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

 
Never Flown Public
9-16-2000

It was a bright sunny day, perfect for riding my motorcycle across the land. I didn't even need a road. I just went along with other scarce travelers over grassy fields and low hills. No civilization in sight. I came upon another motorcyclist, and we stopped before a very steep, muddy hill. It had recently rained, and we both dumped our bikes as we tried to climb it. I looked at him and said, "Oh well, such things are bound to happen." We pondered the ability of our cycles to climb it without slipping and falling again. His cycle was more like a little dirt bike. "We'll never make it," he said. I was thinking I could help push his cycle up, and then he could help push mine, but instead he suggested, "We'll have to dismantle them," which was possible for his little bike, but not mine. I figured there had to be another way around.

I entered some sort of daycare center. It was nap time, and noone was supposed to be walking around. The daycare ladies were mean, but only doing their job. Everyone in their care had color-coded pajamas on to indicate age, division, and so on. I particularly remember pastel green and purple. My clothes were white, however, and did not fall into any particular group, so I knew the nurses would spot me. I avoided them for a while, seeing other people around who were trying to excape their tyranny. At one point I hid underneath a big purple sheet that was forming a tent around a chair. When the nurse walked by, she said, "Now now, you know you're not supposed to sleep under large sheets like this," and tried to take it off me, but I grabbed onto it. She discovered me, though, and I fled.

We couldn't get rid of the nurses because they were such nice people underneath. Nonetheless, we had to in order to escape. To justify our plight, somehow they merged into a large disgusting violent creature, which we somehow destroyed. One woman commented, "They turned them into a monster just so they could kill them. They never did anything wrong." I agreed, but it was too late now.

We were getting ready to leave, but there was unrest. Apparently there were some unsolved issues among the inmates. One woman said to a man, "You want to know where your parents vanished off to?" He nodded. "I'll show you." We went inside some complex. It felt ancient and eerie, as if it were a world within a world and it hadn't been explored or bothered in a long time. We stopped in a green yard outside of a building with a semi-circular entrance. There was a sign that read "Toy Room." Everyone (there were a lot of people) smiled and nodded, as if it made sense that all the missing people should be in the Toy Room, playing with toys. I unnoticably recoiled, commenting to noone in particular, "Don't these people see? They aren't playing with toys...they ARE the toys!" That same noone in particular, a disembodied female voice, replied, "Yes, but they don't know that." The entrance stared spinning like a carousel. Some people stepped up to it, and wind picked up due to a vacuum mounting up inside the building. Everyone was excited and waiting with anticipation. I walked backwards away from it, watching a couple people who were too close get sucked inside. I turned and walked across the yard, against the wind, which thankfully wasn't too strong yet. There was an overturned wooden box, and beyond that some iron posts, like a big snake-like ladder stuck sideways in the ground, lots of wood stacked up around it. I grabbed a post, then decided I might not be able to hold on strongly enough, so I got on the other side and pushed my body orthogonal to the bars, watching the scene through them. Everyone was instantly sucked away into the vortex. The wood all around me flew through the air toward the building, some of it crashing into the wooden box out there. Then it was over.

I knew it was safe when the wind stopped and a small puppy came walking over. Behind it, three baby foxes were chasing and stalking it. I grabbed a nice thick stick and clubbed one of the foxes after it got its mouth around the puppy, leaving a flat smear on the grass. Then I saw a bigger wolf, the father, who was merely watching for now. I came out of my spot and followed the puppy and foxes, who worked their way around a garden. I eventually clubbed the other two. The father fox somehow saw that having a puppy was more worthwhile and took to raising it as its own.

I grabbed my luggage and went through a turnstyle, then up an escalator into an airplane. I was stopped while they inspected my luggage or took care of my ticket or something. Some computer geek guy I supposedly knew came up after me, complaining, "I've never flown public before." The line was stalled. The person in front of me was taking forever. Another associate of ours arrived and started complaining that this was the result of work that didn't get done at his company, Network Instances (or something). He went on and on about computer integration, and the attendant by me rolled her eyes.

I imagined building an army of hard-shelled insects, using them to do battle with my associate's own breed. He attacked me before I was ready, and I sent them out in different formations to retaliate.


posted by Phlegm at 11/25/2003