"Forget
it Kelsey, I don't even care about my stuff anymore," I tell
her, from across town. As far as I know, no wires are involved, nor
satellites. I'm telepathic, in a half-assed way. She'll get the gist,
in her half-assed comprehension – once she tries to stop "reading
me" like she does her clients, and just fucking listens.
"Props
on the physical threat though, you really do know how to prey on my
insecurities. And by all means, send your 'super pissed' douchebag
over. I'd super love to meet him. But better tell him to come heavy,
you cunt. Sorry to be super crude, but there's no other word that
fits. You know accuracy is a priority for me."
It's
not my fault, it's telepathy. Yeah, I chose this life, if you can
call it life, but it got out of my hands. I can't help but think, and
send. I suspect she can't help but hear, but she will have the option
of denying it to herself. I figure. She'll distract any unwanted
thoughts with a boyfriend-girlfriend carpentry project. Ahaha. How
cute.
I'm
vile and bitter and childish. And justified, I think. I'm a child
when it comes to these ugly mind games played in the dark corners of
the Casino Licentious. I think licentious is a better word than love.
Love is so fucking good, man, but it's corruption. And it makes me a
juvenile delinquent, what I've wanted to be since I was eight. So I
suppose I should be thankful to those mean girls who pried open my
rusty heart with a chisel for kicks and allowed me to enjoy anger.
Especially the latest one, the last one. I'm through with this game,
I'm taking my ball and I'm going home. But not before vandalizing the
playground.
The
worst part is that she's not even that evil. She's come a long way
from when she complained to her server friend that it "fucking
sucks, doing someone else's job", ie, "my" job, the
cutlery, that all the other servers are happy to help me with - then
later that evening, yelling to her pathetic non-associate tag-along,
eager to present her some hand-crafted birthday gift, that "I'm
on the fucking phone!" while having a smoke break outside.
No,
Kelsey's not that evil. Just her nose-ring - that's her evil jewel,
the seat of her shiny happy power. But the rest of her is fairly
decent, even under the hair dye, has she gone back to black? I
haven't seen, except in my head, where she's still blond, and I
couldn't bare her being back to black, it's too dark, too catholic,
and now her school-girl skirt is taut in my head between two legs
that were straddling me that one time, or was it two? I honestly
don't think about it much anymore. I couldn't if I tried.
So,
the super-pissed boyfriend. I guess he's coming. I just sent out an
official invite. I told him to come heavy. Fair warning I guess.
Although I never get fair warnings, especially from those
sweet-voiced bitches. And I'm likely to be the light-weight in this
fight. I can picture him hulking over me. Hulking over her, hulking
inside her, skulking up the stairs to my house. Kelsey was the first
girl I've been with that I could pick up and throw on the bed.
Imagine what he could do with her, the douchebag. And he's such a
douchebag that he would. Do all kinds of crazy things, just to prove
he can. And when's the last time I've even been in a fight?
But
I've got something he hasn't got: the power of delirium. I'm the
meta-me master's marionette. I don't even remember what I did to
cause this delirium. I have a few theories, but there's too much
noise to signal. The meta-me master will take care of me - pull some
strings. It'll dispassionately appraise the situation and force me to
do things I would never dare try on my own. Oh, he's a partner in
crime, and though I've never heard anyone agree with me that he's a
good friend, I love the bastard. Good friend? What's a good friend?
There are no good friends anyway, it's silly criteria. Just friends.
And he's the deepest of them all.
I
trip over a pile of bedroom debris stumbling for the "stabbing
knife" I think is in the closet when I hear a knock on the door.
Panic strikes. Did I lock it? Oh god, I hope I locked it, because I
know my roommates are gonna try and come in, I've broke the unspoken
inconceivable covenant of this sacred house and now I have no right
to privacy. They'll come in and find the motherload, mounds of used
medical supplies! Another burst of knocking, fuck, how long before
they open the airlock and blast me into space? I creep up to the
door, spindly off-kilter maneuvers over debauched debris. Quietly, I
squat under the door handle, reach up, and TWIST in a sudden spasm.
Locked, haha! Too late for you, mate!
I
expect pounding, maybe a battering ram or whatever techno-tronic
equivalent exists in this house, maybe Ninova with a jasmine-scented
crowbar smashing the handle. Silence there, and nothing more. Fuck.
Okay. Fucking with my head, are you? Well, whatever, I have my
delirium to go back to. So I will.
Did
I grab my stabbing knife? No, I don't have it, unless it's sticking
out of an inaccessible organ. It's in the drawer though, right? I
stumble back to the desk chair, stubbing my toe and stepping on my
good pair of Sennheisers. Seems like fate, more broken headphones,
Void's plan. I open the drawer to find no stabbing knife, but
something I hadn't expected. A little baggie. I was hunting for that
baggie for hours earlier, I remember. And here it is in my top
drawer, the one I checked two hundred times. But there's no kootenay
crystals in it. Instead there are two lavender colored pills. I don't
remember buying them, but I guess I must have. Somehow, I'm sure
they're E. But I'm so delirious, is it worth taking E at this point?
Yeah. I'll just take one. Then another.
Wait
a second. Aren't those the diphenhydrinate pills I'm tripping on
right now? Uh, yeah, that's right. And these brain zaps are getting
worse. I thought it was because I forgot to take my sertraline, but
then I remember that diphens cause that too. Except ten times worse.
It's like an electric shock that passes from the back of my head, to
the right hemisphere, then the left. Then I feel like I'm passing
out, my vision dims, and for two or three seconds, I'm convinced that
I'm dying and life's a big nothing - my final thoughts will be a dry
haze of phase out. Then I come back to full consciousness, gritting
my teeth. I'm alive, but I'm dreading the next shock. Will it come in
ten seconds, or twenty? Maybe it's slowing down. But of course it's
not. Fifteen seconds pass and then it all happens again. I know why
they use electricity to torture people - there's something about it
that's just so hard to tolerate. I'd rather be scourged till I bleed
to death. I should take my sertraline but I can't find it. Shit, and
I just took another two pills thinking they were E. I wish I could
sleep, but if I somehow manage to, I think it'll be the last one I
ever take. They call it "the big sleep", but it seems small
to me. It's a doll sleep.
That
reminds me, I'm in a dollhouse bedroom. I guess I took DXM too,
sometime during my blackout last night. I see four bottles of
Robitussion liquigels and several empty packets with their crinkled
foil. And then I feel the march of pills in my stomach, one after
another, slowly passing through the protesting intestine like a
clogged chunnel, and me, the traffic controller, prostrate. Four
bottles, fuck! Plus whatever else. Oh, I can taste the toxins in the
back of my throat and in my stomach. It's methamphetamine, ammonia,
and bleach. Somehow I have stomach consciousness, the most gross form
of internal telepathy. And the little voice, the leader of a busy
bio-hazard crew, ripples clear through my fogged head. It's not words
exactly, but the message is: You must throw up. You idiot, you must
throw up, right now. If you don't hurl in the next thirty seconds,
you will die. The toxins will pass, barely, but there is also a
parasite, a horrible monster transmission dweller. It just flew by
me. If you think you feel bad now, just wait till that bug digs into
your DNA. You have twenty seconds. Do it, idiot, or we're all dead.
Oh
no. I'd better do it. This is body gnosis, I can't pretend it's not
real. I guess I'd better purge, even though I'm so scared that it'll
get stuck in my closed throat, or I'll start puking and not be able
to stop and start dribbling liquefied organs out of my mouth. But I
must, or I'll die. The little voice doesn't lie.
I
stumble to the door again and scrabble at the handle but it won't
budge. I remember it's locked and twist the other way, but it's still
stuck somehow. I grab and pull and twist every which way, left and
right, forward and back, inside and out, in a senseless frenzy,
fretting about roommates again. Somehow it opens, and I robo-swing
out like a wrecking ball, from bedroom doorway to adjacent bathroom.
But I smack into the door - it rattles loudly. I open the door
automatically, but my sense of left and right are inverted, so I'm
twisting the knob the wrong way, and my axis of gravity is ninety
degrees relative to the hallway. This fucking house, it's going
perpendicular JUST to fuck with me.
I'm
still trying to come to grips with the doorway, when the door opens
in front of me. The light is bright in the bathroom and Ian is in
there, startled and staring at me. The washing machine and dryer are
humming. Fuck. Uh, nevermind, I think, or say. Ian is doing his
laundry in my bathroom. So no puking. I'll just let whatever bug is
in my gut kill me. Whatever.
I
robo-swing back into my room and shut the door, forgetting to lock.
Something pokes into my foot through my sock. Oh a needle. One of
those. It's funny, somehow. It gets funnier every time.
"You
idiot, you're dead now," says the little voice, and I'm so
ashamed. But I think I can hold the puke in. If I'm going to die, I'm
going to die dry.
But
my body feels like liquid mercury. Now I remember, I'm a T-1000. Not
the famous one. I'm not a bad terminator, I don't care about John
Conner. And John Conner doesn't care about me. If I can keep out of
human detection, maybe I can co-exist with humanity, somehow, in a
dark corner. I've been sent on a mission of some kind, maybe sent
myself as a sleeper agent. But I still can't remember what -
ZAP!
Oh fuck, please let the zaps stop. I can't take it. I'm going to jump
out the window, bash my head in, do something crazy, anything crazy.
What can I do, what could distract? For some reason, I'm playing
Super Mario Kart and thinking about game-melody collecting
woodsprites. My thoughts are so flexible and so locked down. That's
what it's like on this theme park ride.
Faking
seizures... so convincingly. Why why why? Why does this exist? Why
not? Silly human questions, as silly as a rock talking to me. Silly
answers, but I'm serious on this radioactive test-isle.