Cherries. It tasted like cherries and chai tea with the low note of kale set to spoil. The buzzing sank into a low, comforting hum.

  Bubblegum Pink walls surrounded me. I could feel Tracy somewhere beside me, fighting it.

  “Fighting what?” I said, trying to find her in the Pink.

  “Fighting,” said the man.

  The man. Who is the man?

  I took another swallow. It was filling me, satiating what hunger gnawed through the Tenuate. But the speed high was gone, I realized.

  Mostly I thirsted. I could no longer feel the nipple, the source, though the flow, like porridge or grits—yes, that was the texture, grits—softly oozed down my throat.

  It was warm in the Pink room.

  “Don’t fight now, darlin,” said the man, “Pink is all we got, and it won’t hurt you.”

  “Who are you?” I said, smiling as the Pink formed a hand that rubbed my head. I could smell oil—lavender and eucalyptus—as a mist released from a slit that smoothed back as quick as it ripped against the perfect flat of Pink wall.

  “I’m Jim,” the man said. “I’ll introduce myself proper when you push through that Pink cloud.”

  Tracy, beside me, had stopped struggling. I heard her gulping.

  “That’s it, darlin. Keep pretending to drink,” Jim said. “Pink won’t hurt you. It’s those others you got to worry about.”

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  The Pink. A big hug of Pink. Not like drugs where you feel chemically fulfilled and don’t need physical contact, no—this was like both.

  I read a book when I was younger, I think a Young Adult book where these kids were looking for their parents and one of the places they ended up was like a utopia where everyone drank this coconut booze they called ‘cordial’.

  Cordial is where the Pink had me, and I was happy to stay—

  Kids looking for their parents. Kids that can’t find their parents. Kids … with no parents.

  I stepped forward, touching the Pink wall where the slit had been. It was like bread dough now, which made me hungry again. When I pulled it up to my mouth and chewed, it was like sweet fluffy bread. I ate the way I used to after a workout, Abby always telling me I’d splode! if I kept on.

  “Looks like this one’s ready,” Jim said. I heard a grunt from someone else. When my teeth bit air, I frowned. There was a black hole in the Pink. I reached up and pulled at the edges, tearing it now, not like dough, but kinetic sand, easy and pleasant to ear and finger. There was a low crackle. The air was colder. I pulled away a large patch of Pink covering my eyes. Yes, the Pink had somehow covered my eyes, covered my whole body like a cocoon. I wasn’t in a big pink room at all. I was in the goddamn psycho funhouse again.

  “Gods, but I hate this part,” Jim said.

  Another grunt, maybe a laugh.

  Fluorescents cut into fresh eyes. My warm Pink blanket gone, I choked back a sob. My skin was wet, like a molting caterpillar’s, hair pasted to my forehead. I felt my face twist. I blinked my eyes, pulled more of the thin Pink membrane away. I couldn’t move my legs, though from the look of the Pink cocoon, I should have been able to kick through. I was able to lift my head, look down. I was lying on my back, not standing at all.

  “Don’t,” said a muffled voice behind me.

  I opened my mouth wide to try and clear the pressure.

  “I just hate it,” Jim said. His voice was lower.

  “Then do not watch, Doc,” said the other voice. “If you help, the mothers will leave them. You would rob them of the only defense we have. Remember Brenda.”

  I couldn’t quite turn my head to look at them for the stiffness of the Pink.

  What I could see were the head-aching lights, the boxes leaking Polaroids all around, the four dingy walls, and the door just open—left open.

  I tried to kick free of the Pink and could not. Shadows flickered on the wall to my right, man-shaped, but … wrong, long ears pointing up above their heads like the rabbit man.

  It was then that I screamed.