Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
Laying in a bed in Bellevue Hospital with a blindfold over her eyes, Bronya saw the dragon.
As her body metabolized the psilocybin, a hallucinogenic mushroom extract, the 55-year-old home health aide then somehow was inside the beast, resting in its belly like a baby in the womb as it flew over mountains.
They arrived at what Bronya can only remember as a vast “fleshy thing, it was like flabs of pinkish tissue.” She pushed herself through. It enveloped her and she found herself in a dark cavern. There she saw a batch of glistening eggs. She was encased in a womb for the second time during the trip. It was a reverse birth. One of the eggs transmitted a message to her: The egg was her, from another time and dimension, and she wanted to be born.