Part 10 (1/2)

”What? No.” I had no clue what she was talking about.

”I promise not to tell anyone.” I just smiled again and looked at her. ”I mean I had was up all night last night and I didn't get any sleep and no one cares and I'm very tired and everything's pa.s.sing me by.”

I guess she was trying to be friendly. I thought she was ok but she was behind a window and there were people behind me and the train was leaving soon. Maybe I should have said something but I didn't. ”No. I'm not.”

Then I turned and walked away down the station to track number nine where my train was supposed to be. It wasn't there yet so I sat down and waited. There was this lady there selling chestnuts in a stand. I wished I said something to that girl behind the counter. But then the train rolled in and the chaotic cascading clicks started so I stopped thinking about it. The train was weird; it looked like a Hikari but I didn't know we had them here. The windows were huge. I got on and sat down. I put my hand up against the window. I had this urge to touch it. The train was still making its way out of the city and I could see shapes moving on the streets.

For a while I didn't think anything. Sometimes I can stare at stuff without thinking. I remember one time in high school I was looking at this pencil that was on my desk and rolling back and forth and this kid next to me was freaked out by it. He kept asking me what I was doing. It was hard to explain. Sometimes my brain just turns off for a while. I guess he thought I was mentally deficient.

Later the train pa.s.sed out of the city and I was back in the grain fields. Maybe I pa.s.sed over the same crossing as before. The train was quiet like an airplane and I was able to fall asleep.

I think this is where I had the last dream I could remember, the last long dream. I might have had one or two later on and confused them with reality but this was the last one I could be sure about. It was like that H. G. Wells book about the moon. I'm not sure though cuz I've never read it. Maybe I'll read it in the future and that's where I remember it from. Anyway I was on this rocket and it was gray and made out of cardboard and had yellow lightening coming out the back like thrust. I was looking out of one of its round portholes. I knew it was just a dream cuz I could see myself and you usually can't see yourself unless it's a dream or you're in front of a mirror. The stars were all yellow too and the sky was dark blue. They were shaped like stars, too. The stars I mean. The stars were shaped like stars.

I could see the moon. It was a crescent and there was a face on it like in that old Big Mac commercial with the moon-faced pianist in the street. That's the kind of stuff I remember from my childhood. Anyway as I got closer to the moon the man in the moon smiled and closed his eyes. He didn't grow any bigger though. It was hard to tell how close we were to the moon because the moon didn't grow. But then the landscape became really detailed and I knew we were about to hit it like when your not paying attention and your crossing the street then all of the sudden you hear brakes screeching and its a blur and you turn your head and freeze in front of Beelzebub.

The crash was really gentle though. I felt a puff of air like at the optometrist and he tests you for glaucoma or something with one of his machines. Or her machines. Then I opened my eyes. I guess I shrunk cuz the moon was normal now. I couldn't tell; there was a discontinuity which happens frequently dreams cuz there really isn't any cause and effect. The moon had craters and there were shadows where the sun couldn't get into. I don't remember seeing a sun though. The ground looked like cheese so I tried eating it but it tasted like soap so I spit it out. I was waiting for blue meanies or something to come and get me but nothing happened to I just sat down and looked at the sky. I saw the earth. Maybe the earth is the sun. It was big and beautiful. Everything is the sun. I could feel it. I wanted to make a wish on the Earth-Sun cuz it was blue.

Then when I did make a wish everything changed and I was felling down a pit. The walls were yellow and black and smeared like an anime cuz I was descending quickly. I landed softly on the bottom as if it was moving with me down the pit. But when I looked up again the hole was gone. I was in a cavern and the pit closed up without me seeing it. There wasn't any sun but I could see anyway. There was something important about that sentence but I forget what. (stack pointer) In the cavern I still couldn't think so I just felt like Moses in the wilderness except I was on the moon. Or in the moon. My wish was lost in the transition though. I mean I forgot what it was.

I heard this song, ta-ra-tta-ra-ta-ta, coming from behind me down the cavern. It sounded like a little boy was singing it. I headed towards it and the sound reverberated off the cavern walls so it felt like more than one person was singing. Except it became out of sync. (mutex) It became harder to make out the pattern. Then the cavern around me turned dark and there was only an orange hue emanating from the far end of the cavern in front of me. I could only hear the orange hum. I felt like I was being observed by things hidden in the dark. The orange didn't pulse or anything but there was fear all around me and an emptiness in the color in front of me. Eyes staring at me. (breathing) (whispering) The hum began to distort, changing frequency; the breathing and low-pitched murmurs of my captors began to overshadow it. My hands and forehead sweated; I couldn't inhale. The orange glow became dimmer. I wanted to close my eyes and regress but something made me stop. It reminded me of back in the cabin when I shot the gun and died and then revived. Like I was being pulled again to another place. I wasn't supposed to be here and they were trying to take me back. My eyes became squints and the voices clattered around me but I didn't shut my eyes. I twisted my neck and I was in a pool of lead and I couldn't resist any more when I saw one of them.

It stopped.

I haven't the faintest recollection of what I saw in my own head but when I awoke I said 'Blue M&M's are evil.'

What the h.e.l.l is matter with me? Where did that come from? That happens every now and then; I'll wake up with the breath of something bigger than I am on my tongue as if I was tasting part of a great unknown and then I'll only come up with something ridiculously ridiculous. Like a Rube Goldberg machine. I felt like I was somehow being tortured for liking Heinlein's ending of Pokadyne of Mars better than the version that was originally published.

Job & Lot

On top of that when I woke up I heard a version of Olde Langue Songe that sounded like it was being played on a d.i.n.ky synthesizer like back in the mall but worse. At first I didn't know what was going on so I thought I was going crazy again. But then I realized the train had stopped and the music was just the train's way of saying it's time to get off. It was coming out through the loudspeaker.

I walked down the train platform towards the exit. I think at this point I started to think maybe I wasn't dead. I mean, I was just walking down a pa.s.sage like a normal human would; there wasn't anything special about it all. And all the weird stuff that happened to me began to fade from my memory. But sleeping always had that effect on me. It's like lithium bicarbonate and makes everything seem better all of the sudden. I remember this one time I fell in love with this girl that I met one weekend but she was going out west and I couldn't go with her so I was depressed. Then I slept on it and in the morning it seemed perfectly logical to me that she would fly every week or so to visit a guy she only knew for two days.

By this time I was out of the train station so I took another cab to college. I still had a decent amount of fake money with me. In the taxi I started thinking about how if I wasn't really dead then I might still be right about everything stopping when you died. Every time I think of stuff like that I get really sad. Another infinite sadness I guess. The cab driver tried to talk to me. ”So where are you coming from?”

”Huh?” But thinking of death was making me feel detached. Like the cabdriver was on the outside and he wasn't real.

”Where are you coming from?”

I didn't say anything. Whenever I feel the detachment I don't want to interact with anybody. It's not really a feeling of aware or anything like that, it's about...

”Well if you don't want to talk why don't you just say so?”

I remember one time I had a dream that I was a kid again riding my bicycle. I remembered how happy I felt. And then when I woke up I realized that I the most I could ever hope for from the rest of my life was to be a kid again riding my bike.

That's what it's about.

When I reached my apartment the security guard wouldn't let me in because I didn't have my key or ID or anything. I tried calling my roommates but they weren't in. I kinda just sat in the lounge for a while staring at the couch across from me and then I figured I outta go to one of the bars and see if anyone I knew was around. The security guard didn't look at me when I left; he was watching TV.

The bar I went to was called Infinite Loop and was down at the end of the street and sometimes they would card you if they felt like it. I think it was supposed to be fas.h.i.+oned after an English pub. It had natural wood boards and bra.s.s. That night they didn't try to card me. When you walked in the bar was on your left and there were tables all around and a counter that sold pizza and French fries in the back.

There were a lot of people there. I remember my neck being sore when I turned it. I guess I haven't been sleeping well lately.

I saw one of my roommates sitting at the bar. ”Henrie.”

”Huh? Oh, what's up?” He was about to drink something but put it down when he saw me.

”Nothing, I just got back. I don't have my key and the doorman wouldn't let me in.”

”Really? That sucks. Why not?”

”I don't know. I don't have any ID or anything.” I was standing next to him in the aisle and people kept knocking into me.

”Ya, do you want me to get you in? I'm just about to leave.”

”Um... Ok. If you're finished.”

”Ya, it's fine.” He took a drink out of his gla.s.s and put some money down and we headed out.

”Hey, what are you doing here?” someone said. I turned to my left and it was someone I recognized so I guess he was talking to me.

”Hi Job, how are you?” You can read into just about everything these days. It was a friend of mine I knew from last year.

”Pretty good, drinking a few beers, getting drunk.” He was with two girls at a table in the dark next to a lampshade that didn't emit any light. ”Sit down, will you?”

”Sure.” I turned to Henrie who was waiting for me. ”I think I'll stay a little longer. Are you going to be back at the apartment?”

”Ya. Here, take my key. I'll get the guard to let me in.”

”Are you sure?”

”Ya, no problem.”

”Thanks.” Henrie left and I waved at him.

I sat down next to Job. We were sitting at one of those tables that come out of the wall. The two girls were on the other side. He introduced me to them. Their names were Marie and Anne. He poured some Guinness for me out of a pitcher into a plastic cup and I drank some. ”So what have you been up to?”

”Nothing much, I just got back a couple hours ago.” I wasn't lying.