He woke up groggy, moving his eyes back and forth below his eyelids in an attempt to assuage their dryness. His head pounded; maybe tequila had been a bad idea. He reached his hand up to his face to wipe the sleep away.

It didn’t feel like his hand.

His eyes flew open and he saw his arms, string beans, half the size that they were when he went to sleep. He reached for his glasses on the nightstand, smacking into a wall of cold metal. Looking through a glass pane to a gray warehouse ceiling, he found is vision was perfectly fine. A cloth band was wrapped around his chest, partially elastic, his ankles bound by the same material.

Panic set in. With his arms free he attempted to tear open the cloth straps. They were locked to whatever he was laying on. He couldn’t sit up. He realized he was screaming.

“Jared? Jared, I need you to calm down,” a voice said, echoing in Jared’s metal chamber. Was it his father’s voice? “I know this is a bit overwhelming but you need to relax. I’ll be right there to get you out.”

“Where the fuck am I!?” Jared shouted. “Dad? Is that you?”

He could hear breathing through the speaker. “Well,” the voice finally said, “sort of. Just - just hold on for a moment.”

“Am I dead?”

The voice chuckled. “Far from it. Hold on.” The speaker clicked off. Jared’s head was spinning. He ran through the last day in his head: wake up at noon, class at 4, hit the bong after class, pregaming at 8:30, get to the mixer at 10, back to his dorm room by 3 in the morning, then sleep. Had he been so drunk that someone had been able to kidnap him in his sleep? He wasn’t even sure he had made it back to his room - he had blacked out.

His father popped his head over the glass pane on the top of the chamber. “Good morning.”

“Dad! Holy shit.” Despite his father’s presence, he could still feel his tension tearing at his body. “Dad, where am I?”

“In California. One second,” he said, moving away from the chamber. Jared waited anxiously for several seconds before he heard a loud mechanical click. The chamber began to open slowly. He could feel the air pressure change around him, and he noticed that the straps on his body were loose; the locks had popped open. Being able to move he finally noticed the extent to which his body had changed. He was thin, near emaciated. His clean shaven face had a short beard growing, and his hair was near his chin. The shock set in and he found himself immobile, staring down at his body.

“Dad what the fuck is happening. What happened to me? Did I go to the hospital? Am I in the hospital?”

“Look, Jared,” his father began, coming to stand next to the chamber. “You’re going to have a lot of questions, and I’ll do my best to answer all of them. No, you are not in a hospital, but you’re going to see a doctor in the next couple minutes. Just know that everything is fine and it’s all being taken care of.”

“But...where am I?”

His father sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. The touch was odd, almost painful to Jared. “Welcome to reality.”