Virtual Thought

I’m standing in an arcade, maybe not me, maybe just my POV, but I’m watching this little boy play Galaga. He’s really into it, doing well. Out of the blue, this little boy with really thick glasses runs up with a snotty-looking little girl in a wheelchair along with him. The two confer, and they agree, gleefully, that it’s time to “mess up his Galaga game”. Four Eyes starts moving the second player button a lot and hitting the fire button. Apparently, when in single-player mode, this game interprets that as someone trying to control the single player as well and it starts messing up the first boy’s game. The first boy starts whining and ineffectually resisting while never touching Four Eyes, right next to him, or Wheels, behind him, who both seem pretty pleased with the situation.

This is where I come in. I don’t know anything about myself other than I’m pissed at these two. I might be a teenager. I walk up and shove Four Eyes, screaming something incoherent at him and Wheels. I am distinctly not angry. They look startled and run the other direction. The little boy looks at me, grateful, then returns to his game. He really is pretty good.

The busybody arcade owner sees this and gives me a stern talking to about messing with kids. I try talking with the little nerd but he talks right over me. He just wants me to learn a lesson or some such thing. So, I scream at him as well, really venting my lungs and reaching down into my diaphragm. I’m still not angry. though; I’m exhilarated and happy. Not wildly happy, or giggling happy… more finding the situation grimly amusing. I yell at the guy in some wordless roar and he summons Mall Security.

As Mall Security is escorting me away from the arcade and, perhaps, out of the mall, I make some snide remark about being dragged off to “mall jail”.

Some context: yesterday was my last day of work at my former employer. My new job starts Monday.

I’m sitting in what seem to be endless meetings at my former employer’s corporate headquarters (which is not here in Austin). An old co-worker, who resigned some time ago, is also present in these meetings. I wildly interject a couple of times and say inappropriate things, offending some of the old guard present at the meetings. By the time the next meeting is being organized, I decide to walk out and not tell anybody.

Walking out of the office puts my in downtown Austin. I wander up and down Congress a bit, poking into some weird old shops… I look in a costume shop and purloin an office chair; I literally wheel it out of the shop and get halfway across the street when the proprietor stops me. She scolds me, I make some lame excuse (returning the chair in the process), and then she begins to lament about how someone returned the hooker costume in the night (it’s early morning) and the morning dew might have damaged it. The costume isn’t anything sexy or revealing; it looks like mummy wrappings, off-white gauze, with what look like tapioca-yellow salad forks for claws? Hands? I’m not sure.

I begin to move toward the capitol that has a south mall that looks a lot like UT’s south mall. A grand wedding is taking place so I try, as much as possible, to make my way through the proceedings (Is it the ceremony? Or the reception?), trying not to get in the way of people in formal wear taking pictures, staying away from the wedding party… I find myself in some temporary reception hall, some large tent. There are tables and chairs everywhere, and some unidentifiable stage equipment set up near the entrance I just walked in.

As I make my way towards the opposite entrance to get away from the wedding, I skirt a girl who is playing a small, Casio keyboard on a keyboard stand near all the equipment. The keyboard is the type that has only about sixteen or eighteen keys and has loads of silly sounds that are more annoying than fun, no matter what their marketing department thinks. She’s plunking out some aimless melody. As I pass her, though, she plays the theme of a song I wrote when I was sixteen, my “show-off” song, my friends’ favorite. How could she know this song? I turn around and march back up to her.

“Where did you hear that?” I ask her.
“That song? Oh, it’s everywhere,” she replies airily.
“I wrote it.”
“No way! Prove it!”

So I attempt to play different parts of the song on that tiny, sad keyboard… it turns out that there are three bands of color on each key and only the lowest band sounds like a piano note; the other bands are all strange whistles and sighs, the weird Casio sound effects I never like. After some messing around, I play various bits of the song back to the girl and she’s so surprised that she’s found me.

We’re at the new house, not the house we’re in now, but the new one and it badly needs repairs. A big rusty pipe is leaking some fluid onto the concrete floor and an exhaust tube, kind of like the type used for dryers to catch lint, is full of some tough, wooly, fibrous material. There are plastic dropcloths on some of the walls, and I don’t feel comfortable living there anymore.

We’re all there, too, having some sort of party with these new people that we’ve met who are trying to fix the house… but meeting with little success.

Alex isn’t helping: he pulls some drywall down and exposes an old door, one which our landlords sealed off right when we moved in. This sparks a conversation about the other doors that were sealed off, the ones that give a view of the backyard. I remark that the room would have creeped me out if I’d had that view of the backyard at night. I don’t remember if anyone agrees.

Right around then I notice that one of my teeth, my bottom right bicuspid in fact, is raised a bit. Probing around with my finger, I shove it back into place.

Things get blurry here for me… what happened next exactly? Securing the thick wire around the styrofoam mannequin head to simulate some nightmarish headgear for the girl who wanted to dress as a Cenobian? We stumbled over the word “Cenobian” and, I think, only managed “Ciccadian” at the time. Was this when my brother and some woman took a nap in a recliner not because they knew each other but because the recliner was comfortable and they both need to sleep somewhere?

At one point my curiosity and dread finally overcome me and I reach into my mouth and pull on that lower tooth. I feel the satisfying ripping that I only previous experienced when I was a kid worrying and pulling my baby teeth out of my mouth… but suddenly I realize that too much is coming out of my mouth. The ripping of dental roots becomes a kind of fleshy tearing feeling and I’ve gone too far.

I rush to the bathroom, one of those bathrooms with a big vanity mirror and two sinks and a marble counter top. I’m still holding whatever it is I pulled out of my mouth. Terra comes with me, asking, “What’s wrong? What is it,” but my mouth is too full to answer without spilling anything. I put my head over a small soapdish (why not the sink?) and spit out some blood and small bits of tissue, which Terra catches in her hand. I don’t want her catching it in her hand and at first I feebly bat her hand away as I continue to spit blood and gobbets of flesh out of my mouth.

Finally, I slap down what I’ve been holding: it’s not just one tooth with some skin attached, it looks like a piece of my jaw along with three or four teeth and blood and skin. It makes a hard sound when it hits the counter top and I’m able to push Terra’s hand away as she’s somewhat limp with disgust. Spitting into the sink this time, I empty my mouth of the rest of the blood, bone, and bits of flesh that I’ve been carrying.

I wipe my mouth and stand up and probe at the gaping hole in my mouth, tender and bloody.