Fallen behind? Catch up here.
DOOM MAGNETIC!! - CHAPTER TWELVE:
DIRECT LINE TO THE TELEPATHIC
William Pauley III
I’m not crazy.
I open my eye and I’m inside the jar again. I say again, but I never really left in the first place. All of this has been taking place inside my head. Only in my head. Mother is dead. She lives…in my head. That sounds nice, like a song:
Mother is dead,
she lives in my head,
la ti da, la ti da…
I’m not crazy.
Actually, I feel quite nice. I can’t be crazy if I understand everything that is happening to me, right? But maybe I don’t really understand everything that’s happening to me. Maybe that’s why I’m having these visions. Maybe that’s why the doctors look at me the way they do. Smug little smiles. Idiots. They’re all idiots. Look what they’ve done to me.
I’m not losing it.
I’m not crazy.
My eye twitches. That doesn’t mean I’m crazy. It could be anything. It could be nothing. It is nothing. I’m fine. I need Gusto. Where’s Gusto?
I push in on the pink bubble. My vision immediately transfers to one of the specters. I travel from specter to specter, into every room of the clinic, until finally I find him sitting at a table in the cafeteria down the hall. He’s eating lunch—a turkey sandwich, a bag of plain potato chips, and some peanut M&Ms. He’s listening to music on his Walkman. Oingo Boingo’s Dead Man’s Party on cassette. I can hear it blasting from his headphones all the way across the room.
I need to speak, but I cannot speak. Not to him anyway. Another specter, standing in the corner of the room, speaks out to me.
“You can show yourself, you know,” he says.
“What? What do you mean, show yourself?” I ask.
“I mean just that. You can show yourself to him. Make yourself visible. Just concentrate.”
The specter just stands there. Emotionless. Like he never even said anything to me. I take a deep breath and wipe my hands down my face, over my moustache. Close my eyes. Clear my thoughts.
I can do this. I know I can do this.
I open my eyes, but nothing feels different. Focusing my thoughts solely on manifesting, trying to draw all the energy from the room and absorb it into my body, even if only for a moment. Just need enough for him to see me.
Nothing. I am too weak.
“You’re not concentrating. Your mind is everywhere,” the specter says to me.
“Yes, I could see that too. Your mind must be much clearer than that,” another specter says.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and out of pure frustration I shout back at them.
“It’s too goddamn impossible to clear my mind with so much shit going on all around me all the time! My head’s already a mess and you shits aren’t making things any easier!”
My fist slams down on the table in front of Gusto, directly on top of his bag of M&Ms. The M&Ms burst from the wrapper and go scattering over the table and across the floor of the cafeteria. I stare in amazement, not quite sure exactly how I achieved such an act. Gusto yanks off his headphones and nearly falls over backwards as he leaps from his seat and backs away from the table in horror.
“What the fuck, man?!” Gusto yells, “Did anyone else just see that?” He looks around, but he sees no one else in the room with him.
The M&Ms are my ticket out.
Gusto tiptoes back over to the table, cautiously eyeing the possessed candies. I close my eyes and focus all my strength on pushing one of the M&Ms, a funny little green one.
“What the fuck…” Gusto says to himself, much calmer than before, as he watches the M&M move.
I push it around in circles a few times and then flick it off the table, towards the hallway. Gusto does exactly what I was hoping he would do. He follows.
With my help, the M&M rolls all the way down the hallway, through the legs of each passerby, until finally reaching my room.
Gusto leans down, picks up the M&M, then walks into the room. He spots my severed head, complete with folded, oversized arachnid legs, stuffed inside the glass jar.
“Qoser? Zat you doing this, man?” he asks.
Through my actual head, I’m unable to speak aloud, due to the tubes running inside my mouth, so I just stare and concentrate. With all my might, I try to relay a message to him. The veins in my forehead and neck swell, bulging from my skin. I grind my crooked teeth together, clinching my jaw so tight I taste blood.
Gusto just stands and stares, watching me behave in this strange manner, with nothing but a blank expression on his face.
Then suddenly, he pushes the green M&M between his lips and chews it up.
“Sure, boss,” he says. “Whatever you say.”
Paid subscribers! The next chapter of this story will be posted on April 25th! Stay tuned for Lady Starman.
Direct Line to the Telepathic
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
Share this post