CW: body-horror, gore
The air in that downtown loft was thick and gooey. It smelled of cheap aroma diffusers, sweaty yoga mats, and that specific scent of a desperate spiritualism known as “finding oneself.”
The self-appointed ‘High Priestess’ of this circle—let's call her Enlightened Stacey—sat in a lotus pose in the middle of the room. She preached about attracting money into life by being a "proper woman".
And just I couldn't tear my eyes away from her foot. On her big toe, the coral polish had chipped, revealing a yellowish flaking nail.
The nail was digging into the soft skin of the toe next to it. It looked like a tiny, slow-motion assault. A horribly slow murderer with an extremely inefficient weapon.
Stacey started to teach us her wealthy healthy breathing techniques. But all I could think about was that fungal nail.
“Just trust the flow, my queens,” she was constantly holding her uncanny plastic smile, staring through us with glassy eyes that held nothing but a desire to sell us her course.
I wanted to punch myself for even dragging my ass here. The event was called “Let’s meet, talk, and do some yoga with the girls.” And the reality definitely wasn’t what I expected.
Lately, I’d been grinding at work until I felt like a squeezed lime in a trash bin. Wandering aimlessly through big city parks when I had some free time. Weekends I’d waste in bars, letting loose.
I was new in town. What I actually needed was just a pleasant conversation with someone outside the office, deeper than a regular drunk small talk.
When this “yoga” class was over, I didn’t buy any of Stacey’s tarot reading courses.
Her polished smile cracked for a second, and she looked at me like I was a piece of dog shit stuck to her flip-flop.
Later that day I was on my way home thinking that this meeting wasn't a total waste of time. I didn’t really make any friends, but I did get a couple of cool location tips and a new FB friend—Maya.
Maya was one of the few who wasn't trying to join this esoteric "womb breathing" flow. She just sat on a mat in the corner, sipping her iced coffee, looking just as out of place as I was.
We chatted while waiting for our taxi rides. Settling into this concrete jungle hadn't been easy for her either.
An office girl just like me, Maya had that specific soft accent, greyish-blue eyes and linen-colored hair. I figured she was from somewhere in Eastern Europe.
I shared the location of the best second-hand shops I knew, since we shared a passion for treasure digging. And she gave me a QR code for her favorite meditation app.
“I’m quite sure you will like InnerBloom,” she said. “It really makes your mind clear. And it’s based on actual meditation practices—not the 'bring money to your life by saying affirmations' kind of stuff.”
I downloaded the app purely out of politeness and because I thought Maya was kinda cool. My phone was already stuffed with fitness apps it kept suggesting I delete.
I guess she was a part of the dev team. She stood there, watching me download it, staring at my screen. It was a bit awkward but I know this feeling too, looking at every successful project you put effort to like at a little miracle.
She seemed very happy when I told her I would give it a try. Didn’t want to upset her with a confession that my real meditation was brain rot shorts and series.
“I think you really need this. You’ll never know until you try”
Monday was an absolute clusterfuck.
My boss, a pretentious man-child with a raw-steak-colored tan, spent thirty minutes morally eviscerating me.
The fuckup was big. Wasn’t entirely my fault, but I was the one who had to take the hit. As always.
His screams vibrated in my teeth like a dental drill. I just stood there, watching the foam gathering in the corners of his mouth.
I caught myself imagining how I put my sweaty sock into his mouth so he shuts up. The idea made me giggle. He didn’t appreciate and by the time he was done, I felt like my ears were actually bleeding.
Back home I collapsed on the floor like a potato sack and was laying there for an hour or so, waiting for the Tylenol to kick in and make my head stop feeling like it was about to pop. It didn’t help much.
I grabbed my phone to check how hard shit had hit the fan in our private work chat. Regretted doing it immediately.
Tried to relax by cleaning junk from my phone.
I was scrolling through my old photos when I saw one from last year. I’d deleted almost all of them, but this one managed to stay, hiding from me, avoiding total purge.
It was a picture of a breakfast table with a gigantic pile of pancakes. I used to make them almost every morning back then. My stomach rumbled, empty and bitter. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
In the corner of the picture was a man’s hand.
I remembered how he used to tap his fingers on the wood while reading his morning news feed.
I quickly deleted the picture.
I opened the trash and emptied it, too. And I don’t make pancakes anymore.
I felt that familiar, cold knot tightening in my chest. Shit. Not again.
I went back to my home screen. Started deleting apps. Stupid, useless apps I stopped using a while ago.
A loyalty card for a coffee shop in my old city. A "Step Counter" that kept telling me I was a lazy ass.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
That’s when I saw the meditation app. InnerBloom survived the purge. A perfect black circle on grey it looked too much like the camera app.
It brought back the images of that day. Maya’s light flower perfume, with some strange bony note, which I couldn’t identify. Her cold colored eyes. And that honest hint of warmth in them when she smiled at me.
Alright. Give me your best shot. Calm me down, or you’re fucking gone too.
“Welcome home,” said a soft female voice in my earbuds.
A standard clean artificial voice. The speech was accompanied by relaxing ambient music.
The interface was cheap crap. Just a dark grey background with a light grey ‘Begin Session’ button.
When I tapped the button, the app asked for my camera access. I denied and was about to swap and get rid of it.
But the button changed its colour to a dark blue. My favourite color.
I let out a short, dry laugh. It was so bad it was actually good.
Go ahead, surprise me.
A female torso appeared on the screen. A soft blue, semi-transparent render with organs filling it. It looked like some sort of digital atlas for doctors or something.
Below the diaphragm, the dark blue colored organs were nestled together, glossy like worms on the ground after a rain. Liver, heart, kidneys. Everything was in its place as far as I could tell. The lungs were hugged by the rib cage, with the pumping blue heart at the center of it all.
The figure was slowly spinning, allowing me to see every detail from every angle.
Hell, this design looked high-class and didn’t match my first impression of this app.
“Your heart is beating too fast,” the narrator said as the image on my screen zoomed in on the heart. “Let’s slow down the rhythm and ease the pain. Find a comfortable position. Take a deep breath in. And out.”
I didn't even notice the fifteen minutes pass.
Didn’t notice how I started following the instructions of that artificial voice. How the time passes by, coloring my room from a shady red to pitch black.
The narrator's voice was truly relaxing. Hypnotic, artificial magic. Her words were gently carrying me like a warm river stream.
But something felt a little bit off.
“Bring a gentle, inner smile to your bladder”—a wet and juicy juicy lip smack interrupted the flow—“May you be happy. May you be safe. May you be at peace”
Simulated voice doesn’t do lip smacking.
After that moment I started to pay close attention to her speech. Sometimes between phrases—especially the ones about scanning and focusing on my body parts and organs—I heard lip smacking or swallowing kind of sound.
A simulated voice doesn’t smack its lips. It doesn’t swallow. But she did. I never listen to ASMR stuff. And don’t enjoy salivating sounds.
It was disgusting. But the moment she told me to let my heavy thoughts go—I just did. Like a switch flipped in my brain. And it felt so good.
By the time I finished my practice, the sunset was gone and the only source of light was the phone’s screen.
“Session is over. I hope you’re feeling better now. Come back soon.”
My ears were ringing slightly, and my head felt pleasantly fuzzy. Migraine was completely gone like it never existed. Like someone had reached into my skull and simply turned the pain off.
Damn, it actually worked. All I had been doing was lying on the floor with my eyes closed, focusing on my breath and trying to feel my body through the narrator's guidance.
Thanks, Maya.
Since that day InnerBloom has become my routine. My crutch. My magical pill for crushing headaches.
After work, I’d rush home to catch my dose of relaxation.
“Imagine your vessels are hollow glass tubes. We are pouring a warm, heavy, mercurial peace into them,” artificial voice would say.
Weird phrases would appear more and more often every day. Half of it was absolute horseshit, but I didn’t care. It was my hit of dopamine.
I’d fall asleep to stories about my lungs filling with a thick, grey silt and my ribcage stretching into a cage of wet bone.
I texted Maya, inviting her to hang out, and told her that her app was so great. But she didn’t reply and she hasn’t been online since the day we met.
I started to feel much better those days. I started to fall asleep really fast, and I stopped dreaming. In the mornings I’d feel fresh and full of energy without caffeine. I even began some simple working out and taking care of myself better than I did.
But that Saturday morning was an exception. I had THE hangover. The worst one I had in many months, it woke me up way earlier than usual. I went to a karaoke bar with a girl from my office, Daniella, and left my voice there, so now it rasped like an old radio, feeling like a train wreck.
After drinking some electrolytes, scrolling my feed, and showering, I decided to use my magical pill.
I sat on the living room floor, set up my phone, and launched InnerBloom.
The regular ‘Begin Session’ blue button was gone. Instead, there was a new one. An ivory colored button.
‘Bloom’
They updated the design? So sweet.
I pressed it and closed my eyes, waiting for my dose of happiness.
“Welcome home. I’ve been waiting for you” the narrator said. “Today is a special session. Today we are finally ready to bloom.”
At that moment, a sharp pinch hit my lower stomach.
I snapped my eyes open and stared at the screen. At the transparent female figure with her organs inside. I was very familiar with this strange design by that time. Now it was different.
Among the azure loops of the intestines, there was a dead pixel. A black spot in the centre.
“What the hell...” I muttered. My voice cracked. My throat was dry, like I’d been eating sand.
The black spot on the screen moved. A tiny, rhythmic twitch. Like a pulse.
And I felt it. Deep in my gut. A sharp, rhythmic kick from the inside.
Then, the pixel exploded. It dilated like a pupil in the pitch dark, swelling instantly like a balloon filled with pressurized gas.
A black orb, which now looked strangely organic, not digital.
First came the cold. A flash of numbing shock. Shivers. And a painful feeling like I was super gassy. The cold turned into a wet heat. I looked down at my stomach, then back at the screen.
As the orb on the screen kept growing, my pain was growing with it. I felt exactly the same as what I saw on the screen.
It’s….it’s INSIDE of ME!
“Do not be afraid. Trust the process.” Narrator guided, accompanied by the same, relaxing ambient music, “Follow my voice as you are witnessing the True Heartbeat manifestation”
Krrr-chak—the wet snap of a branch breaking in the dead of winter.
The sickening crack of my own ribs snapping. The skin on my stomach stretched until it was translucent—matte and thin, like an old plastic bag.
I could see my veins. Pulsing, changing color from blue to black, like I was injected with ink.
I know it was impossible. I know I should have knocked out. Was it just a bad dream? But it hurt. It hurt as hell. I have no words to describe this feeling. Is this what people call an agony? But why does it feel strangely good and warm?
Strangely fulfilling.
Mesmerised, I stared at the screen, my hands cradling my bloated stomach.
The sphere on the display shivered. Tiny, white nubs of human teeth sprouted from its surface. They grew with impossible speed, like seedlings in a time-lapse video, pushing through the orb’s black surface.
The image on the screen was so clear now. So organic. A constantly moving orb surface was like some black, wet, tangled hair with human teeth of a different size and shape, sticking out from all sides.
Then the sphere started to spin.
I opened my mouth to scream—not because of the pain. The pain was gone now, and I felt only a familiar soft, fuzzy feeling in my head.
I screamed, at the top of my lungs, putting all my hopes and dreams, all my life experience, everything I ever was and could have ever become into that scream.
But only dry, hot air came out, bringing a metallic smell with a hint of a dentist’s office.
“Allow your thoughts to float by, like clouds in an infinite blue sky. Do not cling to them. Just observe.”
And I watched. Hypnotised I watched how the black sphere quickly dealt with my innards. Liver, kidneys, guts, lungs. Everything was chewed down. As it spun, in grinded my innards and sucked them in.
I was nothing but a living, stretched leather bag for its terrible feast.
I heard the sound from the phone speakers and from inside of me. Squelching. Slurping.
When everything was over, it settled comfortably inside, filling every inch of my abdomen.
I looked at my stomach, still holding it in my hands. It wasn’t so bloated anymore.
I heard a purring sound. A happy kitten that ate a big fish. A rhythmic purr, coming from within.
And the mesmerising voice. Finally, I didn’t need my phone to hear it.
I heard it in my head.
We have bloomed. Welcome home.
The purring grew louder, vibrating. I closed my eyes, accepting the inner peace. The True Heartbeat.
You will never be alone again.
Monday. A blissful day. I was going to work, feeling the sun on my skin in a way I’ve never felt before.
Everything felt different—something beyond words. Something you’ll understand only after giving it a try.
Loneliness, hatred, pressure, betrayal. All the stupid, heavy things that used to break me every day are gone.
Some things still linger. Things like he said that day. They still linger somewhere in the deep, like that photo with pancakes.
But it’s just a matter of time. They will be gone soon, too.
He told me, we couldn’t be together. He told me, I couldn’t give him what he needed.
Soon you will forget.
Now, I feel a heart beating inside me that isn't mine. I feel a purpose.
To bring something new into this world.
A notification popped up on my phone. A QR code. I smiled to myself.
When I entered the office, Daniella saw me first. She noticed that I looked very fresh today, like something has changed in me in a good way. She asked what kind of perfume I was using.
I saw some change in her, too. With my new eyes, I saw changes in them all. A black dead pixel. It was hidden deep inside each one of them, even in my boss.
Waiting, patiently.
Ready to bloom.