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

 
Complete the Conversion
12-11-1999

I rescue a bunch of people and bring them into a large warehouse to escape the harsh weather. Most of them are magic-users, and I debate on whether or not to kill them all on general principle, even the women.

I get into the passenger seat of a car. Tasneem gets into the driver's seat and takes off. I ask why Aziz isn't coming, and she says he's staying the night for some reason. She turns on the radio, asking me which station is the house music station. I find it, but it's playing some drum 'n bass type of stuff.

I look up at there's an antique black car right in front of us, head-on collision, not even a meter away. I flinch for collision, but then it's gone. Tasneem never even swerved. I marvel at this, saying how we should be in a major wreck now. Then there's another car headed toward us, and I notice a long line of cars in the opposing lane, with cars coming into ours to pass other people. The strange thing is that it's as if they're all going in the same direction as us, just slightly slower, and that they're going backwards. Someone pulls out in front of us to let someone pass by on our left.

We travel to a hut in the yard of a relative I met several dreams ago. I can't remember the combination on the door, though, so I go up to his house. It's nighttime. There's a little lapso whatever dog leashed up on the porch. It gets tangled around some posts. I help it out, but the leash breaks. It eats the leash until it's hanging in the air, its teeth touching my fingers. I ring the doorbell. Some people I've never seen answer, supposedly cousins. I give them the dog. They set it on the ground, and then it attacks my leg, clamping its mouth around my ankle. I can't seem to shake it off. Finally I manage to fling it across the porch and get inside, wiping my feet.

I end up playing a computer game with some other people. It's deathmatch, and I pick some chick character with two knives who can turn invisible. I get creamed a lot at first, but then I turn invisible and end up knifing a lot of them from behind, racking up the frags. I kill someone attacking a semi truck, which then fires heat-seeking missiles at me. I dodge them and fire some missiles back. Others join the battle against it. It's almost destroyed, but it suddenly regenerates all its damage.

I find myself standing in a driveway with a gun strapped to my chest. I reach into the holster and whip it out, firing at all my competitors. Things get blown up, people go down, and so on. I hear someone say how we'll be ready when the apocalypse comes with all this training. I jump onto the side of a semi truck. It whips around and goes over some curbs in an attempt to throw me off, but I stick onto it, yelling triumphantly. I fire a mini- missile from somewhere on my arm into the side of the truck, but it does little damage. An older couple in a car come to a stop nearby and gape at us. As the truck crashes into something, I climb onto the top. A car crashes into the other side of the truck. Taking advantage of these shifts in momentum, I leap down onto the hood of the car, run along its top, and jump off the trunk back onto the driveway, gloating to myself about how good I am. Then a white car comes speeding into the driveway, headed straight for me. I draw two pistols and fire at the windshield even though I know the glass is bulletproof. I roll to the left and the car goes speeding by.

I meet some guy with a lot of rings on his left hand in the garage. I put away my pistols and give him five. Good game. The bunch of us mercenary types go to a room with a large pool. Some guy is sitting in a throne at the opposite end, his foot resting on a large lever. The water in the pool is circling clockwise, and warm. Someone disturbs the guy and moves the lever in the other direction, changing the motion of the water to counter-clockwise, and the temperature to cool. I get in and let the water take me, relaxing after our training exercise. I realize I still have my pistol on, so I take it off and hand it to someone with their legs dangling in the pool. I'm kind of ashamed I let my gun get wet. He comments on what a unique item it is, that it could double as a snorkel. Someone else holds up a rubber stopper or something, as if that was the piece that could complete the conversion.


posted by Phlegm at 11/25/2003