Morning, Day Seven of my hermitage. Curled on the apartment’s rose-red love-seat, I’m holding an unappreciative cat tight to my leaky old heart. The wail of a distant ambulance is synchronising with her cranky bawl, a rise-fall I now realise is not hers but mine, my own pathetic keening.

From the start, the agreement with myself has been that if I reach Day Seven without finding good reason to persevere onward into my sixth decade, that’s it. God knows, I’ve tried. But it’s become crystal: after sixty years, the act of living has proved colourless, tedious, wholly exhausting in its lonesome pointlessness. I release the cat onto the small balcony. She’s not my cat. She trots back in.

After some labyrinthine online research, I find what I want from a far-flung ‘Private Laboratory’. As in, other-side-of-the-world laboratory, run by what appears to be eager young entrepreneurs, anonymous, antipodal in every conceivable way to my position. I check the customer reviews (in retrospect, should’ve been a clue, but, well) and conclude that this, at last, is the job.

I order the components. I’m untroubled about any digital trail I’m leaving behind. If anything, I make sure it’s lyrical, narrative, engaging, checking over my search history to see how it’ll read: 08:59 The-Fifty-Ways-Bye-Bye, 09:19 Repose-Depot, 09:39 Paradise-Ultra, 10:01 Eezee-Go-Well, 10:09 Dr-Dante’s-Medicine-Chest.

The package arrives a week later, as promised. It drops through my letter-box at dawn, wrapped in smiley-face paper (a courtesy that almost breaks me). Feeling inter-connected, global, at one with the world, I thank the courier through the door, getting down on my knees and speaking cracked-voice into the letterbox. I’m gushy, overly familiar. I call her ‘Sister’, Blessings on you, Sister, I say. Appropriately, and without malice, she doesn’t respond.

It comes with instructions. Under the cat’s glare, I convert it word by word via Google Translate.

1. To take seven pilule waiting forty-five minute
2. Next fourteen pilule final waiting four hour
3. To drink vial at once
4. You are now sit down please
5. Personal-affairs total in orders before
6. Good luck!

That’s it, other than the small-print at the bottom which, after a sweep into the Translation portal, I’m able to interpret broadly as:

Make sure you are fully prepared. Once the contents have been ingested, it will be too late to write farewell letters or revisit wills. You will begin to have not-unpleasant visions likely related to early teens or childhood. Note: though infrequent, some in-utero memories or live pre-conception experiences have been reported by the rare few who have come back. If you find yourself becoming an ovum or one of a multitude of rushing spermatozoa, make every effort to quickly get through germination and onward into infancy (at minimum). Prior to final black-out, most customers will experience regret and/or a sense of humiliation. Do not fight. Go to The Light, in the knowledge you are not alone’.

In preparation, I open the balcony, wedging it with an old bible that came with the apartment. The cat will want to leave, later. I perform Step One: seven pills, slug of warm water. The instructions lay open before me. A warm breeze flares the paper’s edge, releasing a vague smell of mould. Addressing the cat (who’s taking an uncharacteristic interest), I read them again, these remarkable words composed so carefully for me by someone somewhere. All of us, we are sparkling mycelium. I feel connected to my lab siblings on the other side, to the polite courier, to every kindhearted ambulance scurrying around the world in fellowship. I see you, I tell them. I am universal.

Forty-five minutes in, observing nothing yet but an atypical pall of excitement, I perform Step Two. Four hours later, ramped to a state that could be described as Tender Turmoil, Step Three, Step Four. Finally, I lay back, cruciform on the rose-red lips of the love-seat. Au revoir, I’ve loved your fine walls, floors, ceilings I whisper to the little apartment, its ten-year lease about to expire.

Before long (I cannot ascertain how long; Time itself, that silver-tongued fractal rogue, has become one with the tangled roots of us all), I rise high into the warm threads of air above the love-seat. I become fixed there, arms outstretched, soaring motionless like an ancient albatross.

From some distance (again, who can tell how far, who could put a measure on it), I watch the love-seat fold. A big rose-red pocket, containing one slender siren-wail, sentient but silent. I am allowed to know this, I am allowed to remember. The pocket folds and folds again, like paper.

The courier has returned, I discern. A paper-thin hand, a ribbon reaching in through the letterbox. She unravels, releasing a multitude of smiley faces. Motile. They sprout little tails, flagellate towards the rose-seat. There they hover; between albatross-me and the pocket, a swarm of squirming smileys. I see several diving down in turn to head-butt the love-seat, searching for entry. In vain. Finally, following some secret signal, they abruptly abandon their mission, whip-tail out the window, get absorbed into the quivering noon air. Gone.

I regret leaving the balcony-window open. An exit, an incorrect one. I am an idiot. I note I’m slouched on the love-seat, head to floor, feet ceiling-ward, arms tucked as useless wings. I’ve concerns, am developing sombre concerns for my welfare. The cat, not mine, the cat is performing CPR. Whose. There are consequences. My heart? My heart, rueful, appears to be rueful, to be returning ruefully, in through the out door.

Twenty-three hours of luminous visions later, I find myself awake, alive. I’m hungry, thirsty, I’ve wet myself. I’ve folded the instructions into an origami swan, a skill I didn’t know I had. The cat requires an apology. I check my pulse, its beautiful beat, pa-tum pa-tum pa-tum, I’ve never felt such pride. I stand on the balcony, suck in lungfuls before opening my laptop to compose a carefully-worded review for my antipodal siblings.

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Niamh Mac Cabe is published widely, including in AGNI, The Stinging Fly, Narrative Magazine, 3:AM, The Offing, Exacting Clam, and The London Magazine. She has work forthcoming in Copper Nickel, and a collection forthcoming with Lilliput Press. She lives in northwestern Ireland, and is represented by Marianne Gunn O’Connor (Dublin). Website: http://niamhmaccabe.com/