But mostly I just assumed it was the usual thing, a story I need to write or like a lack of zinc in my diet or somebody I love is about to come out with some dreadful secret. Some other unanswered equation my little brain is working hard on without my knowledge. So once I figure out the question that'll be the end of it, because that's always the end of it, because that's really all it ever is. I don't do depression or cyclic shit like that, I just sometimes get weird vibes and become a hassle for everybody and eventually the blister pops when I figure it out, and hopefully write some of it down.

...But nope. Not this time, brain. I think this time I was being altered, prepared, perhaps in my very DNA, so that when I watched this episode of Bunheads I wouldn't go berserk and run through a plate-glass window or go decorate my neighbor's house for Christmas in the middle of the night, just out of the sheer bath-salt zombie weirdness. So I guess thanks. Thanks for being so utterly batshit crazy that I actually had to time-travel backwards, in time. To make sure that my body was ready.

JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Bunheads, Pretty Little Liars and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, and novelette "The Commonplace Book" will appear on Tor.com in October 2012.