Recollections from my Tour of the Invisible World (Part II) (392 hits)
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Submitted by Kirillovian_Shit_Stain (View user info) at 2008-11-28 13:48:37 EST
II (of VI)
On Dematerialization
Well, that certainly isn't the worst of what I've dreamt. As a matter of fact, now that I'm awake, I suspect that my real life is ten fold more frightening. Here I am, in a bed of grey sheets that are supposed to be white, and... there's my alarm clock, singing a nice beat but for the awful mixture of tones that create it. I can't afford the nice clocks with a more soothing alarm. What does it mean? Us poor folk are made to wake up to the sound of a wretched shriek that startles the would be sleeper from contemplating a world of silly could-have-beens and should-have-beens - shouldn't-bes and can't-bes. This world was designed to imprison those without the means. My walls, these concrete things that I bump my head against at night when I'm asleep, risking concussion, are not the worst part. This alarm clock, this faded and filtered sunlight, this aching back of mine, the empty refrigerator and the long forgotten bags of salt that sit on the shelves with nothing to flavor - they all glare at me with immaterial faces, and their sarcasm and silent loathing penetrate the barriers that I prepare as I turn off the emissary of the day: the alarm clock.
I imagine all the items I would have bought at the store yesterday, and how I would have arranged them on the empty metal shelves that line my kitchen walls. I imagine how I would have prepared a breakfast of French toast, and an omelet with sautéed onions and garlic and ham and peppers and tomatoes, with cheese. This is how I eat breakfast. Some people have imaginary friends, but I have imaginary food. The invisible substances that feed my soul are quite ample when my powers of creativity are rightly sparked, but it doesn't change the fact that my stomach will be growling angrily at me for the rest of the day, until I can find some old slice of pizza, or swallow a pack of gum. See how even my own organs seem to rebel against me? My empty stomach, my aching back, my decaying teeth, my clogged ears, and my spotted face all wage war with me, not understanding that I am on their side. "If I had the means, my dear parts, I would send you to a new home where your new master would feed you, drill you, polish you, cleanse and massage you, but there is no money in the old pockets, so you can either cooperate with me for the moment while I enjoy this glorious imaginary omelet, or you can carry on with your childish rebellion. But you're not helping anyone." My parts don't listen. My ears may have heard me, but it is the job of my brain to understand what the ears hear, and since it was my brain that told my ears these things in the first place, they are unwilling to listen. So be it.
After breakfast, I usually travel the immediate vicinity of my city. Today, however, I have a different plan. I remember last night when I went to the convenient store, I saw a flier for a tour of the invisible world. I remember reading Wonders of the Invisible World by a wretched Puritan. It's a fine title, but all about the witchcraft trials. I may be fully qualified to give this tour, as the invisible world is the realm that I would prefer to inhabit, and in fact often do inhabit when the means of entrance present themselves. But it's nice to have a day off, even from dreaming, let somebody else be the guide, I decide. I'll take a backseat on this bus, and let some other guy do all the work. Ah... there it is.
A nice tour bus, truly it is: shiny black siding, the name of the company "Invisible Inc." written in big red bombastic cursive that sprawls across the side. The windows of the bus are circular sometimes. Other times they are square. Right now they're triangular, and I can see wide eyed children pressing their faces against the glass. They look shy when I make eye contact, and quickly look away, laughing. I wonder what they could possibly be thinking. The exhaust of this bus comes from a swirly pipe, and purple smoke is expelled when it changes gears, with little wisps of vapor entering the atmosphere. I hear that the smoke from these kinds of buses actually destroys green house gases. Or, no, it was green houses. Actually, I don't hear that. I see it.
The bus parks right in front of my apartment its green paint melts. In a pathetic puddle, it hisses and bubbles, before it evaporates into nothingness. The naked walls of my entrance frown at me, but I don't care. Let it frown. It's just a building. I hate that building. The bus screeches as it lowers itself for a wheelchair, and more vapors escape the pipe. I look quickly at my apartment entrance, and the frown has become a terrified expression that demands pity. As the vapor approaches the building, I behold the walls creeping back, fearing what's to come... The purple smoke takes on the form of a clenched fist. The weeping walls are thus battered to bits by the fist, and crumble, exposing the embarrassing innards of my home. The shattered bricks make disjointed patterns, like some sort of hellish rock garden. Wait, that can't happen. I blink, look at the bus... The wheel chair lady is being brought into the bus, and it's almost my turn to get on. I blink. I look at my apartment, and there it is... green walls intact.
At this point it is clear to me that I may still be dreaming, but lets roll with it and see what happens.
I enter the bus. There's a nice collection of poor bastards like myself here. They stare blankly at newspapers, or listen to MP3 players, or discipline their children. A little boy rushes to the front of the bus and attacks the machine that eats our change, pushing all the buttons he can get his crazed and shaking hands on before his mother tears the two apart. I smile, remembering how I used to be fascinated with the buttons of machines, before realizing that at some point in my past, somebody pushed a button on the machine that processes us all, eats us like change. I must have been a penny, because I fell into the place where only the barely-worth-a-fucking-thing wait in a pile for instructions. I'm walking down the aisle of the bus now, seeking a seat, once blue, once green, once yellow... The shifting colors of the Invisible Inc. seats can be disorienting, but as long as I don't blink, the scenery will not change. That's the key. A rhythm created by the mixture of an immensity of iPods turned on full blast, melding the beats of many different songs from all corners of the world, help me move along. I find a black seat in the back. I blink. My seat is pink. I hate pink. I blink. The seat is a pleasing shade of gray. I like that. I wonder how long I can keep my eyes open... Hopefully Alex's doctor will sit next to me, and I can borrow the device that pries the eyes open, waters them, and makes blinking or closing impossible. What a happy device it is.
The tour guide takes the microphone from the shimmering ceiling of the bus, and announces that the tour is about to begin, get in your seats please, put away your drinks, papers, and iPods, thanks. My leather jacket... is thick and warm... but I feel like I'm incased in a block of dry ice. I blink. I had to. My jacket is warm again, and my seat is pink again. So be it. The wheels hit the road, and we're off. A nice tour of the invisible world! The children start clapping their hands... and poof! They're gone. The tour guide picks up the microphone and says in a steady, disinterested voice, that only people between the ages of 18 and 25, 35 and 40, and people who are 53, 29, 67, 13, and 83 are allowed on this bus. I smile to myself, and wonder how old I am. The children are gone... the middle agers are gone... the driver is gone! Hm. I could drive this bus with my eyes closed. Wouldn't that be something though?
Close your eyes on this bus, and the surroundings change faster than ever, but you can't see it. A reality based entirely off of the presence of sight, but not dependent on conventional physical laws... That's something to consider for another time, perhaps, but I believe that for now it might be more entertaining to focus my attention on the tour guide.
A strange figure: he wears a plaid shirt, overalls with one undone shoulder strap and holes at the knees, a straw hat, big brown leather boots, and a stereotypical piece of wheat poking out from his yellow teeth - surely this man is joking. Invisible Inc., you bastards, you hired a farmer? What could he possibly know about the wonders of this invisible world? I blink. He's a strange figure. A colossal man with folds of fat that drag on the floor behind him like the train on a wedding dress, except it's made of flesh and a rancid smell... "Like a tainted cheese," radiates from it. He bears a white chili stained wife beater, and wears a top hat on his bald, tattooed skull. His eyes naturally squint, as the muscles in his eye lids are not powerful enough to prevent the fat of his face from closing them shut. He could use Alex's Doctor's device as well, I bet, but it would have to be a custom model. Not the generic one that they manufacture for badly behaved British young adult murderers and rapists that I could probably fit into.
This man though, he's like a blob of unperfected existence. His legs are like oak tree trunks, the shapes of which are made curvy by a bleeding tree sap that oozes out of the vines that strangle them. Imagine a giant, melted two-liter bottle that was formed at random by a pyro by a camp fire, bored with burning mere wood in the pit. Or a Jell-o cake cast from a mould that resembles the shape of a blue whale that got caught in the propellers of an oil rig - a completely mutilated mess of lard, all of it hanging together by thin strands of cartilage, and then rounded up in an enormous fishing net. His legs look like that - a shredded whale in a net. That's the simile I'll favor for this description.
The tour guide was unfazed by this change, and perhaps was not even aware of it. He told us to come up to the front, as near to him as possible, please, thanks, so we can better serve you, and so I don't have to shout into this microphone. He mumbles something to himself about gas mileage. My eyes are dry, but the enormous man that I behold makes me laugh so hard inside that I feel like I might pass out. I can't blink. This is priceless. The people on the bus look at each other, scratching their heads, nervous about getting too close to this blubbery individual, for fear that he might engulf them all with a swing of his arm slabs. I give up, I guess. I don't want to see my companions get plastered to the wall by a fleshy, hairy, smelly, chili stained wall of disgust.
I blink. My leather jacket is now tweed, the chair that I am now leaving becomes tie die, and dotted with bowling balls, and the tour guide becomes a respectable business man in a suit, of some sort of Asian ancestry. I don't know my Asians as well as I should, but he looks like he might be Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. That's as accurate as my judgment can become at this time. That's it, he says, take a seat in frant prease. The bus is moving full speed now. We're on the highway. A highway with no signs, no speed limit, no road lines, no destination... full speed ahead to the invisible world we go.
User Reviews
Submitted by KirillovianShitStain (user info) at 2008-12-01 07:00:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Alright. I guess.
Submitted by skee (user info) at 2008-11-30 17:56:28 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
didnt read it either...here u go, have a -2. Just because this shit is xtra long
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2008-11-30 16:09:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-11-30 11:28:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2008-11-28 14:58:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Didn't read it.
Just felt like you deserved a bright shiny +2 for some reason.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-11-28 16:08:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2008-11-28 14:58:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Didn't read it.
Just felt like you deserved a bright shiny +2 for some reason.