fever dream

based on what I went through when I took ill during my last trip to India (December 2009)

Voices tumbled over one another exhorting him to mix the contents of different overlapping strata of space and time in order to survive the precarious walk on the tightrope between real space and dream space. It was all this and much more. As he struggled to make sense of the directives, the thought blanket switched face with another series of interleaved ripples and the voices now screamed another message. It was still convoluted and self-aware in its lack of clarity, but he was hypnotised by its power. He felt like a plane slicing the bodies of clouds holding hands of vapour in the cold sky as the sun glared all around. He could not feel the cold droplets of water as he glided from one cirrus contour to another cumulus trough. Yet, he knew where he was. The sense of confusion and deracination at once felt very wrong and completely appropriate. Another conceptual shift revealed a new configuration in the clouds and voices. Now the sense of being in some metaphysical ravioli was pronounced. He could feel the water boiling but did not feel wet or hot himself. There were no beads of sweat to comfort him. Everything he felt was incomplete and somatically wrong. The voices continued their fervent chanting, still not making sense and still very persuasive. He knew he was dreaming; he knew all he had to do to break this fervid marathon of nonsense was wake up, but he was afraid he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep again and sleep was he needed most to let his body fight the virus. He had to be patient and let the fever break when it was time. Until then, he was stuck in limbo between real space and dream space. He couldn't take it anymore. His stomach had started churning in response to the drama in his brain and he was too weak to restore order. He forced his burning eyes open and swallowed a few times. He then rose painfully to his feet and lumbered to the jug to get himself a glass of water.

We're piiTh :: George

Down by the seaside

The waves smashed the edge of the shore; the spray and sand joined forces and flailed in the air only to settle down until the next splash.

Singing to an ocean, I can hear the oceans roar

He stared out at the sea and wondered what he felt. The thoughts running through his head were not unlike the waves he beheld. It was not the turmoil of the waves but the indifference of the sand that rang closer to home.

And there was a void of feeling.

No happiness.

Singing in the sunshine, laughing in the rain

No relief.
No joy.
No regret.

Yet the act demanded something. Or perhaps He was right. There seemed to have been a certain rationale motivating his action.

Uncertainty.

Perhaps that was it. What next? What now? Only time would tell.

No time left to pass the time of day

The consequences didn't seem to faze him or wriggle down his spine like a sense of unease.

I've been waiting for the hands to move until I just can't look no more

Dwelling on the past with its sunshine and shadow only made his stomach churn.

I used to sing to the mountains, then the ocean lost its way

In the far distance, two figures walked into the house. A light filled the inside. That was when he realised that dusk was here.

People turned away

Another gaggle of thoughts twisted in his head and exploded into bits as he rose from the sand.

The pain, the pain without quarter

He looked down at the body and the drops of blood beside it. Cain dusted the sand off his blade and walked towards the house.

Lab #3: Heart of a small boy :: George

A van had just come around the corner. The crow was getting hysterical. Without a wince, Valon pulled the trigger. Twice. Kalinas tried to grin but there wasn't much left of his lips. Or his mouth. Or his face, for that matter, although the right eyebrow seemed to have won a few more minutes of airtime. And they ended just as Kalinas crumpled to the ground. The eyebrow beat the rest of his face by a whisker. Which was a bad way to put it, because getting your face blown up while your guts were falling onto your shoes is not a great time for puns.

Six weeks ago, the sight would have made Valon give up his dinner. Now it was different. It felt like brushing your teeth. Or eating a homemade coriander chutney sandwich. But he still didn't like it.

Ten minutes and a black coffee later, Valon's taste buds registered the flavour of the syrup that covered the hot waffles. Dada was late. Again. And then he walked in through the door, a tired-looking, resigned-weary man wearing a gray porter's jacket, as gray as his hair, as gray as his indoor skin. It was spooky. It was almost as if he had been waiting outside. Waiting for Valon to think of him.

"Coffee. Black, " said the crusty voice. "So, Kalinas dead?"

Valon nodded and took another bite.

"The blue eyes were gone on the jackpot bars"

"I hadn't thought about it really"

"A lot of impossible things are happening lately"

Valon's mutter was the only indication that he agreed as he raised his cup to tell the waitress he needed a refill.

Dr. Foster from the Rekal Research Institute believes that the miasma theory might hold the answer to the madness we've been seeing over the last few months ...

Dada treated the TV screen with a few subdued obscenities and treated himself to another gulp of coffee. A grimace and a "yech!" followed. The final glance away from his cup saved his life. The morphy's drunken swipe with the chopping knife missed his face by a breath. The morphy lost his balance and doddered a bit on his left foot, before falling onto the floor. A bar stool broke his neck along the way and the sound was drowned out by the scream of the waitress behind them. And the sound of Valon's gun drowned that out. And then a jug crashed on the floor and coffee mixed with blood. The screaming waitress backed away, slipped, and fell into the mix. More screaming. Dada would've loved to slice her head off just to stop the noise.

Valon slapped a withered Lincoln and some change on the table and headed for the door. Dada dusted his jacket and followed suit, swapping out the clip in his gun in a fluid motion he'd perfected after watching the old Woo tapes at the motel.

"Picture yourself! In a boat! On a river!" screamed the preacher standing at the corner of Romero and King. Valon and Dada walked past him and Valon tossed some change into the dented rusted bowl at the preacher's feet. The clinking was quick and muffled.

"Dunwich was online an hour ago"

"Is Abagail fine?"

"Yeah! They heard from the group in Kingsport too. They should be getting to the outpost by Friday"

"Any more sightings?"

"Conflicting reports. Two reports from Innsmouth and then a message came in from Doglick that a group had seen him near an encampment."

"Maybe Griffin's ... what was that he called it ..."

"Refractive index aberrations"

"Yeah, that. Maybe that's what it is. We'll have to wait till the town hall meeting to find out"

A scream pierced the night air. And then half a head landed with a splotch on Dada's shoe.

Lab #2 - George

{Yes, I accept all brickbats (and I have already accepted several in the form of the two submissions for the lab). Thought I'd provide a nice silver nail for the coffin:) Postmodern references (as if there weren't enough already) available on request}

"Don't you dare call me Ishmael!" And Aichi proceeded to provide a competent phonetic equivalent of his name to the bewildered customer service representative at the other end of the cell-while. The flatline drone of redundant information on the traffic channel was suddenly interrupted by yet another calmercial:

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

The dehumidifying kruegers had won this time. A brief smudged flash of the long line of SRVs going nowhere on the intertown. The rain did this here. Drove people's brains to seed. Social historians and people who subscribed to the Methuselah Manifest were now getting bolder about finding all this atavistic drive to disaster that humanity had embarked upon. Yet again. It had happened after every revision of the Public Transit Bill. The concerns of the leftist factions who supported the cause of mass transit were laid to rest using what many historians in the know referred to as offering "epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude". The Howard Family had only managed to achieve a fractional improvement over the work of the previous generation and had announced a renunciation last week. The allocated funds would soon be up for grabs through the tax-exempt growleries and their weekly trivia contests...

Aichi Je's voice broke into the void of Walker's thoughts. "Can you connect me to room six one one?"

The scraggly treescape didn't offer much of an alternative to the vista of the chocked arteries on the expressway. Walker had hoped that someone in the administration would appreciate the irony of the term and find an acceptable replacement. But then, it would be too much to expect irony in the administrative circles. All these years had not afforded a government job any more value and meaning.

"You're taking a chance by not wearing a cap, especially at a time like this." That was Aichi Je again. Referring to Walker's overdue haircut and the consequences it might have if they were flagged by a heli-cop and presented with a citation for being decalvant delinquents. Walker didn't even want to explore the irony of that phrase. He just gave Aichi a blank look peppered with the hint of a smirk. They had more pressing problems at hand.

Aichi was trying to get in touch with a feelings facilitator for some "vision reconciliation." Something about a recurring dream he was having –- some dark figure standing by his bed blowing smoke and quotes from Derrida at him. Walker wondered if the lady two lanes away would consider that a nightmare.

A short high-pitched squeal on the radio hinted that the Stochastic Signal System was about to proceed to its next iteration. This might be their chance. A short window of time and space opened up and they managed to get to their exit with just about a second to spare.

The clarity was devastating and the ambiguity had fled the box.

Lab #1 - "Me" : George

Isn't this what you've been waiting for? The chance to wax eloquent about the big Y. This is when the microphone is amplifying the sounds of microbial coitus waiting for you to begin the flood of erudite praise, of euphonious self-aggrandizing magniloquent verbiage. This is when all the lights in the house have colluded to produce the correct hues of anticipation, the spotlights of importance, the shadows of contrast. This is when no voice will cut you off, no margin will force a detour, no hand will rise in question, no clock will strike the time to end … This is it. The moment you've desired in secret, prepared for in your mind, devoted a maddening sense of dedication to. From the deepest recesses of your mind, this is you at your most narcissistic.

Wait till the last ripple dies away so that you can have an uninterrupted clear unblemished view of yourself as only you can see. Wait for the silence, as the forest of your milieu approaches its equilibrium of venerating quietude. Gather your thoughts, get your lines straight, recall the pauses, practise the twitches and the grimaces, the smiles and the frowns, and remember all those subconscious gestures you have to suppress. Quickly, briskly, but without haste.

And we have run out of time. Next ego please.