filius philosophorum,
by rewired.
I'd known Audrey for a few months by that time. I'd done the usual: at first I was intensely attracted to her, and found, to my delight, that she was attracted to me. We exchanged poetry, commented on each other's verse, hung out now and then and made out. Nothing serious -- it rarely gets anything resembling serious until I start freaking out and distancing again. I fought with myself, though, and we'd gone on a double-date with her friend Angela, a sweet, brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty who worked with us. Angela had brought her quiet and apparently emotionally-dull boyfriend, Donnie. Everything had gone great that evening, it seemed to me; Audrey and I seemed more of a couple than did Angela and her boy.
The following day, Audrey came in her this blond-haired kid that turned out to be her boyfriend a few days later. Not that I could blame her.
We still exchanged poetry, however, and we still talked. On the afternoon in question -- April 7, 2002 -- she had met me in the dining room after work, having brought back the rough-is-putting-it-mildly drafts of what would eventually become the first few chapters of my book. It would be a very strange book (to this date unfinished) documenting and attempting to comprehend all the weird shit that had happened to me since I was sixteen (to this day ongoing).
She told me she liked it, but she didn't comment on any of it. That was because, unlike my poetry, I'm certain she hadn't read a word of it. It was just something I knew.
We kept up our talking at that booth in the smoking section, however, and I was trying to fight my ever-present desire to be alone by forcing myself to be vaguely communicative. As we were talking, I found myself a bit distracted (which really isn’t all that unusual) when this family of four came in and sat in the last booth of the smoking section at the back of the restaurant and directly behind my friend.
There was a curly-haired brunette lady who I presumed to be the mother; a tall, dark-haired man who’s face I never saw and two kids. There was a younger one, perhaps two years of age, who had blond hair and blue eyes and looked rather frail-looking. His head was kind of big, too. The other was a bit older and had dark hair. I didn't see the kid's face at first, either. Audrey, who was sitting at the end of the booth, had her back to the father's back. The brown-haired kid was between the father and the wall, and across from him was his blond-haired brother.
It was the blond-haired kid who first caught my attention: he was a cute little being with bright blue eyes, but there was that aura about him that struck an uneasiness in me. I attributed it to paranoia, as ever since the event with the kid I saw December 15 I’ve been wary of children in general. I kept an eye on him for a few moments, however, just to be on the safe side. I couldn't shake that something certainly did seem to be a bit `off’ about him.
Growing frustrated with what I was certain must be paranoia, I forced myself to look away. My attention drifted back to my friend, who was still talking, apparently oblivious to my distraction. She was equally oblivious when I inevitably found myself looking back at the kids yet again. Something just felt wrong somehow, and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. It was like an itch I couldn't scratch.
As I watched, both kids got up and stood on their respective seats almost in synch. They then leaned over the table toward each other and touched foreheads, like freeze-framed bucks in a duel. (They may have been grabbing the sides of each other's heads; I didn't put the detail into my notebook, but it's the way I remember it now.) My first thought was that they were going to start kissing, but they just remained the way they were, staring deeply into each other's eyes and occasionally giggling in unison. The parents seemed to get agitated with the kids at this point, perhaps because whatever they were doing was drawing my attention and it made them feel embarrassed. The father whispered something urgently to the mother, and she lightly back-handed the blond kid and told them both to stop it.
I let out a half-forced chuckle under my breath at how weird it seemed, and then my attention slipped back to my friend for awhile. She was still talking. I had absolutely no fucking clue what the hell she had been saying, and even what she was saying at present seemed to be empty words lost in a jumble.
It was like there was static in my brain. I was starting to freak out. Something was bothering me about that family and making me very scared; very uncomfortable. When I found myself looking back up over her shoulder yet again, this time the dark-haired kid turned around to face me. He looked straight towards me and dead in the eyes.
That's when it happened. That's when all my fears manifested right before me. That's when something happened that I've been trying to properly convey through words ever since, never ceasing to fall short.
When we locked eyes, a fraction of a second seemed to pass until he gave me this large, creepy Cheshire Cat smile, just like the kid the previous December. This smile, however, was unreal. It was cartoon-like, inhuman, and unnatural.
Then, not a second later, the weirdness went off the scale. I still don't know if it's better to explain it as my mind being pulled into his, his mind pushing into mine, or both our minds fusing for a second; all seem inadequate descriptions, but all three seem to hold some truth. Regardless, there seemed to be a "meeting place" outside the physical arena where only him and I existed. I could still see his face there, but it was cartoon-like, distorted, magnified and surreal-looking. His eyes were huge and his smile was wide.
I snapped out of it by looking away.
I slouched in my seat, tipped the bill of my hat and looked at the table, trying to find my bearings. Had any of that actually happened? Had I imagined the whole thing? Was I hallucinating? Was the fuck was going on?
I looked up at Audrey, who was, believe it or not, still talking. She looked up at me, looked away, and then looked back at me and stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn't talking, she stopped moving. She just looked at me quizzically. I imagine the look on my face must have been about as fucked up as I was feeling. She asked me what was wrong, and part of me wanted to say something about it, but what the hell could I possibly say? Something like: "hey, you know those stories I wrote that you never read? They dealt with these strange little creatures I've been seeing all throughout my life. They can do this weird telepathic thing with their eyes... and for some strange reason, that kid in the seat behind you can do the same thing with his eyes."
I couldn't say anything, though. I couldn't mumble or make a noise. I couldn’t even find it in me to shake my head in the negative and play like nothing had just happened and she’d merely misinterpreted the look on my face. I just stared into her eyes very deeply -- as deep as I could. I tried it with effort, I tried to stare into her and just "let go". I got nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I looked over her shoulder, and back at the kid, who was giggling, with his eyes waiting for me -- and it took a second or two. That was it. First his smile grew enormously wide and his eyes grew vivid and large -- and I mean this in the sense that this is what I saw in what seemed to be an otherwise normal visual field as I was looking at him, just before I got sucked into his mind. I wouldn't say he "shape-shifted" in the sense of actually physically changing, he just changed how I perceived him. What I saw wasn't physically real, but it didn't seem to originate from my head, either.
Then I'm violently shot to that psychic `meeting point' again. It's as if we were in this foggy psychic bubble where we're close in a way that's impossible to describe; just him and I, eyes and mind. As if he establishes a telepathic link through eye contact and then pulls me into his imagination, where he can cook up any kind of visuals he wishes. If I focused at all or stared for any lengthy period of time, I feared I might be trapped in there forever and never be able to snap out of it. He was the one that looked away this time, though. He leaned over the table to whisper and giggle up a storm with his brother. Then he turned back to me and did it for a third time, grinning that wide, unearthly grin, with pupils as big and black as universes.
I looked back at my friend with wide, frightened eyes, shaking my head, speechless. I stared deep into her again; nothing. If this were all in my mind and some hallucination, wouldn't staring into her eyes do the same damned thing as staring into this little telepathic Nazi behind her?
She was asking me what was wrong, begging me to tell her. She had some strange notion that it was the father that had upset me in some way, and started babbling on about some stupid story about being in a haunted house once with some evil dog. Reality's insane enough, like I need her blabbing on about bullshit, I thought. I just put my head down on the table and cover it with my hands. How I wish I were an ostrich. How I wish there was a hole here in some sand.
I tried to calm down about it. It was probably a hallucination, brought about by whatever mental disease I had. I had absolutely no real reason, other than the premature certainty I had and yet distained, that what had happened was a telepathic moment with a kid not fully human. It was probably a hallucination; I was probably insane.
Then one late morning I had the dream about Angela. We were in a dark room, in a bed pushed in the corner. We were having sex, but I got up half-way through and walked out of the room to do something I felt was of intellectual importance. When I came back, she was waiting, ready and spread for me. We continued, and as we did I noticed that her face had started changing. It was morphing, shape-shifting, or `shimmering' between her face and the face of the girl who played Trinity in the movie the Matrix, with those dark glasses.
I looked to the side of me and saw a door open by the bed. Light poured in from the doorway. There were now other people walking in and out of the door, but none of them stuck out except the familiar fellow sitting next to the bed on a chair. I hadn't seen the guy in two years: he was morose, cynical, gothic rich-kid who all the girls seemed to drool over. I liked him, as he was an intelligent and pessimistic fellow. I had learned some time ago, I believe, that he was a hermaphrodite. He was saying something to me, but I couldn't recall what upon awakening -- and I awoke abruptly to find I had slept in.
I was late for work. I drove there, clocked in, and went into the back kitchen. Half-asleep, I began making sandwiches and was doing so when Angela came and clocked in. Seeing her brought back a bit of the guilt from the dream I had of her, and I was sort of embarrassed to look at her. She put on her headset for drive-thru and then came in the back kitchen, which she had rarely if ever done. She then stood there for a moment until I turned around and looked at her.
She smiled broadly and pointed a finger at me. "Timmy, I had a strange dream about you last night." And then she walked away.
I got that familiar head rush -- the one I get every time synchronicity occurs, something finally makes sense, or the world I live in casually contradicts popular notions of consensus reality. It was important to understand that though I often remember my dreams for certain periods of time, I hadn't remembered many dreams at all lately, nor had I ever discussed any of them with her or anyone associated with work at that time. She had also never, ever told me about her dreams. It was the first time, so far as I knew, that she'd dreamed about me -- and the first time I ever remembered dreaming about her. Even more strange is the fact that though the scenery and exact situations in our respective dreams differed, both of our dreams involved us having sex with one another.
by rewired.
I'd known Audrey for a few months by that time. I'd done the usual: at first I was intensely attracted to her, and found, to my delight, that she was attracted to me. We exchanged poetry, commented on each other's verse, hung out now and then and made out. Nothing serious -- it rarely gets anything resembling serious until I start freaking out and distancing again. I fought with myself, though, and we'd gone on a double-date with her friend Angela, a sweet, brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty who worked with us. Angela had brought her quiet and apparently emotionally-dull boyfriend, Donnie. Everything had gone great that evening, it seemed to me; Audrey and I seemed more of a couple than did Angela and her boy.
The following day, Audrey came in her this blond-haired kid that turned out to be her boyfriend a few days later. Not that I could blame her.
We still exchanged poetry, however, and we still talked. On the afternoon in question -- April 7, 2002 -- she had met me in the dining room after work, having brought back the rough-is-putting-it-mildly drafts of what would eventually become the first few chapters of my book. It would be a very strange book (to this date unfinished) documenting and attempting to comprehend all the weird shit that had happened to me since I was sixteen (to this day ongoing).
She told me she liked it, but she didn't comment on any of it. That was because, unlike my poetry, I'm certain she hadn't read a word of it. It was just something I knew.
We kept up our talking at that booth in the smoking section, however, and I was trying to fight my ever-present desire to be alone by forcing myself to be vaguely communicative. As we were talking, I found myself a bit distracted (which really isn’t all that unusual) when this family of four came in and sat in the last booth of the smoking section at the back of the restaurant and directly behind my friend.
There was a curly-haired brunette lady who I presumed to be the mother; a tall, dark-haired man who’s face I never saw and two kids. There was a younger one, perhaps two years of age, who had blond hair and blue eyes and looked rather frail-looking. His head was kind of big, too. The other was a bit older and had dark hair. I didn't see the kid's face at first, either. Audrey, who was sitting at the end of the booth, had her back to the father's back. The brown-haired kid was between the father and the wall, and across from him was his blond-haired brother.
It was the blond-haired kid who first caught my attention: he was a cute little being with bright blue eyes, but there was that aura about him that struck an uneasiness in me. I attributed it to paranoia, as ever since the event with the kid I saw December 15 I’ve been wary of children in general. I kept an eye on him for a few moments, however, just to be on the safe side. I couldn't shake that something certainly did seem to be a bit `off’ about him.
Growing frustrated with what I was certain must be paranoia, I forced myself to look away. My attention drifted back to my friend, who was still talking, apparently oblivious to my distraction. She was equally oblivious when I inevitably found myself looking back at the kids yet again. Something just felt wrong somehow, and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. It was like an itch I couldn't scratch.
As I watched, both kids got up and stood on their respective seats almost in synch. They then leaned over the table toward each other and touched foreheads, like freeze-framed bucks in a duel. (They may have been grabbing the sides of each other's heads; I didn't put the detail into my notebook, but it's the way I remember it now.) My first thought was that they were going to start kissing, but they just remained the way they were, staring deeply into each other's eyes and occasionally giggling in unison. The parents seemed to get agitated with the kids at this point, perhaps because whatever they were doing was drawing my attention and it made them feel embarrassed. The father whispered something urgently to the mother, and she lightly back-handed the blond kid and told them both to stop it.
I let out a half-forced chuckle under my breath at how weird it seemed, and then my attention slipped back to my friend for awhile. She was still talking. I had absolutely no fucking clue what the hell she had been saying, and even what she was saying at present seemed to be empty words lost in a jumble.
It was like there was static in my brain. I was starting to freak out. Something was bothering me about that family and making me very scared; very uncomfortable. When I found myself looking back up over her shoulder yet again, this time the dark-haired kid turned around to face me. He looked straight towards me and dead in the eyes.
That's when it happened. That's when all my fears manifested right before me. That's when something happened that I've been trying to properly convey through words ever since, never ceasing to fall short.
When we locked eyes, a fraction of a second seemed to pass until he gave me this large, creepy Cheshire Cat smile, just like the kid the previous December. This smile, however, was unreal. It was cartoon-like, inhuman, and unnatural.
Then, not a second later, the weirdness went off the scale. I still don't know if it's better to explain it as my mind being pulled into his, his mind pushing into mine, or both our minds fusing for a second; all seem inadequate descriptions, but all three seem to hold some truth. Regardless, there seemed to be a "meeting place" outside the physical arena where only him and I existed. I could still see his face there, but it was cartoon-like, distorted, magnified and surreal-looking. His eyes were huge and his smile was wide.
I snapped out of it by looking away.
I slouched in my seat, tipped the bill of my hat and looked at the table, trying to find my bearings. Had any of that actually happened? Had I imagined the whole thing? Was I hallucinating? Was the fuck was going on?
I looked up at Audrey, who was, believe it or not, still talking. She looked up at me, looked away, and then looked back at me and stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn't talking, she stopped moving. She just looked at me quizzically. I imagine the look on my face must have been about as fucked up as I was feeling. She asked me what was wrong, and part of me wanted to say something about it, but what the hell could I possibly say? Something like: "hey, you know those stories I wrote that you never read? They dealt with these strange little creatures I've been seeing all throughout my life. They can do this weird telepathic thing with their eyes... and for some strange reason, that kid in the seat behind you can do the same thing with his eyes."
I couldn't say anything, though. I couldn't mumble or make a noise. I couldn’t even find it in me to shake my head in the negative and play like nothing had just happened and she’d merely misinterpreted the look on my face. I just stared into her eyes very deeply -- as deep as I could. I tried it with effort, I tried to stare into her and just "let go". I got nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I looked over her shoulder, and back at the kid, who was giggling, with his eyes waiting for me -- and it took a second or two. That was it. First his smile grew enormously wide and his eyes grew vivid and large -- and I mean this in the sense that this is what I saw in what seemed to be an otherwise normal visual field as I was looking at him, just before I got sucked into his mind. I wouldn't say he "shape-shifted" in the sense of actually physically changing, he just changed how I perceived him. What I saw wasn't physically real, but it didn't seem to originate from my head, either.
Then I'm violently shot to that psychic `meeting point' again. It's as if we were in this foggy psychic bubble where we're close in a way that's impossible to describe; just him and I, eyes and mind. As if he establishes a telepathic link through eye contact and then pulls me into his imagination, where he can cook up any kind of visuals he wishes. If I focused at all or stared for any lengthy period of time, I feared I might be trapped in there forever and never be able to snap out of it. He was the one that looked away this time, though. He leaned over the table to whisper and giggle up a storm with his brother. Then he turned back to me and did it for a third time, grinning that wide, unearthly grin, with pupils as big and black as universes.
I looked back at my friend with wide, frightened eyes, shaking my head, speechless. I stared deep into her again; nothing. If this were all in my mind and some hallucination, wouldn't staring into her eyes do the same damned thing as staring into this little telepathic Nazi behind her?
She was asking me what was wrong, begging me to tell her. She had some strange notion that it was the father that had upset me in some way, and started babbling on about some stupid story about being in a haunted house once with some evil dog. Reality's insane enough, like I need her blabbing on about bullshit, I thought. I just put my head down on the table and cover it with my hands. How I wish I were an ostrich. How I wish there was a hole here in some sand.
I tried to calm down about it. It was probably a hallucination, brought about by whatever mental disease I had. I had absolutely no real reason, other than the premature certainty I had and yet distained, that what had happened was a telepathic moment with a kid not fully human. It was probably a hallucination; I was probably insane.
Then one late morning I had the dream about Angela. We were in a dark room, in a bed pushed in the corner. We were having sex, but I got up half-way through and walked out of the room to do something I felt was of intellectual importance. When I came back, she was waiting, ready and spread for me. We continued, and as we did I noticed that her face had started changing. It was morphing, shape-shifting, or `shimmering' between her face and the face of the girl who played Trinity in the movie the Matrix, with those dark glasses.
I looked to the side of me and saw a door open by the bed. Light poured in from the doorway. There were now other people walking in and out of the door, but none of them stuck out except the familiar fellow sitting next to the bed on a chair. I hadn't seen the guy in two years: he was morose, cynical, gothic rich-kid who all the girls seemed to drool over. I liked him, as he was an intelligent and pessimistic fellow. I had learned some time ago, I believe, that he was a hermaphrodite. He was saying something to me, but I couldn't recall what upon awakening -- and I awoke abruptly to find I had slept in.
I was late for work. I drove there, clocked in, and went into the back kitchen. Half-asleep, I began making sandwiches and was doing so when Angela came and clocked in. Seeing her brought back a bit of the guilt from the dream I had of her, and I was sort of embarrassed to look at her. She put on her headset for drive-thru and then came in the back kitchen, which she had rarely if ever done. She then stood there for a moment until I turned around and looked at her.
She smiled broadly and pointed a finger at me. "Timmy, I had a strange dream about you last night." And then she walked away.
I got that familiar head rush -- the one I get every time synchronicity occurs, something finally makes sense, or the world I live in casually contradicts popular notions of consensus reality. It was important to understand that though I often remember my dreams for certain periods of time, I hadn't remembered many dreams at all lately, nor had I ever discussed any of them with her or anyone associated with work at that time. She had also never, ever told me about her dreams. It was the first time, so far as I knew, that she'd dreamed about me -- and the first time I ever remembered dreaming about her. Even more strange is the fact that though the scenery and exact situations in our respective dreams differed, both of our dreams involved us having sex with one another.
