The thoughts we have when we’re left alone can be either eye-opening or mortifying. It’s when the rest of the world has fallen silent and our gaze wanders around the room while we’re waiting for the next stimulation that one can become more aware of how they fill the space. You begin to realize how complex your body is and how beyond your control it can be, where every twitch or sensation can beyour body screaming out for you to do something to climb out of this void. It’s fascinating to see what realizations and thoughts can emerge from being in this space, especially if one examines multiple responses to the silence.

Bliss by Nicholas Alexander Hayes is a new hybrid work from Alien Buddha Press comprising of two stories that show how their narrators react to this unintentional meditation. Both stories appear to be intertwined and potentially set in the same world. The first story, “The Altogether,” is mainly focused on a college-aged male in the quiet after making love to his girlfriend. “Bliss,” meanwhile, follows a college adjunct faculty member and their relationship to one of their students and their cousin’s child.

Each of these pieces explore isolation and the human body, and the sort of thoughts that can come when one is left to examine themselves.

The first story, “The Altogether” is bare in its action, but heavy in its description of the body. We follow our protagonist as he is left with idle hands and an idle mind after his girlfriend falls asleep. He distracts himself with injuries on his person and the cleanliness of his dorm before he goes out in the middle of the night. Hayes writes a description for every part of this person, some familiar and some grotesque. However, we don’t see the inner workings of this person. We’re just left to watch them scrubbing linoleum in the middle of the night before they walk into a lake.

Hayes’ writing is very direct, and while it can be somewhat discomforting to be kept out of this character’s mind, Hayes’ prose forces the reader to be completely grounded in the action. The reader is forced to feel the frustration of trying to scrub a spot that won’t go away or the cold chill of a lake at night, and as a result, they’re left to wonder if the thoughts they feel during these sequences allow them to relate to the protagonist or are a wall that keeps them from being fully immersed.

The following story, “Bliss,” opens the reader more to its protagonist’s inner workings, as we see how they react to everything around them while also considering how their body fits in these spaces. While “Altogether’s” protagonist avoids connection, “Bliss’s” protagonist is all about connection. They muse on their students, coworkers, and their family, all while struggling to feel grounded and settled in their space. We barely learn anything about “Bliss’s” narrator while “Altogether’s” is completely drawn out for the reader.

But unlike “The Altogether’s” main character, we are allowed more spaces to fill and more interactions to try and make sense of the protagonist. Because “Bliss’s” protagonist is allowed more settings and exchanges, it’s almost easier to slip into their skin and try and work out the mechanics of their mind. However, the barrier erected means that, while it’s easier to relate to this character, there are still a number of details about them that we can only surmise, leaving more questions reflected back onto the reader.

What’s fascinating about both pieces in Hayes’ work is that both of them, while occasionally fantastic and unpleasant in their descriptions of the body, really capture the navel gazing that can come from being left with nothing but oneself. There are times one can find themselves completely alone even if they have companionship or relations, but in that dark, quiet time where there’s no tether to this world, the characters are left to really examine themselves and wonder about why they are. A stretch mark may be a sign of something more sinister, or a sensation on the spine could signal something they never considered.

Bliss is an examination of the vivid, forced review of the physical body and that comes about in bouts of loneliness. It’s a psychological piece that asks the reader to think about how they feel and react when there’s nothing else to feel and react to. For a short read, Bliss is quite impactful in its descriptions, and will make every rub or scratch against the reader’s skin feel like an interrogation.

Bliss is now available from Alien Buddha Press.

Alex Carrigan (he/him; @carriganak) is an editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. He is the author of "May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry" (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Empty Mirror, Gertrude Press, Quarterly West, Roi Fainéant, 'Stories About Penises' (Guts Publishing, 2019), 'Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear' (Et Alia Press, 2020), and more. He is also the co-editor of 'Please Welcome to the Stage...: A Drag Literary Anthology' with House of Lobsters Literary. For more, visit https://carriganak.wordpress.com/.