12.30 in the morning and Koba's ego needs some sweet, sweet lovin'

[MST3Kakalina]

this is a short story i wrote. some of you have seen it before. i know there are still some problematic parts, but i tried to work some of them out.

<center><b>Snake Eyes</b>
<i>“God does not play dice with the universe.”—Einstein</i></center>


He jumped in his bed, the kind of spontaneous lurch that happens in between the dreamworld and the real world that some credit to the re-entrance of the soul after astral projection. The evening sunlight shocked him into consciousness as easily as a bucket of cold water. His bedroom was on the west side of the apartment building; there was no reason for sunlight to be napping in here. The alarm clock cheerfully informed him that it was now 5:04 PM. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. It was Saturday, at least, as far as he knew, which was a plus. He hadn't missed a day of work, but missing a whole Saturday, free of obligations, was still something that irked him. This pounding headache wasn't helping, either—he felt something akin to a hangover, even though he rarely drank, and never in excess.

<i>What is wrong with me?</i> Edgar thought to himself, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. <i>What did I do yesterday, anyway?</i>

He stumbled out of bed to the kitchen, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. <i>Christ almighty.</i> He looked like death warmed over. His dark eyes seemed shrunken in their sockets, underscored by heavy bags, while his already white complexion seemed grey and ashen. He could almost see the little stars and circles floating above his head, like Andy Capp when he's had too much to drink.

The antiseptic white of the kitchen made him wince as he poured himself a bowl of Froot Loops. Concerns about being drugged and violated in some form or another floated at the back of his head, but primal need for food broke through the fog first. As he munched on his processed bits of dyed corn, he ruminated on what had happened the previous day, trying to figure out the part where a renegade organ harvester had slipped roofies in his water and stolen his kidney.

He had gotten up, as per usual, at seven, blindly pulled on some khakis that looked clean in the dark with a respectable grey and black sweater to match. Had to look presentable to the customers, after all. Got through the morning coffee without spilling it on himself—twenty-three straight days free of spillage, according to his count—grabbed his lanyard with his ID on it and his black windbreaker and he was out the door. Arrived at the bookstore at about seven forty-five (he walked) and helped his boss set up for the day. He had put some new stock on the shelves, mostly diet and exercise type books, and then handled register for the rest of the day. Register. It must have been while he was at register.

The plastic of the chair clung to his bare back as he peeled himself off for another bowl of cereal. What had happened while he was at the register? Nothing extraordinary, that was for sure. When he first started working at the bookstore, he had made a game of trying to remember every customer he rang up during the day. That had gone all right for the first month or two, but soon it became apparent that there simply wasn't enough room in his memory for everyone he ran into. He would remember their jewelry, their voice, their books, whether they used cash or credit, what kind of credit card they had used, the colour of their eyes, everything. It soon became necessary to unload all of this information on paper, otherwise it would become simply overwhelming.

He didn't really have much else to do, anyway. Even after three years at the store, his paycheck was far from spectacular—enough for his apartment, utilities, cable, food, and clothes, and not much else. He had no girlfriend, few friends, and little desire to go participate in bizarre social rituals he didn't understand. Notating the people he saw in the bookstore became his own personal form of recreation. He thought that, maybe, he would someday be able to record everyone in the city in his notebooks, would be able to recognize people in the street not by name, but by literary taste. He had hundreds of entries already, and had actually seen some of the people outside of the store. Every time he saw one of them, he would stare at the the ground and move on with quick, birdlike steps, praying they wouldn't recognize him. He had no idea what he would say if they did.

He put the empty bowl in the dishwasher, after first rinsing off the ring of soggy cereal pieces so they wouldn't become affixed to the bowl. The sugar intake made him feel a little better, reducing his earlier headache to a dull throb somewhere in the back of his skull. He padded through the hall back to his room, feeling along the wall for the light switch. The closet was a mess, as usual, but it was easier to keep it a mess than to clean it. In the far corner was the Tupperware container with his notebooks. They were the small, postcard-sized variety sold at the dollar store. He had filled five so far, more due to the large neatness of his handwriting than to the volume of information he had, with four more blank ones waiting to be used. He wrote all of his entries in mechanical pencil and used both sides of the paper.

But there was one missing. The most recent one, the one that would have the people he customers he had seen yesterday, was gone. He frantically double checked the Tupperware container, dumping the notebooks on the floor of his bedroom and spreading them out to count. There were definitely eight, and he knew he had nine. He dove into the pile of clothes on the floor, wading through a sea of boxers, pant legs and tee shirts. He shined a flashlight under the bed, checked behind his dresser, pulled the cushions from the couch in the living room, investigated the plumbing under the sink in his tiny bathroom. He searched every nook and cranny of the apartment in a mad frenzy, then collected himself and did it again in much more methodical manner. It was no good, the notebook was gone. He groaned and decided to distract himself by doing a bit of housekeeping.

And all of a sudden, there it was, in the garbage. He had given the bag a little shake for some reason he couldn't even begin to fathom, and he had immediately noticed the impression of the metal rings on the plastic bag as the notebook slid from the top of the heap to the side. Nearly overwhelmed with joy, he put the garbage down in the middle of the floor and fished the notebook out, momentarily unaware of the used coffee filters, banana peels, apple cores, and old tissues. Prize in hand, he sat with his back to the refrigerator and flipped to yesterday's date. He combed through the entirety of his day, determined to find whatever it was that had struck him, leaving him so out of sorts the next day. He found it in the third to last entry.

<i>M, 20s. 1 copy of Time, 1 copy of Entertainment Weekly, 4 books from the science section. Paid in cash. Very tall, very nervous. Strange smell, haircut, mannerisms, speech patterns. Something else, indescribable.</i>

That was it. He remembered this one, even as it threatened to slide away, wriggling like a fish, his headache flaring up again behind his eyes. What was it about this man that set him off so much? He had moved a lot, for one, tapping his fingers all the time. He walked with his head down, looking at as few people as possible...no, it wasn't any of that. There had been something he had seen while he had been conducting the transaction, the trading of money for books. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the scene in his head, but every time he did, his headache doubled in intensity, breaking his concentration. Finally, he found that if he kept his mental focus on the row of books behind the man, he could watch what was happening out of the corner of his “eye,” a sort of mental peripheral vision. Out came the brand new wallet, presenting a thick selection of bills that all seemed crisp and fresh. As the fingers hovered over the currency, unsure of what to pick, Edgar noticed what it was. There, in the little pocket with the plastic window for your driver's license, was some kind of ID. It didn't look like a license, though. It was shinier and had no identifying state at the top, but there was the man's picture. And the birth date under it...

April 23, 2150

[MST3Kakalina]

His head roared in protest, his temples feeling fit to burst. He curled into a ball and rocked back and forth, focusing on the hum of the refrigerator to numb the pain, leaving him in a sufficient condition to run to the bathroom and down two of his prescription strength painkiller capsules. He splashed some water on his face without thinking, staring at his narrow, dripping face in the mirror.

<i>You know what he is, right?</i>

He shook his head. <i>That's ridiculous. There's no such thing. I'm just misremembering.</i>

<i>Then why are you getting such bad headaches?</i>

<i>It's just a sinus infection. Nothing more.</i>

<i>What kind of sinus infection acts up this selectively?</i> As if to taunt him, his headache and the image of the man returned simultaneously. He clenched the edges of the sink until his knuckles turned white, focusing his attention on the rust on the drain until the headache subsided once again.

<i>It's just a prank, then. Just a joke license. I've seen those before.

Why did you almost throw out the notebook, then? The only record of his visit here? Why couldn't you remember him?

Coincidence, that's all. Maybe I've been putting too much work in those notebooks. Maybe this is just my brain playing tricks on me.

No. You know what's really going on here, and you KNOW that you know. You've seen something you weren't supposed to.

I haven't. </i>He shook his head. This couldn't be happening.

The headache returned, so badly that tears crept down his cheeks. His mind was being turned inside out, stretched beyond repair, pulled towards the point of no return. The voice in his head, the other him, screamed through it all, like someone trying to shout above the noise of a low-flying jet.

<i>You have seen a time traveler! You've created a time paradox, and the universe is trying to right itself!</i>

“But even if such a thing were possible...you go to another reality, an alternate one. String theory.” He was talking now, trying to reassure himself with the sound of his voice. There was a whole fleet of jets roaring inside his skull, now.

<i>String theory is bunk! There is no multiverse, just the universe. It's a one shot deal, one big river of spacetime with planetary flotsam here and there, and the fact that you've seen something that doesn't belong on your piece of flotsam puts the whole system in danger. Your memory of it has to be erased, or the paradox will cause the universe to blink out of existence!</i>

The headache refused to let up. He clutched the bottle of painkillers and stumbled off to his bedroom. What he needed now was a nap.

<i>You can't fall asleep. You'll never wake up.</i>

He stopped and stared at his bed, so appealing in its disheveled state, like a cold glass of water on the hottest, driest day in August. <i>August in the Sahara,</i> he decided.

<i>If you fall asleep, then the universe can do whatever it wants with you. Including kill you.</i>

“If the universe wanted to kill me, wouldn't it have done so by now? Why did I even wake up this morning at all?”

<i>I don't know, probably because you didn't realize you knew. Then you were just a latent threat, but now you're very much an active one.</i>

“But what would I even do about it? There's no one I would tell about—”

The headache returned again, and he swallowed two more of the pills, not even bothering with a glass of water.

“I need to sleep eventually, though.”

<i>You can't, now. You need to forget what you saw.</i>

“Fine.” He turned deliberately around and trudged, like a man condemned, to the couch in his living room, praying that his television would live up to its promise of brain cell genocide.

He didn't move from the couch for the rest of the day. He watched the news, primetime sitcoms, reality shows, the late news, movies, and then anything he could find. As basic cable gave way to nothing but infomercials, he silently cursed his decision to turn down HBO or even the Playboy channel; there was nothing to distract him and he could feel the headache returning. He was taking at least two pills every half an hour or so to numb the unbearable pain, punctuating his self-medication with lots of coffee. By six the next morning, he was out of coffee and out of medicine. The morning news offered a glimmer of hope, as did the cheerful faces of Regis and Kelly, but by the time the soap operas and children's shows made their rounds, he knew it was a lost cause.

"More coffee," he decided to no one in particular.

<i>You can't go outside, it's too dangerous.</i>

"It's either that or I fall asleep. Do you have a better suggestion?"

The voice in his head gave as much of a harrumph as a voice of that nature can be expected to give. <i>Fine, but be careful.</i>

Edgar made his way down the stairs as carefully as possible, testing each one before he put his full weight on it. Everyone else in the building was at work. There'd be no one here to call an ambulance if he fell. Pessimistic paranoia was the word for the day.

Three flights later, he arrived at the stoop, blinking the morning sun out of his eyes. Where could he find coffee? Coffeeshops wouldn't do; he needed to take it with him in bean form to the safety of his apartment. There was a mom and pop kind of market three blocks down. Three blocks. that was an eternity away, but it was his only choice.

Edgar edged his way along the sidewalk towards his destination, always on alert for that out-of-control motorcycle that would find its way in the middle of his path or the flower pot haphazardly knocked from its windowsill post that would connect with his head. He imagined a wake of destruction behind him as he made his way forward, always one step ahead of the universe.

Crosswalks posed an especial problem, with the obvious problem of traffic. There was also the necessary time constraint, which Edgar resented. He needed to take his time, be careful, not let something creep on him unawares. He compromised with himself on this by waiting until a sizeable group had collected at the crossing. If anything were to happen, they could act as human shields, keeping him from harm.

Not that anything happened, though, either on the way to or from the store. This confused Edgar, as he expected something more dramatic—some kind of movie-style close call as the car grazed by him to explode in a fireball just far enough away for nothing but the rush of air to muss his hair. Something to prove to him that it wasn't all just in his head. He decided that this anti-climactic showdown with the world was due to his own vigilance. That would be the price he'd have to pay, then: constant attention and paranoia, at least until he forgot. And if he couldn't forget...

<i>No, don't think like that. You'll forget and it'll be fine.</i>

Edgar was back at the door of his apartment. What would normally have been a brisk little walk of half an hour or so had turned into an eighty-minute excursion. That didn't matter, though. He had coffee. Plenty of coffee. Plenty of blessed caffeine to keep him from whatever it was that waited for him in his sleep.

Sleep. Even though he had only been up thirteen hours, he felt inexplicably drowsy. Even though it was only 9.30 or so in the morning, Edgar could feel his eyelids start to sag as he bent to sit on the sofa.

<i>You can't give in now!</i> The other voice in his head wailed, dim and scratchy like an old record. <i>The last thing you need is sleep.</i>

“It's the first thing I need,” he yawned, collapsing lengthwise on the couch in what seemed like slow motion, his consciousness lost in the blissful stupor of sleep.

<center>* * *</center>

It took them a while to find Edgar, as no friends were around to be particularly concerned with his absence. After a week of phone calls left unreturned, his manager took it upon himself to pay Edgar a visit at his apartment, where he found him sprawled on the couch. Minutes later, the ambulance arrived. They attributed the death to an overdose on Darvon. Suicide without a doubt. These things happen. You spend so much time as a recluse, you go a little dotty. They found his notebooks while cleaning out his apartment and nodded importantly to themselves. Definitely a wackjob, this one. No normal, happy person would spend so much effort detailing the lives of others.

A few family members showed up at the funeral, comforted by those of Edgar's coworkers with more of a sympathetic streak. The obligatory compliments and comments were made, and that was that. It was a nice day; everyone remarked how nice it was, given that it was just early March, still. The birds were especially loud, the weather was warm enough for knee length skirts on the women and for men to shed their sport jackets. The nieces and nephews and distant cousins chased each other around tombstones as the casket was lowered into the ground, dirtying their little black outfits, totally unaware of their surroundings.

The universe smiled to herself and smoothed the fold in her skirt.


the main character's name was originally Arthur, but i realized that made the story sound too much like HHG2TG. it reminds me of Donnie Darko, too, so if you're going to post to say that, i know already.

yes? no? whatever? like? cheese? trombone?

[HOMERCHESTRA]

Hot sex. We have it now.

[MST3Kakalina]

so you liked it? :: coy eyelash flutter ::

[HOMERCHESTRA]

What I read, yes!


Ooooh, Lawrence Block can eat his heart out.

[deadish]

;_; i loove.
you may want to change 'he jumped in his bed' though. X3 it confused me for a moment. perhaps 'started' or something.. blahhh

and cheese. always.

[MST3Kakalina]

thank yooooouuuuuus. I LOVE YOUR NEW ICON.

[exemplary citizen]

Trombone. Definately trombone.

Yeah, I think you've got a bang-up piece of writing there, Miss Kobabritches. The only thing you might wanna work on is your word choices for action descriptions -- they either get a little repetitive or a bit loggy with extra stuff. Like "He jumped in his bed, the kind of spontaneous lurch that happens in between the dreamworld and the real world that some credit to the re-entrance of the soul after astral projection" could be pared down for clairty. I don't think it would be out of place to put that "astral projection" bit in a seperate sentence altogether, or at least behind a semicolon. <i>I</i> would rewrite that as "He started in his bed, the kind of spontaneous lurch that happens in between the dreamworld and the real world; an electric jolt that some credit to the re-entrance of the soul after astral projection."

I dunno. Maybe. I write weird. And I've also never had a writing teacher chew me out over semicolons, so I tend to make use of them whenever I feel like I've got a particular addendum to a sentence that <i>needs</i> to be there but can't really thrive on its own.

[Takker]

wooow. I wish I could write like that...

[MST3Kakalina]

Trombone. Definately trombone.

Yeah, I think you've got a bang-up piece of writing there, Miss Kobabritches. The only thing you might wanna work on is your word choices for action descriptions -- they either get a little repetitive or a bit loggy with extra stuff. Like "He jumped in his bed, the kind of spontaneous lurch that happens in between the dreamworld and the real world that some credit to the re-entrance of the soul after astral projection" could be pared down for clairty. I don't think it would be out of place to put that "astral projection" bit in a seperate sentence altogether, or at least behind a semicolon. <i>I</i> would rewrite that as "He started in his bed, the kind of spontaneous lurch that happens in between the dreamworld and the real world; an electric jolt that some credit to the re-entrance of the soul after astral projection."

I dunno. Maybe. I write weird. And I've also never had a writing teacher chew me out over semicolons, so I tend to make use of them whenever I feel like I've got a particular addendum to a sentence that <i>needs</i> to be there but can't really thrive on its own.
hahahah. WHY DO I ALWAYS USE TOO MANY WORDS? i am so wordy. oh well. semi colons are incredible and more people should use them.

[implode]

hehehe. you DID let the universe win! good deal, ms. kobe. very good deal.

i liked it. i was a little offset in the beginning, because i HATE that "descriptive writing" style that's been crammed down our literary throats since the beginning of time. you know, stuff like He looked like death warmed over. His dark eyes seemed shrunken in their sockets, underscored by heavy bags, while his already white complexion seemed grey and ashen. He could almost see the little stars and circles floating above his head, like Andy Capp when he's had too much to drink. or He had gotten up, as per usual, at seven, blindly pulled on some khakis that looked clean in the dark with a respectable grey and black sweater to match. Had to look presentable to the customers, after all. Got through the morning coffee without spilling it on himself—twenty-three straight days free of spillage, according to his count—grabbed his lanyard with his ID on it and his black windbreaker and he was out the door. writing is not a visual medium, and i don't believe it should be treated as such. i like to let people create their own mental images of characters instead of going through the trouble of literally describing word-for-word what they should look like. but this is just a stupid little quirk of mine, which hardly even qualifies as criticism (especially the first quoted selection, which is just describing the all too familiar feeling of waking up with a cat on your face*.)

otherwise, i loved it. excluding the part about taking two painkillers every half hour - not only would that put you to sleep far before 30 hours had passed, you'd literally be too incapacitated to open the bottle after taking your eleventh or so.

but all this is mere nitpicking. wonderful story, kobaroo. plz post more. a "short story" thread might be fun, actually. like the competition, only no pressure to actually make your shit any good.

<small>*a straight dope reference. findable <a href="http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_081.html">here.</a></small>

[MST3Kakalina]

excluding the part about taking two painkillers every half hour - not only would that put you to sleep far before 30 hours had passed, you'd literally be too incapacitated to open the bottle after taking your eleventh or so.

I'VE NEVER OD'D ON PAINKILLERS, SORRY. do i get points for actually using the internet to find one that WOULD kill you?

and i'm a visual person. so it kind of happens without me controlling it.

[implode]

yes! ¡muchos puntos!

i've never OD'D on painkillers, either. two of anything every half-hour is bound to be bad for you.

but don't yell i lurrrved it! you inspire me to actually give a shit about writing.

[MST3Kakalina]

haha. i was kidding. i never get angry when people don't like my writing. unless they're shitty writers, but you're not, so therefore i'm not angry =P

[implode]

tidbit: i picked "eleventh" because i wasn't sure if i could spell "twelfth." and i'm still not sure if i can, and if i can, i'm never writing a word so fucking awkward again.

shit. i need to get started on this script. i need more days off. i can't stand having to cram 5 days of activity into 18 hours of semi-awareness...

[MST3Kakalina]

what's so awkward about twelfth?

i can't find my Beatles songbook, and i want to play "good day sunshine" really badly. =C

[implode]

the f. two decades of shit like "dolphin" and "telephone" has spoiled me on "twelfth."

[MST3Kakalina]

twelphth? that doesn't even LOOK right.

MY FRIENDS SHOULD LEARN TO USE THEIR FUCKING COMPUTERS.

i'm going to jump on this Ben Folds lyrics in the sig train.

[implode]

i was bummed that "you'll all die in your cars" wouldn't fit in my tagline.

haha. i know, which is why i'll just never use the word again. twelvth would actually suit me the best, but i'll all about not getting wedgies from the grammarian crew.

i'm glad my friends don't come here. it would upset the balance of my two awesome worlds.

[MST3Kakalina]

i thought it was just "you all die in your cars"...? oh well, whatever, i'll be deaf by the time i'm 30.

haha. like the grammarian crew would be the kind to hand out wediges. =P

shit am i ever glad some of my friends don't come here. that'd be bad. but others would fit in nicely. just one of them is all OMG i can't fix the resolution on my screen it goes back to 800x600 waaaaaaaaah. sorry dear, but it's hart to troubleshoot computer problems over AIM.

[implode]

hm. perhaps it is. i... always thought she was giving them a spiteful assessment of what she thought of them, not actually handing out factual information about the death of salesmen. shit. i'll be bummed if i'm not right. it'll ruin the whole song.

one scene down oh boy oh boy! only 675 more to go. maybe then i'll have something to work with. maybe.

i really need to go to some sort of school for something. blah. i need to immerse myself in 8 hours a day of something that doesn't require you to wash your face afterwords.

[exemplary citizen]

Plodey, I have some really good screenwriting books if you're interested.

I should post my litle cyberpunk thing I'm working on. Except that it's quickly pushing that "short story" boundary and would probably irritate people with its length.

[implode]

!!!

VERY interested. i've never read anything about actual technique or method before, and i guess it's about time i stop pissing <i>true</i> writers off with my hackneyed bullshit.

post it post it post it! i'll ban anyone who complains.

and on a sad note, i recently learned that the founder of IKEA is the sixth richest human on the planet, and she's not even sharing her capital with her dorky internet friends.

[exemplary citizen]

I should mail those to you, then. I sure as hell ain't using them.

Pffft. That's because I'm giving all of my revenue to starving children. With AIDS. You're not a starving child with AIDS, are you?

[implode]

would you? i'd be so grateful. i'd even thank you in the credits.

i was watching TV last night, and an ad came on for a hotline that counsels people with gambling problems. i came to the conclusion that if i ever have enough money to buy colorado, i'm going to donate it to groups like that. groups that aren't out to make a profit, groups that aren't out to spread awareness and/or advocacy for whatever their cause happens to be... just groups that offer their help & services, at any time, to anyone who wants them. that's true charity. the willingness to help, in any way you can, to people who feel they need it.

yes, i know it's vague. i'll narrow the list down when i have enough to buy boulder.

[deep]

<i>“God does not play dice with the universe.”—Einstein</i>

I know this is offtopic ,but didn't Einstein say this in response to the Heisenburg uncertainy principal?

[MST3Kakalina]

yeah, he did, but i needed a title for my story and that quote and that title just popped into my head.

[deep]

works well

[AngryGoatFace]

<Font face="trebuchet MS">very, very good. your use of descriptive writing is astounding. :<3:</font>

[Takker]

hahahah. WHY DO I ALWAYS USE TOO MANY WORDS? i am so wordy. oh well. semi colons are incredible and more people should use them.
Dickens was wordy too...

[deadish]

**leaps upon konkubane like a monkey**

[MST3Kakalina]

Dickens was wordy too...
hahah. you know you've been reading too many shitty books when you consider Dickens the epitome of brevity.


seriously. Robinson Crusoe? like, fifty billion pages on him MAKING A GODDAM SHELF. no. wrong.

[Linzoy]

It's not in my place to criticize anything because I can't write and have no idea what I'm talking about. But I'm going to anyways... I like name arthur better. Every time I read the word edgar in that story it bothered me. The name doesn't seem to match. I wasn't going to mention this at all until you said you changed the name. I can't describe why but edgar doesn't match his personality.

There's something wrong with the rhythm of this story. I read it twice hoping I’d figure out what it is, but I can’t. Maybe too many commas.

But I overall I really liked this, it sucked me in. I like time travel and insane people.

[MST3Kakalina]

i knooow. i need to find some other dopey, silly, slightly English and backwards name for him. Arthur was just so perfect, but i don't want people to think i'm trying to be the HHG2TG or something.

that whole part where he leaves his apartment to get more coffee wasn't in there, originally. people in class said they wanted something more exciting than him watching TV, so i added that.

[Linzoy]

If I where you I would stick with arthur. Or pick something close like arnold or something.

Also I think it would make more sense if he was watching tv or doing something else that doesn't involve moving. There isn't really anything exciting about getting coffee. This doesn't seem like much of an action packed story anyway, it's about one guy and how his mind works.

[MST3Kakalina]

maybe i'll have a car almost hit him or something.

Edward? Roger? Arnold?

[Linzoy]

You could have him attacked by a hallucination, that would go with the whole insanity thing.

Dillan just poped into my head but I don't know if it's english.

[MST3Kakalina]

Dillon is a name, yes.


half of the point is he's not really THAT insane. i mean yeah, he doesn't have friends and keeps a weird system of dossiers on his customers, but the time traveller thing is for real.

[Linzoy]

Oh... well I didn't get that, I thought he was crazy.

[tater]

that reminded me of a stephen king story i read once. i just don't know which one. and anyway it sucked because he let the people outsmart the universe.

i loved the ending.

the only thing that really stuck out in my mind was how quickly he gave in to sleep once he got home. it was kind of like you got him there and then just ... stopped wanting to write the story. you did a great transition into the coffee shop thing, but the following transition is a little too abrupt for me. :)

[MST3Kakalina]

hahaha. because i typed up the coffee thing as i was posting this XP


i'll make it better. HOLY SHIT AM I HUNGRY.

[robot]

that was so good and chilling it make me feel sick. thats hard as fuck to do to me.

good work.

[ImWearingUrSkin]

koba, my dadman read your signature and he didnt like it very much.

HE SNUCK UP ON MEe
and pointed at the screen like "What are you doing reading stuff like that?"

this giant finger out of the shadows, poking my computer screen
It made me jump.

[MST3Kakalina]

aww. i'm sorry. obviously the man can't appreciate classic movie references.

[Linzoy]

Someone on another board has "all the ladies love my big hot deck" in his sig, with a link to his yu gi oh deck or something. My mom saw it and called my counsoler to tell her about the sexual harrasment I was being exposed to. My counsoler then gave me a speech about how it's unnatural and dangerous for teenagers to talk to adults.

[MST3Kakalina]

parents are insane. OBVIOUSLY.

[robot]

i wonder what would happen if your parents found out youve bee sendiong naked pictures of yourself to people you dont know

[Taxy]

awww kobakoba I WUVED it. I Def. like the ending, and the universe smoothing her skirt line, that was great. The conversation in his head got a little weird to me because it seemed to structured or something, but that could just be me. When I have inner dialogues they never last very long because I cut myself off or interrupt myself or get sidetracked. And if it's too important to get sidetracked from (as I assume is the case with Edgar) then after a while I give up arguing with myself, and curl up in a ball of childish self pity and scream in my head. >_> *coughs*

I don't think you're too descriptive, but then, I just finished reading the House of Mirth. So my <i>view</i> right now is a bit <i>askew</i>. *yes plodeykins, that one's for you :3*

I am very interested in Ami's cyberpunk story. And could you gimme the titles to your screenwriting books, just so I know? I can look for them in my own time eventually ^_^ I wouldn't be able to read them now, I have a huge list of books to get through as it is. And btw did you ever start decorating that piggy?

it's be great to have a short story thread! I love reading short stories. *bounces* I hope people post more.

[MST3Kakalina]

i'm thinking of sending this to a writing contest, so i really want to make sure it doesn't suck before i mail it off.


<center><b>Snake Eyes</b>
<i>“God does not play dice with the universe.”—Einstein</i> </center>

The evening sunlight shocked Roger into consciousness as easily as a bucket of cold water. His bedroom was on the west side of the apartment building, there was no reason for sunlight to be napping in here. The alarm clock cheerfully informed him that it was now 5:04 PM. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. It was Saturday, at least, as far as he knew, which was a plus. He hadn't missed a day of work, but missing a whole Saturday, free of obligations, was still something that irked him. This pounding headache wasn't helping, either—he felt something akin to a hangover, even though he rarely drank, and never in excess.

<i>What is wrong with me?</i> Roger thought to himself, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. <i>What did I do yesterday, anyway?</i>

He stumbled out of bed to the kitchen, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Christ almighty. His dark eyes seemed shrunken in their sockets, underscored by heavy bags, while his white complexion seemed grey and ashen. He could almost see the little cartoon stars and circles floating above his head.

The antiseptic white of the kitchen made him wince as he poured himself a bowl of cereal. Concerns about being drugged and violated in some form or another floated at the back of his head, but primal need for food broke through the fog first. As he munched on his processed bits of dyed corn, he went over what had happened the previous day in his head, trying to figure out the part where a renegade organ harvester had slipped knockout drugs in his water and stolen his kidney.

He had gotten up, as per usual, at seven, blindly pulled on some khakis that looked clean in the dark with a respectable grey and black sweater to match. Had to look presentable to the customers, after all. Got through the morning coffee without spilling it on himself—twenty-three straight days free of spillage, according to his count—grabbed his lanyard with his ID on it and his black windbreaker and he was out the door. Arrived at the bookstore at about seven forty-five (he walked) and helped his boss set up for the day. He had put some new stock on the shelves, mostly diet and exercise type books, and then handled register for the rest of the day. Register. It must have been while he was at register. That was where he interacted with the most people; the only thing that varied within his routine day. Maybe he had contracted some contagious disease or influenza variant.

He peeled his bare back off the plastic of the chair and went to get another bowl of cereal. What had happened while he was at the register? Nothing extraordinary, that was for sure. When he first started working at the store, he had made a game of trying to remember every customer he rang up during the day. That had gone all right for the first month or two, but soon it became apparent that there simply wasn't enough room in his memory for everyone he ran into. He would remember, more or less automatically, their jewelry, their voice, their books, whether they used cash or credit, what kind of credit card they had used, the colour of their eyes...everything. It soon became necessary to unload all of this information on paper, otherwise it would become overwhelming, sitting in his memory banks until it reached some sort of neurological critical mass.

Roger didn't really have much else to do, anyway. Even after three years at the bookstore, his paycheck was far from spectacular—enough for his apartment, utilities, cable, food, and clothes, and not much else. He had no girlfriend, few friends, and little desire to participate in bizarre social rituals he didn't understand. Notating the people he saw in the bookstore became his own personal form of recreation. He had hundreds of entries already, and had actually seen some of the people outside of the store. Every time he saw one of them, he would stare at the the ground and move on with quick, birdlike steps, praying they wouldn't recognize him. He had no idea what he would say if they did.

He put the empty bowl in the dishwasher, after first rinsing off the ring of soggy cereal pieces so they wouldn't become affixed to the bowl. The sugar intake made him feel a little better, reducing his earlier headache to a dull throb somewhere in the back of his skull. He padded through the hall back to his room, feeling along the wall for the light switch. The closet was a mess, as usual, but it was easier to keep it a mess than to clean it. In the far corner was the Tupperware container with his notebooks. They were the small, postcard-sized variety sold at the dollar store. Roger had filled five so far, more due to the large neatness of his handwriting than to the volume of information he had, with four more blank ones waiting to be used. He wrote all of his entries in mechanical pencil and used both sides of the paper. A small moan escaped Roger's lips as he squatted to open the lid.

[MST3Kakalina]

There was one missing. The most recent one, the one that would have the customers he had seen yesterday, was gone. He frantically double checked the Tupperware container, dumping the notebooks on the floor of his bedroom and spreading them out to count. There were definitely eight, and he knew he had nine. He dove into the pile of clothes on the floor, wading through a sea of boxers, pant legs and tee shirts. He crawled under the bed, checked behind his dresser, pulled the cushions from the couch in the living room, investigated the plumbing under the sink in his tiny bathroom. He searched every nook and cranny of the apartment in a mad frenzy, then collected himself and did it again in much more methodical manner, finally ending up in the kitchen.

And all of a sudden, there it was, in the garbage. He had given the bag a little shake for some reason he couldn't even begin to fathom, except that the odor was only make his headache worse, and he had immediately noticed the impression of the metal rings on the plastic bag as the notebook slid from the top of the heap to the side. Nearly overwhelmed with joy, he put the garbage down in the middle of the floor and fished the notebook out, momentarily unaware of the used coffee filters, banana peels, apple cores, and old tissues. Prize in hand, he sat with his back to the refrigerator and flipped to yesterday's date.

<i>M, 20s. 1 copy of Time, a few newspapers...</i>

That was it. He remembered this one, even as it threatened to slide away, wriggling like a fish, his headache flaring up again behind his eyes. What was it about this man that set him off so much? He had moved a lot, for one, tapping his fingers all the time. He walked with his head down, looking at as few people as possible...
No, it wasn't any of that. There had been something he had seen while he had been conducting the transaction, the trading of money for books. Roger closed his eyes and tried to picture the scene in his head, but every time he did, his headache doubled in intensity, breaking his concentration. Finally, he found that if he kept his mental focus on the row of books behind the man, he could watch what was happening out of the corner of his “eye,” a sort of mental peripheral vision. Out came the brand new wallet, presenting a thick selection of bills that all seemed crisp and fresh. As the fingers hovered over the currency, unsure of what to pick, Roger noticed what it was. There, in the little pocket with the plastic window for your driver's license, was some kind of ID. It didn't look like a license, though. It was shinier and had no identifying state at the top, but there was the man's picture. And the birth date under it...
April 23, 2150
His head roared in protest, his temples feeling fit to burst. He curled into a ball and rocked back and forth, focusing on the hum of the refrigerator to numb the pain, until he was in a sufficient condition to run to the bathroom and down two of his prescription strength painkiller capsules. He splashed some water on his face without thinking, staring at his narrow, dripping face in the mirror.

<i>You know what he is, right?</i>

He shook his head. <i>That's ridiculous. There's no such thing. I'm just misremembering.

Then why are you getting such bad headaches?

It's just a sinus infection. Nothing more.

What kind of sinus infection acts up this selectively?</i> As if to taunt him, his headache and the image of the man returned simultaneously. He clenched the edges of the sink until his knuckles turned white, focusing his attention on the rust on the drain until the headache subsided once again.

<i>It's just a prank, then. Just a joke license. I've seen those before.

Why did you almost throw out the notebook, then? The only record of his visit here? Why couldn't you remember him?

Coincidence, that's all. Maybe this is just my brain playing tricks on me.

No. You know what's really going on here, and you KNOW that you know. You've seen something you weren't supposed to.

I haven't.</i> He shook his head. This couldn't be happening; it was beyond ridiculous.

The headache returned, so forcefully that tears crept down his cheeks. His mind was being turned inside out, stretched beyond repair, pulled towards the point of no return. The voice in his head, the other him, screamed through it all, like someone trying to shout above the noise of a low-flying jet.

<i>You have seen a time traveler! You've created a time paradox, and the universe is trying to right itself!</i>

“But even if such a thing were possible...you go to another reality, an alternate one. String theory.” There was a whole fleet of jets roaring inside his skull, now. Roger allowed himself to speak aloud, now, in too much pain to care about eavesdropping neighbors.

<i>String theory is bunk! There is no multiverse, just the universe. It's a one shot deal, one big river of spacetime with planetary flotsam here and there, and the fact that you've seen something that doesn't belong on your piece of flotsam puts the whole system in danger. Your memory of it has to be erased, or the paradox will cause the universe to blink out of existence!</i>

The headache refused to let up. He clutched the bottle of painkillers and stumbled off to the bedroom. What he needed now was a nap. Never mind that he had just woken up. He would go back to bed, wake up, and it would be nine on a Saturday morning, and these last few hours nothing but a bizarre nightmare.

<i>You can't fall asleep. You'll never wake up. If you fall asleep, then the universe can do whatever it wants with you. Including kill you.</i>

“If the universe wanted to kill me, wouldn't it have done so by now? Why did I even wake up this morning at all?”

<i>Probably because you didn't realize you knew. Then you were just a latent threat, but now you're very much an active one.</i>

“But what would I even do about it? There's no one I would tell about—”

The headache returned again, and he swallowed two more of the pills, not even bothering with a glass of water.

“I need to sleep eventually, though.”

<i>You can't, now. You need to forget what you saw.</i>

“Fine.” He turned deliberately around and trudged, like a man condemned, to the couch in his living room, praying that his television would live up to its promise of neurological genocide.

He didn't move from the couch for the rest of the day. He watched the news, primetime sitcoms, reality shows, the late news, movies, and then anything he could find. As basic cable gave way to nothing but infomercials, he silently cursed his decision to turn down HBO or even the Playboy channel; there was nothing to distract him and he could feel the headache returning. He was taking at least two pills every half an hour or so to numb the unbearable pain, punctuating his self-medication with lots of coffee. By six the next morning, he was out of coffee and out of medicine. The morning news offered a glimmer of hope, as did the cheerful faces of Regis and Kelly, but by the time the soap operas and children's shows made their rounds, he knew it was a lost cause. Even though he had only been up thirteen hours, he felt inexplicably drowsy. He was starting to doze off during commercial breaks.

<i>You can't give in now! </i> The other voice in his head returned, dim and scratchy like an old record. <i>The last thing you need is sleep.</i>

“It's the first thing I need,” he yawned, collapsing lengthwise on the couch, in what seemed like slow motion, his consciousness lost in the blissful stupor of sleep.

<center>* * *</center>

It took them a while to find Roger, as no friends were around to be particularly concerned with his absence. After a week of phone calls left unreturned, his manager took it upon himself to pay Roger a visit at his apartment, where he found him sprawled on the couch. Minutes later, the ambulance arrived. They attributed the death to an overdose on Darvon. Suicide without a doubt. These things happen. You spend so much time as a recluse, you go a little dotty. They found his notebooks while cleaning out his apartment and nodded importantly to themselves. Definitely a wackjob, this one. No normal person would spend so much effort detailing the lives of others.

A few family members showed up at the funeral, comforted by those of Roger's coworkers with more of a sympathetic streak. The obligatory compliments and comments were made, and that was that. It was a nice day; everyone remarked how nice it was, given that it was just early March, still. The birds were especially loud, the weather was warm enough for knee length skirts on the women and for men to shed their sport jackets. The nieces and nephews and distant cousins chased each other around tombstones as the casket was lowered into the ground, dirtying their little black outfits, totally unaware of their surroundings.


The universe smiled to herself and smoothed the fold in her skirt.