She was on auto-pilot. The part of her brain still awake wondered if other people ever experienced this feeling, this sensation of being completely separate from the world. She imagined other people felt it, but probably not so often as she did. Maybe drug addicts, disconnected through some form of intoxication or impairment, could feel so apart. She didn’t like it, though, so she wondered why anyone would feel this willingly. She wanted to feel, to engage. Or at least a part of her did, the part of her she liked best. She didn’t like being cushioned from everything without any willful effort on her part. It all happened in some part of her brain she didn’t have access to, like she was locked out of the control room and only occasionally asked which button to press or lever to pull. Every day was like this for her. With her family, at the office, with her various lovers, everywhere. Even her vices were no longer things she did out of compulsion or desire, but instead were merely things he did in an attempt to coax her way back to feeling. Her bad decisions were made in wanting to want something, in the hopes of creating hope and desire where none existed, as if attempting to run enough electrical current through a stone might eventually make it a conductor.
Monthly Archives: December 2014
are you sure it wasn’t banana republic? [trigger #268]
We’d been at the mall all afternoon Christmas shopping. I never enjoy being at the mall, but during the holidays it’s even worse. The good news is that Amy and I aren’t one of those couples who fight every time we go shopping, or to IKEA, or on a road trip. That particular brand of cliché bickering was never ours, even after 13 years.
We were beside the mall fountain, going over our list of who we still wanted to get something for, when one of those shirtless Abercrombie greeters walked right up to us. It was strange for a number of reasons, the most immediate to occur to me being that I’d never seen the guy before in my life and the Abercrombie was at the opposite end of the mall. Yet, there he was, walking right up to us, or rather Amy. He looked her in the face and said, “The food court sure is full this time of year.”
I was about to point out that while that was true, I didn’t understand why he was telling my wife that with no shirt on for seemingly no reason when Amy spoke instead. “Are you sure it wasn’t Banana Republic?”
I was clearly missing something.
Abercrombie spoke once more. “The door buster was impressive but the sale as a whole left a lot to be desired.”
That’s when Amy looked at me and apologized, right before I felt a sharp prick in my neck and everything went black. I woke up seven hours later in my own bed, my head aching like I’d had too much to drink before going to sleep. There was a man outside the bedroom door, looking exactly like a stereotypical government agent in a bad action movie. Mr. Agent ushered me downstairs to my kitchen table, where Amy sat looking down at her folded hands. She looked up at me when Mr. Agent gestured for me to sit down. Amy nodded at the man and he left the room.
“Amy, what the hell is going on? Who are all these people?”
“Rick, you were knocked out at the mall by a harmless tranquilizer dart because a time sensitive issue came up which didn’t allow time to explain things to you. We couldn’t be sure how you would react and in public like that an important situation might have been jeopardized by your potential reactions and so the safest thing to do was temporarily neutralize you altogether. The men and women here in the house right now work for an organization that aims to take the world back from the rich and powerful. The hope of this organization is initially to take the power from the various ruling classes, a group that has shown time and again will cling to their power against all ethical and moral sense. The hope is then to eventually redistribute things more equitably.”
My head was spinning, both from whatever that dart was and from the fact that too much information was coming at me. What did Amy know about clandestine organizations? Was she a spy? A terrorist? It wasn’t possible that I had no idea for 13 years! She was my wife. It was too overwhelming and confusing. I’d never even heard her talk about politics or ruling classes before, not even in college when the rest of our friends went through that phase.
“I’m sorry, what? What does it have to do with us? With you? Amy, are you a part of this… organization?”
“A part of it? No. I’m it’s leader.”
That’s about the time I lost consciousness again, but not because of any tranquilizer dart.
man of the year. [trigger #267]
The trouble is, I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know where to start. I mean, what the hell is the point anyway? I’ll be damned if I know. I just see it all, can’t turn my brain off. Well, I guess I can turn it off, I just can’t adjust the settings when my brain is turned on, it’s an all or nothing sort of thing. We need to be able to lie to ourselves, and I just can’t do it. It’s an important thing, lying to yourself. You have to pretend it all means something, even when it doesn’t. I can’t lie to myself, and so I can’t get moving. Most folks, they can convince themselves they have a destiny, and that part of that destiny is to live forever. Forget their meaningless job, or the spouse who hates em, or the kids they never talk to, or the general lack of skills; no sir, these folks have a destiny. It’s the American Dream, someday they’ll be discovered, or strike it rich, or invent something simple for 100 million bucks, or write the great American novel. Forget the fact that they aren’t actually doing anything to get those things, no sir, your destiny finds you, you just have to sit and wait for it.
So here I am. Stuck seeing everything. Stuck here at the bottom. I don’t even have the job or the spouse or the kids the other poor suckers have. I’ve got even less than them. Feeling sorry for myself, I know. It’s true though. Sometimes being honest just sounds like self-pity.
I want to climb it, the sheer cliff face before me. Not a real cliff face, mind you. Metaphor and whatnot. I really do want to climb it. I’ve tried before, a few times. I get started, get a good head of steam goin’, but then I look down expecting to be pretty far along and I see I ain’t barely moved. Just setting there barely off the floor. And I’ll tell ya what, part of me was relieved I didn’t make progress. The thing about climbing higher is, you’ve got a hell of a way farther to fall. Other folks, they lie to themselves about the drop when they see it. Convince themselves they’re never gonna fall, or else convince themselves that the moment they lose their grip is the moment they’ll realize they can fly, something they’s suspected the whole time. Not me, though. I know that when I lose my grip that ground is gonna come rushing back toward me right quick, fast as you like. Seems a bit safer to just stay here on the ground. It may be gray and dark and pointless, but it sure is safer.
i got in! [trigger #266]
They accepted me! I genuinely can’t believe it. It wasn’t even a reach school, it was a dream school, a lottery ticket school. I never even considered it as a possibility, but wanted to know that at least one time I applied to Grimaldi University. Then they actually accepted me! The most prestigious university for clowns in the world, the only one with four year full-time programs.
This will mean an entirely different degree of schooling than I’d hoped for. I’ll learn everything, stay until they kick me out. I won’t just learn the things commonly associated with clowns now, but will be able to delve deep into the history of clown lore and practice. Makeup theory, horseback riding, balloon animals, tightrope walking, contortion, magic & illusion, trickster mythology, miming, theological abstraction, subterfuge, coulrophobia, and clown car maintenance.
This is the greatest day of my life.
master swordsman in space. [trigger #265]
It’s hard to predict the way trends rise and fall and return from the dead. There are groups of humans who love nothing more than to make bold statements about what the next big thing is (often well past the point it had already become a big thing) and what previously big thing was declining into extinction (often quite prematurely in overstated language). No one, at any point, could have guessed that as humanity finally expanded into the stars, sword fighting would once again become the primary method of close-quarters combat for most of the universe.
Sure, there are telepathy and laser guns, as many predicted in their playful imaginings, but they aren’t practical as one’s first line of defense.
Telepathy became relatively common over the centurues, since those showing a capacity for it were the first selected by humanity to spread our species into the stars. However, it is rarely a controlled and intentional thing. Humans who can use their telepathic power to intentionally sway the will of another human are practically non-existent. Most often, humans with telepathic abilities don’t even know what they can do, they just come off as uncommonly fortunate in dealings with other people.
Laser guns are expensive to buy, and even more expensive to maintain. Also, travel is wildly expensive, and when one is out in the far reaches of space it is usually for years, if not decades. One is still wise to have a working laser gun handy in large cities and ports, just not out in the deep. Statistically speaking, a laser gun in deep space is far more likely to be used as a bludgeon when violence erupts.
Thus, blades came back into vogue. Masters of the sword are now in high demand as bodyguards, bounty hunters, and assassin’s alike. Fortunate for Ed that he is a vampire samurai who has been studying the dance of the blade for over 1,000 years. Bonus that he also doesn’t need to breathe oxygen or expel waste, which cuts down on overhead considerably.
she threw it against the wall. [trigger #264]
On the day when her decanter arrived, the common script of her life would have had her overjoyed. Who wouldn’t be overjoyed to be accepted into an order as desired as the wine librarians? When each young person receives the object that determines their future, revealing what guild they have been selected by, it can go many different ways. To find out you’ve been chosen by the wine librarians is about as coveted an outcome as you’ll find. The job is easy, relaxed, and full of perks (namely, as much wine as one can drink).
The thing is, she never wanted a job that was easy, she wanted a job that felt right. An easy job she didn’t care about would perhaps be even more soul-crushing than a hard job she didn’t care about. She needed a challenge, and freedom, and to do something that made her proud. She believed that the guild of wine librarianship was most certainly a job to make someone proud and fulfilled, it was the curation of beauty, something she herself took very seriously. It just wasn’t the sort of beauty she wanted to be curating, or perhaps it wasn’t the sort of curation she wanted to be doing, or what was it?
She just knew something wasn’t right.
She also had no idea what would be better.
She also didn’t have a choice.
Or did she?
Could she disappoint everyone? Ignore respected customs and laws? Embarrass her family and herself? If she stormed off the well beaten path would she find her own path, one filled with life and goodness, or would she simply get lost and die in the wilderness alone?
It didn’t matter. In that moment she knew what she had to do. She didn’t have a choice after all, but not in the way she first thought when she opened the box with the decanter in it. She had no choice but to reject the choice that had been made for her. With an uncharacteristic shriek of laughter, she shattered the decanted against the wall, threw on a coat, and ran off to find someone to tell.
trigger fiction. 