Gabriel Jeroschewitz, March 28th, 2026, thoughts I had the other day about my resin
statuette friend Mrs. Death, who fell off the shelf and broke her ass
I wanted to tell him to get out of my shared field of being.
You don’t hate them. You hate what they reveal about you. The Interdimensional Lounge is where all kinds of consciousness gather to share drinks and stories. At forty-seven, thinking I’d mastered detachment, I watched as the shared field shifted with the arrival of God. Here, God wears a suit, sports a mustache, and nurses a hangover in my favourite spot in the universe.
Then they showed up.
First in was Mr. Death.
He was tall, dark, and striking in a three-piece suit that probably cost more than my childhood therapy bills. Right away, I felt irritated by him, a reaction tied to parts of myself I’d hidden away over the years with therapy and paperwork.
“Another scotch,” I told the bartender—a concept made manifest in human form.
Mr. Death ordered an existential dread on the rocks, shaken not stirred, because he had standards. I hated him. I called it a “personality clash” or “bad energy.” I ignored the truth echoing in my mind, shouting about my insecurities.
Then came Mrs. Death.
She entered the lounge, and the temperature of the establishment dropped to thermodynamic impossibilities. Mrs. Death was gorgeous enough to make the retinas of the regular patrons burn with admiration of her radiant beauty. Her eyes were a particular shade of iridescent red that emitted smoke from her sockets—delicate tendrils of ash, like cremation rituals, drifting in the air around her and smelling of expensive perfume and forgotten birthdays.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she commented to no one in the restaurant. “How the gorgeousness of my body warps the time-space continuum?”
I wanted to throw my drink at her. It was recognition—precise, psychological, surgical—targeting every bit of vanity that I had ever pretended to have forgotten about over time.
“Try the canapés,” Mr. Death commented, seeking to please his wife’s guest with a nod toward the decadent hors d’oeuvres that cost more than the drink orders in the lounge. “They’re made of everything you were taught was unacceptable.”
I was on the verge of replying with something cutting when my goofy dwarf friend showed up through the wall—not the door—wearing a propeller beanie and carrying a rubber chicken in one paw.
“Heya!” he shouted into the shared field of cosmic being. “Who ordered the pizza of infinite recursion?”
Short, loud, and joyously goofy in a way that made my teeth ache, my dwarf friend represented every aspect of me that I had edited out over time to appear more mature.
“Not now,” I hissed at him.
“Why so serious?” he asked me, honking the rubber chicken in his hand.
Above us floated the nude angels—the deities of universal existence—beautiful, naked, and unashamed to visit my shared field of being. Their glowing bodies indicated that they had never once googled the steps necessary to hide lower belly fat.
I didn’t want to look at them. Irritation quickly developed into rage toward these beings of existence.
“Do they bother you?” Mr. Death asked me.
They were so well-dressed, I couldn’t find the urge to tell him “no.” I hated him for it. “They’re fine,” I lied.
“They’re you,” Mrs. Death corrected me. “Every bit of desire you’ve labelled ‘inappropriate.’ Every bit of self-love you’ve termed ‘vanity.’”
The dwarf friend began juggling voids—empty spaces in the lounge filled with nothingness—each void making a sound like shloop whenever he tossed them in the air.
“Lighten up!” he shouted at me in my shared being. “The cosmos is just God experiencing itself—and God looks ridiculous when it comes to experiencing a fart!”
I wanted to tell him to get out of my shared field of being. I wanted to get rid of all of them—the handsome couple who represented my own hidden arrogance—the angels who showed me my greatness—and the goofy dwarf who represented my need for unashamed, ridiculous joy.
The field of cosmic consciousness did not permit me to do such a thing.
Separation from others in this shared field is an illusion. What irritates us is not the presence of others within the field of shared being, but that which is familiar yet disowned by ourselves.
When I looked into Mr. Death’s eyes, I saw my own unacknowledged desire for power over my mortality.
Looking into Mrs. Death’s eyes revealed my buried sensuality—too bright for beings like me to look at directly.
The dwarf friend reflected my potential to embrace chaos and joy without fear of others’ consequences.
The angels reflected the greatness within me—my potential to display my existence without fear or hesitation—all of it living in shadow in my personality.
“You’re not random,” I said to all the beings in the Interdimensional Lounge. “You’re surgical.”
Mr. Death raised his glass of scotch. “Finally,” he said, “you’re doing the work.”
Shadow work isn’t about soft healing, Mrs. Death said when she looked into my upturned face. “It’s about confronting what you see in yourself that you passionately defend—yet leave un-integrated.”
The dwarf friend stopped juggling the voids and handed me a rubber chicken. “It’s also hilarious,” he said. “Existence is inherently goofy. We’re all just meat puppets pretending to understand the principles of the cosmos and existence in general.”
The angels descended from their floating position in the lounge—yet their nudity was no longer irritating.
They were not attempting to tempt me into their shared existence.
They were instructing me—part of the field of shared being requires the stripping away of that which one is not.
I took the rubber chicken. I squeezed it. Honk.
I was not irritated anymore. I had integrated with the field of shared being—my irrationality included.
“So,” Mr. Death said to me after a brief silence between patrons. “Now that you’ve seen what you hate in yourself, which is actually the part of yourself that you’ve hidden from view…what will you do?”
Looking at the lounge sky and seeing the hermetic principles in effect in this shared field of existence, I realized that until I integrated the shadow within me—that part of me that displays arrogance, desire and irrationality—I would have any semblance of control over my existence. I was being controlled by myself.
“I’m going to need another drink,” I said to the bartender. “And this time, I’m not going to need to battle the judgment from others.”
The dwarf cheered. The angels applauded in tones that resonated through the shared field. Mr. and Mrs. Death smiled at me—perfect teeth, understanding eyes—and the cosmos experiencing itself in the Interdimensional Lounge for once seemed to look a lot like a bar where everyone knows your name because everyone is you.
The next time someone comes along and disturbs you—take a breath. Ask yourself a question: what part of me just got exposed?
That answer—the one found between the handsome Death in the corner and the nude angels floating in the lounge overhead, vibrating in time with the honk of a rubber chicken—is where your real power begins.
Most people scroll past the truth.
I chose to face it.
It was wearing a propeller beanie.
