The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
Blow Yourself Away
5-21-1999

I was at a party with Kitten and Wallace (her boyfriend). I walked around a corner and saw Paul there. He greeted me and asked what *I* was doing there. Suddenly everyone except himself, Kitten, and myself vanished into a room behind a closed door. Paul asked where everyone was, and Kitten said they were in the room. He asked why, and went to open the door, but she told him not to open it. Again, he asked why, and she said that if he opened it, cold air would get in and they would all get sick. He opened it anyway and went inside. He came back out a few minutes later after having done some cocaine, which surprised me immensely.

More people rushed out of the room, and I noticed there was a cop -- a fat, black woman -- arresting someone. Everyone else fell asleep, drugged out or whatever, on the floor. Kitten and I had to ship them to Sweden, so we decided to pack them up. We put them all on a huge, thick, sleeping bag-like blanket and rolled them up, careful to squeeze them together as tight as we could and minimize air pockets. I thought about how hot it must get in there, how they could stand being wrapped up like that during a trip, but figured they were used to it. I was going to put a banana in there for food, but it was already ripe, and Kitten said it would quickly go bad from the heat.

As I finished wrapping the people up, I saw P sitting on the couch, crying profusely. I figured she was sad for the people we were shipping, and I thought about going over there to comfort her -- as soon as I was done wrapping them up! I looked over at her a few other times, and each time she was totally bawling. I did eventually go over to her say something like, "I know, I think it's sad, too, having to pack up these kids like this, but whatcha gonna do? I'll be right back after I finish."

Next thing I knew I was outside of a hotel on a large truck, seeing my shipment off. Some other exchange was also supposed to be going on between a bunch of people under my control and some other upscale gang. Kitten and I discussed the plan to let our courier exchange the goods and then snipe their leader to retrieve our goods back before one of their thieves stole theirs back, and get the Hell out of there.

Unfortunately, after the cases were exchanged, their thief moved too fast and our courier was dead. I spotted the enemy leader and fired at him, but people kept getting in the way and I never got a good shot off. A huge gunfight broke out in the hotel lobby between our two factions. I had two small grenades. I threw one and accidentally hit one of my own men on the head. He said, "OW!" and held his head as the grenade bounced off and blew a hole in the wall behind him. A blew a few people away and got in an elevator to the 2nd floor. I don't remember what I was trying to achieve, but at least it kept me out of the fire for a while as I circled around the floor and found another elevator down, where some enemies rushed the elevator. They threw a mini-grenade out of it as the door was shutting, but I grabbed it as it rolled away and threw it back in, as well as my grenade. They bounced around in there, doors opening and shutting, but they never blew up. They finally got out of it. Then some old lady wandered in and fell down the shaft. I said with a snicker, "Hey, that lady just fell down the chute!" Then the elevator finally blew up.

Then I was controlling a spacecraft in a new video game with my hand, using my thumb and pinky to fire and my wrist and other fingers to maneuver. I told one of the other players I wanted to die (as in the game), and she came over and told me to swallow a pill, which I did. I put my head down, waiting for unconscious to come on, but it didn't. She gave me a gun to blow my brains out with, which I didn't use. Then she lit a match and put it on the floor. I tried to stamp it out, but apparently the pill I took made me very flammable, and I caught on fire. She said, "You better put yourself out soon or blow yourself away." Luckily I smothered the fire on my shoulder quickly. Another guy mused how blowing yourself in the head would have been mercy compared to burning to death.


posted by Phlegm at 11/24/2003