ASTRAL ROB
Episode 1: Waking Isn't Always Wanting
Episode 2: Echoes Over Beaver Creek
Episode 4: Night’s Not Over Yet
Episode 5: And Hold… 1 2 3 4... And In…
Rob was finally home.
The club was behind him. The drinks. The lights. The noise. Gone. But peace? That hadn’t followed him home. The weight of the news about Glenn Picco’s upcoming execution pressed into him like a second gravity. His chest ached. Not from drink. From memory.
The image came fast, like it always did:
The picnic blanket.
The laughter.
His wife’s face, bright and playful.
The kids chasing each other through the trees.
Gone.
Fifteen minutes.
That’s all it had taken for everything he loved to be turned into a crime scene.
Rob clutched the family photo from the mantle. His arms shook. He hugged it tightly, trying to hold them in place—if only in his mind.
On the same shelf sat reminders of another life:
A framed Royal Architectural Institute of Canada gold medal.
Academic awards.
Blueprints he once lived and breathed.
He kissed thefamily photo gently.
Set it back.
And whispered into the silence, “Fucking Glenn. Fucking booze.”
One killed his family.
The other buried the man he used to be.
Later, in bed, Rob opened the OMNI magazine to the article that had been burning a hole in his thoughts all week.
Astral Projection: Exploring the Frequencies of the Soul
He didn’t just read it—he devoured it.
Paragraphs etched themselves into his brain like blueprints.
The concept? Strange. Pseudoscientific. Mystical.
“All planes of existence are connected by frequencies of energy,” the article claimed.
“The mind must be relaxed.
The body tension-free.
Consciousness becomes the tuning fork.”
Rob rolled his eyes at some of it. But the boxed breathing technique? That part felt… scientific. Rhythmic. Procedural. Like building the foundations of a high-rise.
Boxed Breathing Technique:
Inhale: 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8
Hold: 1...2...3...4
Exhale: 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8
Hold: 1...2...3...4
Repeat.
According to the article, the method was like scanning a radio dial. You can’t just receive—you have to transmit. And you couldn’t do it alone. Projection only happened when two or more minds tuned in together.
Rob wasn’t sure he believed it.
But the relaxation? That sounded like something he desperately needed.
Lying back, he followed the instructions.
He tensed and released every muscle from toes to scalp.
Cleared his mind as best he could.
Inhale...
Hold...
Exhale...
Hold...
Repeat.
He did it again.
And again.
A vibration.
No—not a noise. A feeling. Internal. Wavelike.
He felt as if something inside him had begun to drift, stretch, rise—
And he jolted upright.
Sweating. Shaking.
Heart racing like it had outrun something.
The thoughts returned instantly.
The woman on the news.
The reporter’s voice describing what shouldn’t be possible.
He saw it—more than heard it.
The bed. The blood. The explosion.
He buried himself in the covers, eyes open in the dark.
Sleep didn’t come.
End of Episode 5
Meanwhile...
“That poor kid,” the officer muttered to Detective Coleman, standing just outside the bedroom door. “How the hell does someone’s insides come outside like that?”
“Absolutely no idea,” Coleman replied. “But... do you see that?”
“What?”
“His chest. Look closer.”
The officer leaned in.
There it was.
Thin, precise. Like a brand carved with no blade.
∞
With an arrow piercing upward between both loops.
“It’s an infinity symbol,” the officer said.
“Not just that,” Coleman replied. “It’s the Gripper’s symbol.”
“I thought that was a college thing?”
“It was,” Coleman said, snapping more photos. “Back in the day, the joke was ‘Infinity doesn’t exist—because I killed it.’”
“And Glenn made it his own.”
“Yeah. He twisted it. Said it meant: ‘You’re fucked forever.’”
Silence.
“But Glenn’s in prison, right?”
Coleman nodded. “Still... this mark?”
He touched the edge of the wound with a gloved hand.
It wasn’t cut.
It wasn’t burned.
It was scratched...
From the inside.
TTFN
Frank Sirianni aka Foxxfyrre Cg
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