Honorable Mention, Adult Category
On his last day of work, they present Kevin Chen with an enormous self-care basket. It includes an isolation tank session, redeemable at the local spa.
His colleagues cheer and raise their glasses towards him.
Here’s to finally relaxing in your retirement!
Kevin takes a sip from his plastic flute and says nothing. He has been dreading this day: his forced retirement. Forty years working as an electrical engineer designing cell phone semiconductor chips and now he’s being let go at the top of his game. He’s already survived wave after wave of layoffs; he knew that he would succumb eventually. He is the last one standing in his entire group. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to relax. He is used to working twenty-seven hours a day and sleeping five hours a week. His colleagues used to say that his PowerPoints were worthy of posterity. What is he going to do now with his life? Garden? He knows he’s earned himself a good rest, but why does this feel like one giant step closer to death?
In his first month of retirement, he drives his wife, Gayathri, crazy. He purchases his-and-hers cemetery plots and reviews their trust five times and cleans out both of their closets. He calls their daughter, Maya, so many times that her executive assistant starts taking his calls. His insomnia becomes worse. When he’s supposed to be sleeping, he reorganizes the whole house. He creates a ninety-eight-page spreadsheet that lists all of their possessions in alphabetical order, with columns that show location of item and last estimated use. If he’s used an item in the past year, it gets to stay; if it hasn’t proven its usefulness in that time, he donates it or throws it away. His goal is to downsize so that, when he dies, his wife and daughter won’t have as much junk to sort through. He doesn’t want to be a burden to them.
Gayathri is a high school English teacher who works in the same school district in which she and Kevin had once been classmates. She stops by home during her free period to check up on him and on the current state of their house. She surveys the mess with uncharacteristic desperation and shakes her head. She hasn’t colored her hair lately, Kevin notices. Two thick stripes of silver have emerged along her hairline, a startling contrast against her usual dark mane. The silver roots make her look older, though he would never tell her that. He’s not suicidal.
Kevin, I’ve already asked you to please stop throwing out all of our stuff.
I’m just decluttering. When was the last time that we used this blender?
Look, I made you a spa appointment at noon. Maybe you can try out that isolation tank. It’ll help you relax.
She wrestles the blender out of his hands and places it back onto the kitchen counter, even though she hasn’t made a smoothie in, by his estimation, years. He allows himself to be directed out of the kitchen and pushed towards his car. Gayathri usually rules the household and, he assumes, the classroom with calm composure. It’s the only way that one can teach Of Mice and Men to chaotic freshmen. She’s already received her pink slip for the year, part of an insane practice in which most of the teachers in the school district are let go with the understanding that they will likely be rehired a few months later, if and when funding is confirmed. Kevin cannot imagine having to go through this pink slipping three years in a row, as she has. Death and resurrection, all within the span of months.
Gayathri hands him his car keys. Kevin, she says, please don’t come home until you feel relaxed.
###
At the spa, the receptionist checks him in and gives him a tour of his private room. The isolation tank is positioned against the far wall, black and faintly angular.
You know, it looks like a coffin.
What?
A coffin. That isolation tank looks like a coffin.
Does it?
She opens the device and shows him the inside, which resembles a small bathtub. She explains that it is filled with warm, salty water so that the person inside can float. With the lid shut and no way to see out, the person can fully relax without light, sound, or a sense of gravity to distract them. With a push of the hand, the person inside can open the lid of the tank.
She points out three buttons: one button to control the lights, one button to connect to the front desk, and a panic button.
What’s the panic button for?
Some of our clients can’t handle the isolation tank.
What do you mean?
Some clients are claustrophobic. If you find out that you are, press the button and we’ll help you right away
I’m not claustrophobic.
He’s not. When Maya was little and wanted to play hide and seek, he waited in many a tight spot for her to eventually find him. And over the years, he’s had several MRIs: right shoulder, both knees, lumbar spine. He was fine every time. In fact, he even fell asleep once. He found it restful. He doubts that he’ll find the isolation tank as relaxing.
Some of our clients have hallucinations.
What?
While they’re in these isolation tanks. Since there’s a lack of external stimuli, the brain tries to fill the void. But it’s not always a bad thing! Last week, we had a writer visit us three times, hoping for a hallucination.
A hallucination?
I was told that the writer was looking for inspiration.
Did they find what they were looking for?
Oh yes.
Kevin’s confident that he won’t hallucinate. He has a strong grip on reality. His strength is logical thinking. Logically speaking, he will try to relax, but he’s not the type, not someone who could hang out at a spa all day and do nothing. He already knows that he will be planning out the rest of his action items for the week. He’s always been a man with a plan, someone who fills each day to the brim.
After the receptionist leaves the room, he feels a strong urge to hear his daughter’s voice. She feels too far away. This urge has been coming more and more frequently lately. He fishes his phone out of his pocket and dials. Germany is nine hours ahead, 9 p.m. over there, so Maya will still be awake. His Taiwanese-Indian-American girl lives and works in Isar Valley, the tech hub of Germany. Such is the global world that they all live in now. He just wishes that she would move back home.
As usual, his daughter doesn’t pick up.
There is nothing left to do but disrobe and descend into the warm salty water. He feels a sudden stab of illogical hopefulness. He doesn’t think that being in an enclosed bathtub will help calm his racing thoughts, but he’s willing to be surprised. He floats in nothingness and mentally sorts out the most efficient order in which to complete his tasks. After he’s finished, he feels sleepy. Is this relaxation? His back muscles unclench for the first time in a month. Maybe he is a spa man after all.
Someone, maybe a man, belts out the chorus of the Friends theme song, jolting Kevin out of his rest. Kevin floats towards the side of the tank where the off-key singing is coming from, which seems to be the room on the other side of the wall. Kevin imagines that the singer is a younger, fit man, hair tied into a top knot, a zen smile plastered on his face. This seems like the kind of person who seeks out a session in an isolation tank.
Excuse me, can you stop singing?
What?
Can you please stop singing?
Why can I hear you? I shouldn’t be able to hear anyone inside here.
Well, it seems that neither of our tanks are soundproof.
It wasn’t like this last week. Where are you? It sounds like you’re right next to me
Can you keep it down? I’m trying to relax in here.
Sorry.
Kevin thinks that the man doesn’t sound sorry at all.
After a moment, the singing starts up again. The man is a terrible singer.
Kevin knocks on the side of his tank twice.
The man knocks on the side of his tank three times.
How juvenile they are being.
Hey, Kevin says, you wouldn’t happen to be a writer, would you?
How’d you know?
The receptionist mentioned that there was a writer who came here three times last week.
Guilty. That’s me.
The zen top knot man morphs into a serious-looking writer-type with thick frames and a frown.
But the receptionist told me that you found inspiration, Kevin says.
It escaped me again. Back to the drawing board. Again. Well, since we’re both here, maybe you can tell me about yourself?
Look, I’m just here to relax. I don’t want to be a character in one of your stories.
You don’t want to tell me? Okay, let me guess. Hippie searching for a spiritual shortcut?
Not a hippie.
Are you post-breakup?
I’m married.
Workaholic?
Kevin hates the flattening of that word, workaholic. A workaholic has no life. His life has been full and fulfilling. He has a wife and a daughter. He tells the writer, I just want to get back to my session.
Don’t worry, I get it, I’m also a workaholic, married to my craft. What do you do for a living?
Why do you want to know?
Just curious. I promise I won’t put you in a story.
I’d really like to get back to relaxing–
If you tell me, I’ll stop bothering you. Promise!
Okay, well. I was–I am an electrical engineer. I design cell phone chips.
Cell phone chips?
Small as your fingernail.
Really!
Really.
Okay, tell me something interesting about cell phone chips that I, as a layperson, will be able to understand.
Hmmm, let me think. Okay. The last chip I worked on had ten billion transistors on it!
What’s a transistor?
They’re microscopic electronic switches and amplifiers that control the flow of electricity.
Ten billion!
Ten billion. Can you imagine the complexity of it all? All on a tiny chip the size of a finger nail? We weren’t always able to do this. Since the seventies, there’s been a general projection that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. Of course, nowadays–
Sounds like something out of a science fiction novel!
Yes, except it’s real life. What about you?
What about me?
What do you write?
Magical realism.
I should have guessed.
In Kevin’s mind, the writer’s hairline recedes and thins and his face sprouts an impressive mustache that curls at each end. Although, now that he thinks about it, how does he even know that the writer is a man?
I’ve written two novels, the writer announces, and I’m working on my third. I can sense a story inside me, trying to fight its way to the surface, if only I can find some way to unlock it. I tell you, I’m just one hallucination away from greatness!
There are other ways to induce a hallucination. Have you tried LSD?
Kevin doesn’t mention sleep deprivation.
Believe me, the writer says, I’ve tried everything! Nothing. My agent has been bothering me every week but I don’t have any new ideas. I haven’t written anything in a year. If this continues, I might have to go back to my corporate job. I’d rather die than go back to that job!
What did you used to do?
Kevin imagines that the writer’s magnificent mustache is shaved off abruptly. The writer now sports a cleancut look and wears a suit.
I won’t give you the boring details, the writer says, but we worked nine in the morning to nine at night, six days a week. After a twelve-hour shift, one of my coworkers died from a heart attack in the company bathroom. Right there on the floor, next to the toilet! Can you believe it! She was young and healthy, too.
Oh my god!
Oh my god is right!
Well. I’m sorry that happened. It sounds difficult. I’ve taken up enough of your time–
I can see we’re a lot alike. Just two workaholics, hanging out–
I’m not a workaholic.
Spoken like a true workaholic!
You and I, we’re nothing alike.
Touchy, touchy.
I’m going to get back to relaxing now.
Do you even know how to relax? You probably don’t know what to do with yourself when you’re not at work.
Can you please be quiet?
Let me guess, you have a strained relationship with your wife and child?
What the–I’m–I’m trying to relax here.
Can I ask, what are you trying to prove to yourself when you work so many hours? What are you running away from?
If you don’t shut up, I’m going to have you thrown out.
Mr. Workaholic, I already know you. I know your character arc. I’ve already seen it play out a billion times in books and TV shows and movies. Something or someone will interrupt your little life and teach you about what’s really important.
Kevin finds that he’s actually angry. How can this writer ever understand Kevin’s life, the vastness of it, the complexity of its countless small, moving parts? Kevin resents the writer’s uninformed assumptions. How nice it must be to be a writer. All a writer has to do is to make up a story and write it down. A writer doesn’t even have to get it right, as long as he follows a familiar plot that readers recognize.
Let me guess, Kevin says, you’re just a washed-up writer. You chase inspiration all the way to the spa, but you won’t actually sit down and do the work.
Wake up! You’re just another corporate drone!
Oh yeah? A hallucination is not going to save you from obscurity!
Someday, you will find yourself on your deathbed and realize that you have wasted all your thoughts and time on work!
Inside his tank, Kevin chokes on an inhalation of water, then coughs out a lung. The nerve of this stranger, this writer, to reduce Kevin’s entire personhood to caricature. Kevin says, I hope you don’t hallucinate, today or ever!
A long, deadly pause.
What did you say?
Kevin repeats: I said I hope you never hallucinate. I hope that you never write that third book and have to go back to your corporate job.
Motherfucker!!
There’s the sound of a mechanical whirl from the writer’s side of the wall, a loud grunt, and a door opening and closing. Kevin confirms that the isolation tank isn’t soundproof at all. And then loud, slapping footsteps, a violent rattling of the doorknob, the popping open of Kevin’s door. Suddenly, the writer’s voice booms right above Kevin’s head.
Come out so I can kick your ass!
Kevin panics. How has the writer gotten inside Kevin’s room? He shouts, what are you doing?
Come out of there right now, you piece of shit!
There’s a terrible thumping from the side of the tank. Kevin stabs the call button repeatedly for the front desk. Where is that panic button? The writer sounds like a big person. He imagines a broad and tall man with muscular arms and legs. It sounds like the writer is trying to kickbox his way inside Kevin’s tank. Kevin feels like a sitting duck, even though he knows there’s no way the writer can physically penetrate the tank from the outside. He hopes that the receptionist can put an end to this madness. Kevin fights an insane urge to laugh. How difficult it must be for the writer to live in the imaginary, to devote himself to characters who are not real. It’s probably enough to push anyone off the deep end.
Between thumps, the writer shouts, my agent just fired me!
Look, I’m sorry that your agent just fired you, but don’t take it out on me!
You’ve jinxed my writing career!
What are you talking about?
You deserve a beating! I am going to wait until you come out!
Kevin reasons that he can outlast the writer. Depending on how long he has to stay inside this tank, he’ll just have to rearrange his list of action items. Where is that receptionist? He hopes Gayathri doesn’t worry if he comes home late. What a laugh they’ll both have when he tells her about what happened today! Maybe she will forgive his aggressive decluttering.
He would kill to be able to see outside his tank. Within his tank, he’s trapped. The thumping sounds seem to fade. His hands swipe across the smooth walls, but he can’t seem to locate the button that controls the light. His eyes are wide open and the dark is too big. He can’t feel his arms or his body. His mind struggles without anything to hold onto, a swimmer in a vast ocean without a single buoy in sight. Is this what claustrophobia feels like? The feeling grows worse and worse as the tank walls close in and he descends into disorder. His mind flails and tries to attach itself to passing thoughts. It latches onto the writer’s dead coworker, the one who had died next to the toilet. Is this what her last moment had been like? The absence of everything, and then nothing at all? He tries not to think about his own death, but it is everywhere.
He had read once that thinking about death is like trying to stare at the sun, and he finds that this is true. In the span of a second, he sinks a thousand times into death. Death lies beside him and entwines her limbs with his.
But then the regular chatter of his mind takes over, a stream of thoughts running on an endless loop, and he weeps with relief as he draws the familiar to the forefront of his mind and pushes death back into the darkness. His job, his job! He mourns the death of his job. He had liked his job and he had been so good at his job. He had worked so hard to secure a stable job with coworkers that he liked. His colleagues had been aggressive, analytical, argumentative, complex, logical, pushy, and sometimes insane. He was lucky that his direct manager was only a little insane. This had been his dream job, intellectually stimulating most of the time–okay, if he’s being honest, maybe half of the time–and providing benefits and restricted stock units. He cannot believe he has been let go. The death of his professional life. He wonders if this was how his father felt when he retired. His father, also an electrical engineer, worked in Hsinchu, Taiwan’s tech hub, while Kevin grew up in San Jose, California with his mother. Father and son reunited four times a year for a week at a time. Now his father’s ashes are stored in a mausoleum in Taipei. How many moments that his father missed out on! He always thought he’d be a great father, better than his own father. How has Kevin gotten to this point? He had been young once. He had been young, and then he was not. All over again, he is scared to death about death.
Maybe, when he leaves the tank, he will get a dog.
There is a sudden, unpleasant rush of cold water into his tank. Kevin’s skin turns into gooseflesh. He tries adjusting the temperature, but there is no change. He pushes the call button. Again, no one responds. He wonders if he had imagined the receptionist or the writer. What is life but one giant hallucination? He pushes a button. Only the dim light inside the tank turns on. The water level is rising steadily. More cold water pours in. He will freeze to death if he stays inside. What should he do, leave the isolation tank and risk a beating from the writer, or stay inside and risk hypothermia? Kevin pushes the lid of the tank to open it. It does not open. He pushes on it several times; still, nothing happens. Cold water continues to pour into the tank, pushing Kevin’s body upward. There is about a foot of space between the water surface and the top of the ceiling.
Hey! Kevin tries to keep the panic out of his voice. He tries to be logical. There has to be a kill switch somewhere.
Hey! Writer, are you still out there?
No.
The water’s rising and I can’t get out. Can you help me?
Really? What’s it like in there?
I’m serious! The water’s rising!
Give me more details!
What’s wrong with you! I might drown to death and you’re asking me to describe the situation?
This is great material!
Maybe Kevin is having the hallucination that the writer should be having. Kevin pounds at the sides of the wall. He is going to wake up soon, he just knows it. But the reality of the ceiling, which is moving closer and closer to his face, cannot be denied. Soon he will be pressed up against it. When that happens, he is prepared to hold his breath under water, but for how long? All Kevin can do is push against the lid repeatedly and stab the buttons again and again. The vibration from Kevin’s assault causes the panic button to pop off the wall.
Someone bursts into the room. The receptionist screams: I can’t turn off the water!
Both Kevin and the writer yell, what do you mean, you can’t turn it off?
I mean that I can’t turn off the water!
Kevin feels great thumping vibrations each time they make contact with the hard outer surface of the tank. It sounds like Kevin is driving through a carwash. He is eighteen years old again, making out with his future wife in a carwash. When he dies, he will never drive through another car wash again. More importantly, he will never kiss Gayathri again. His poor wife! His father had wanted him to marry a nice Taiwanese girl; his father had thought that the Indian American high school girlfriend was just a phase. Why didn’t he take Gayathri to try that new Filipino restaurant that she wanted to go to last week? Why hadn’t he taken her to Vienna like he had promised? He wishes that the last thing he said to her was not about the blender. He wishes that his last communication with Maya wasn’t through her executive assistant. He wishes that he could transport to Munich right now and see his daughter’s face.
He will never see his baby girl again!
But he will reunite with his father.
He should have gone to the last family reunion in Taipei. Why didn’t he attend? The ceiling is six inches away from his face. Kevin cannot believe he is going to drown to death. He has been raised on a steady diet of American television and movies, where the hero is always saved in the nick of time through his own ingenuity or luck.
He thinks about his waterlogged corpse being dragged out of the tank.
The writer pants, this is not happening, this is not happening!
As though this is all happening to the writer instead of Kevin! When the writer eventually goes home, he will tell his friends or family or fellow writers about Kevin’s death, the same way he talked about his coworker dying next to the toilet, and Kevin will be just another interesting anecdote in the grand landscape of the writer’s life.
The writer lets out a long litany of curses.
There’s a terrible scraping and sawing and thumping and whirring.
Kevin isn’t a religious person, but he prays fervently to whoever is out there. He’s not ready to die, he’s too young to die, he hasn’t finished his list of action items! Why didn’t he go paragliding! He still has no idea how to cook three cup chicken. He hasn’t held a grandbaby in his arms or made a final pilgrimage to Taiwan. Why didn’t he go to Taiwan like he always thought he would? Why didn’t he learn Taiwanese like he always planned to do?
His life has been so small.
His PowerPoints will outlive him.
As the ceiling grazes the tip of Kevin’s nose, he is convinced that none of this is real, and that he is physically elsewhere. He is back in his office, sitting in front of the computer, overcome by the elephantine weight of Death sitting on his chest. His whole life is but a single transistor, one of billions existing on a semiconductor chip that lives on Death’s fingernail. Death directs Kevin to look upon the thousands of years of technological innovation that have come before him, the cyclical rise and fall of communities, the collective schooling and the magnitude of complex orchestration it takes to keep Kevin’s colleagues and his competitors and the manufacturers and the consumers in motion all over the world, and the sheer human effort of it all unexpectedly shifts Kevin’s fear elsewhere. That he could have been a part of this world, that he could have been alive, not just a transistor on any chip but a transistor on this chip, feels like a wonder and a privilege. On this chip, he has a billion fathers and marries a billion women and has a billion children; he works a billion different jobs and lives in a billion different homes and owns a billion different dogs.
How he wishes he could have read the writer’s third novel.
As the water closes in, Kevin sucks in a breath of air and waits for the cold rush to envelop his face. Something large strikes the tank and shatters part of it, sending bits of plastic and glass raining onto Kevin’s face. A shard strikes him near one eye, causing indescribable pain. Then the whole tank breaks in two around Kevin and he is delivered into the room, naked and gasping, where he looks past three cheering firefighters; past a person who can only be the writer but looks nothing like he imagined; past the receptionist, who is dripping in sweat; and gazes up towards the artificial light, marveling at it as though he is a newborn.
Sharon S.Y. Lee works as a nonprofit legal services attorney and serves as a board member of San Diego Writers, Ink, a literary arts organization. She is the winner of the 2026 John Steinbeck Award for Fiction. Find her at www.sharonsylee.com and Instagram @sharonwritenow.
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