last aftertaste of my corporate day still sour on my tongue. Restlessness gnawed inside. The world felt ordinary, emptied out, except for the promise of friction and the heavy, beautiful stink of good food curling through the air. As I stepped to the door the aroma hit me, a punch of savory longing. My stomach twisted, hungry and hopeful. I leaned the crowbar into the doorframe—it scraped, metallic, out of place in the soft halo of domesticity. 

I hesitated, the smile cutting its own crooked line across my jaw. Was it really that easy? Just the scent of cooking and I could be steered, tugged, manipulated? The old unease stirred as I crossed the threshold, all appetite and anticipation, Tom Waits still howling behind me like a warning, and the fire burning in the place I’d thought cold and dark. I let the smile settle, even as it annoyed me. Because I was home, and trouble, it seemed, was already waiting.

Heat hit me as I stepped inside, a thick, sudden warmth clashing with the stubborn chill that still clung to my arms and back. I stood in the entryway, letting the temperature war play out across my skin, waited for some equilibrium to settle in, the cold to unhook its cling. When I could finally move without shuddering, I walked in further. There was whistling coming from the kitchen. Way too cheerful, the kind of screechy melody that tried to claw its way into my skull, but instead just grated at the edges of my nerves. Tom’s voice cut through it, a muttered growl about him being the same kind of bad, and for a second the whistling faded into the background. I listened to the battle between the two, stepped into the lounge, and let the door slam itself shut behind me with a heavy, hollow thud.

I made a point of gliding through the dining room, keeping my eyes firmly off the table even as it seemed to pull at the corner of my vision, and ducked into the kitchen proper. And that’s when I caught sight of them, standing at the sink, back rigid, wrists flicking suds off plates. The Beast. The living, breathing sum of everything I used to loathe. A memory of violence, a spark of something unresolved smoked beneath my thoughts, but I kept it lidded. They didn’t so much as twitch at my entrance. I let myself fade, for a moment, hanging in the air – invisible.

The kitchen was thick with the scent of something cooking – sweet, spiced, insistent. I drifted over to the cabinet within arm’s reach, thumbed open the door, and pulled down a glass. From the shopping bag at my feet: a bottle of Malbec, twist-cap, sparing me the need to step deeper into contested territory. The act of pouring wine was fraught – a tangled splash of nerves and irritation, fizzing in my chest. Out in the dining room I rolled a tight smoke, laced with something to take the edge right off.

The lighter’s flick was sharp in the hush. I plucked Tom’s bowler from its perch and used it to tap ash, ignoring his wounded howl as he scraped a chair across the floor in protest. I thought, then, how it would have changed things if one of my lovers were there – even awash in just a shimmer of Ultrahigh – but there was no one. Only the Beast, the devil themself, who I had once unmade and remade in agony, now quietly preparing dinner on my behalf. The riddle of it all coiled, unanswered, around the edges of the room.

I smoked, I drank, I let Tom’s voice roll through the room like a bassline breathing beneath the haze. Cigarette tar on my teeth, half-drained wine glass balanced in my palm, static waxed and waned at the edge of my skull. For a while, the devil made it their business to ignore me, perched there just past the lamplight, turning their back so I was left to marinate in smoke and sound. Maybe that was all part of the plan, letting me drown a few more brain cells and words before the main event. Several glasses in, a throat raw from Malbec and tobacco, I felt the shift—a cold shadow crawling up the spine, and at last, the devil turned, fixing their eyes on me. Like they’d been waiting for my pulse to slow, for my edges to blur, before they finally acknowledged I was there.