“Bathroom Footage from Michael Bloomberg’s Limestone Mansion” and other excerpts from The History of America in My Lifetime

[Below is an excerpt from Brooks Sterritt’s new novel The History of America in My Lifetime. Get your copy here!]

The first powder they provided for our enjoyment sharpened something inside me, and dulled something else. My body ceased functioning in the way I was accustomed. Reagan switched on speakers in the room’s corner, filling the air with what may have been a brown note. The two of them flanked a lamp, and sort of shimmied there, watching me. I was reminded of Giotto’s Death and Ascension of St. Francis, for the angels of course but also for what was hidden inside the cloud. In foreground: corpse, mourners, roughly ten haloed angels (some with illegible faces), and the ascendant St. Francis. The cloud, though, contained the face of what could only be a devil, demon, imp, daemon, fiend, or fallen angel. What else watches from a cloud?

The better question: what did “demon” really mean? Even if you reject the label, some things shined with enough intensity to make direct viewing of the source impossible. Some had an ability to control brightness, to blur certain aspects of themselves, even to cloud a mind or two. 

The second powder they gave me caused my body to sink into what felt like a jelly-filled bag. A series of sounds: paper being shredded in slow-motion, a chainsaw backwards, the sound of a single finger snap echoing, extended until it sounded like a hiss of flame. I breathed heavy electricity. A layer of clear glass emerged between my eyes and surroundings, which then shattered, reemerged, and shattered, until the ceiling extended into an infinite corridor. Woodland paths and streams became visible in the tile, a maze buzzed into the hair on someone’s gargantuan head. The pair of attendants were sitting on the edge of the bed, talking.

“They always say they can go forever,” Reagan said.

“Like, I’m going to fuck you for hours,” the other said.

“Then, a few minutes later…”