Space Pretzel

I was sitting at the kitchen table of a potential flat (potential meaning it being hypothetical and potentially mine). The kitchen was large and spartanic, high-ceilinged, and had a very large window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, almost, and might even have been a flattish bay window. The Doctor (played by Matt Smith; the current Doctor) stood there between the window and the table, somewhat on the right side, and suggested I try out for playing the Doctor's next companion. I snorted and said they'd never pick me. And even if ... my mind wandered and I pictured doing just that, trying (that is, waiting for my turn to read) and acting in my chef clothes. This image lasted a very short time before I focused on the window again. It looked out on a dark lake surrounded by trees and I could see much sky above that. I could see stars and a colourful nebula. This picture filled my entire vision... and then contained a large pretzel. I mean, flipping enourmous. It was slender, thin, but BIG. Its shape looked doubled, a bit butterflyish. I thought it might be a space station or a ship. And I was right. It rotated vertically about 90 degrees, swerved to the right and flew a big loop. I expected it to speed away, but it turned back and came right at me, with its centerpiece aligned perfectly to the tip of my nose. It came rapidly closer and grew in my vision as I stared at the midspot that was headed for me. Soon I could make out a zipline and the accompanying latch. When the opening of this pretzel was about 20 metres close to me, both of us hovering out there in black, glinting space, the zip opened a little and revealed a seal, a door, which looked suspiciously like a closed set of pointy teeth in black and white. Which opened to reveal another set of teeth, in dark reds and angled differently this time. The pretzel ship was going to fucking eat me?! Never. I readied my imaginary weapon. (I knew it was imaginary. I had none, so I had to pretend something up, okay?) I pretended to hold a large spray can of lethal poison in my right hand, kept it low and inconspicuous, and waited for the multitude of pretzel doors to swallow me.

As it did.

It opened to a greyish white classroom with over a dozen black and white penguins sitting in broken half circles on plastic chairs. They were sitting still and mute, and simply looked at me.

I'll teach you to snag me like that, I thought-said, and sprayed them all with my pretend-poison. This is lethal, you're all dead now, I informed them, and sprayed again until they all looked utterly immobilised. Meaning, until their eyes all had stopped moving.

Evacuation

We were sitting in a cafeterialike place where a refugeeish family with small children had just left. The people on this planet wouldn't survive for much longer. Luckily, a perky ginger woman with the air of a teacher offered everyone a way out. About twenty to thirty people of different ages, but most of us youngish, from eighteen to thirty, took our seats in a classroom while the woman gave instructions to the quiz game we were going to play. She was cheery-busy at it. We were seated in pairs, each person got one question, and whenever a round of questions was finished, we were to rotate the rows.

My seat neighbour and I started in the last row, then moved to the second-to-last after we'd each answered our first question. The first two best players were announced. They were allowed to immediately board the ship that would leave this planet with as many passengers as it could hold. Not all of us would fit into it, of course, and this, some of us now realised for the first time, was what this game was about. Being good meant that you would survive.

As the first two boarded, a man in a red hawaii shirt stood gaping up at a screen hanging high on a wall, where a person exclaimed that two roundswinners would be announced aftere ach round, would be allowed to board at once, and that this would continue until the ship was full. This didn't faze me much, because I knew I was pretty good and would probably be invited in quite soon. The man kept gaping and looked somewhat spiteful.

Poor But Score Fox

I was on my way home from somewhere near/in the inner city on an early evening. I had no ticket for the tram, nor money for one, but that's hardly a problem for someone with two healthy feet and a unicycle. To be faster, I thought, why not try the cycle out? I'd never ridden one, and I had no idea why I had it with me (or owned it in the first place), but there it was, and there I was with several kilometres to go, so I simply sat on it and it suddenly happened to have handles and a hindwheel. Whatever, I thought, and cycled across the street on this big crossing (which really exists). On the corner I faced stood three women in front of a shop, one of which had a small dog on a leash. They talked about the dog, which had nice short red fur and large, triangular ears. It looked a lot like a cat to me at first, though I knew it was supposed to be a dog. As it turned on its back, curled up and out, lifted its paws and moved its head it looked more cattish than anything else. Then I thought, "maybe a fox?" and cycled on.

I didn't get further than a metre or so, because the fox dog jumped in front of me from the side in the shape of a petite, blackhaired, rather pretty girl, who was rather chipper and also seemed a bit naked to me. I can't say that she WAS naked, because I honestly don't know if she was, but I know that she SEEMED naked to me. She asked if we could go together and I happily invited her to join me on my way home, or wherever she wanted to go.

I immediately had an ulterior motive but she quite obviously had a similar one, so that was fine. We made our way to a train station (S-train, a local inner city thing) nearby, with me pushing my bike and remembering and remarking that I didn't have money for the fare, and apologising for the inevitable march on foot that I didn't want to subject her to in case she became impatient and was bored easily. But she skipped the entry of the train station and skipped along the length of its outer wall, pointed at its end; "That's alright, we're already there!" and indeed, there, out in the open among bushes, grit containers and the wall of the station platform, stood a bed, a few low shelves and lay scattered things that were apparently mine.

I just shrugged and was relieved, amazed, and most of all excited and happy. We both jumped into bed and I noticed how dark it had become. Nightly. Which I could see very well now that I lay on my back. The girl was on top of me at once and now wore definitely nothing except for a long white ribbony bandage around her chest and arms. It suited her and she was grinding and moaning and extremely goodlooking and warm.

Afterwards she woke me up and the light was different, so it must have been morning then. She was about to leave (still so bloody chipper and making me grin, too) and showed me a bag of comics she was going to borrow from me. I sifted through them and was amazed. I hadn't even known I had those!

Horror Synopsis [crappy]

The rooms in this house were large, high chambers and they were all dark and decrepit. There were time sequences of dark and light, and the dark ones were the dangerous ones. Something demonic came then, and we all had to be locked away in some room out of its path, in relative safety, when twilight began. It never worked, though, and we were picked off by one or more each time. People were just too slow and never listened. The dark didn't come in regular intervals, but it did come with a warning of flickering twilight each time.

The atmosphere was suitably creepy, but I noticed that I wasn't frightened. It was too exciting. Any powerlessness expressed itself as frustration rather than fear. I got to fight some of it a few times, but never really successfully. It didn't get me, but it got others (who were really bad at fighting and hiding and saving their own arses), and I couldn't really injure it, just stave it off a bit until light began again.

-

VanessaHo and worm bit

My whole family was already out and I needed to hurry. It was too warm for a jacket, really, but it drizzled, so I put on the soft felt hat my father had brought from the Grand Canyon. It was just getting dark outside and a white van was waiting for me, driven by the lovely tomboy I want. I chucked my things into the back and joined her in the front.

The cast of Downton Abbey was discussing things like it does, when a group of young Americans came near, sat down at a green wooden picnic table by a fence in this grassy meadow, and unpacked sandwiches, fruit and beverages, and proceeded to eat and talk amongst themselves. Lord Grantham was perturbed. He protested and tried to gain their attention - apparently this table and this ground belonged to Downton Abbey premises - and I turned my attention to the direction the Americans had come from. Sure enough, I saw a bunch of white horses fenced in by blue bands, and a dog trying to play with them, which freaked them out. They chased him away and then two ran for the fence-bands, turning a handsome rich dark brown as they jumped the band, and turning into a couple of cartoonish cows. They jumped several of these blue bands and I watched them gallop and jump, gallop, gallop, and jump ... When they had jumped the last band as flawlessly as the rest in perfect synchrony, I heard the Grantham family behind me mentioning something about food shortage.

I went to neighbouring grounds, where I expected to find the tiny, tiny, gnomishly little boy who should be about four years old but had the height, though not the body development, of a baby. He was there and had raided the neighbour's refrigerator. I could tell he had eaten a lot and he pointed at stuff in the fridge and went on about how he'd eaten almost all of the good dumplings. I shooed him forward. At one point I picked him up and carried him the last few paces to the earth pile at the end of my garden. It had holes in it, about head sized, and I asked him twice how exactly it worked for thim and his kind to sleep in there. I let him down and he dug himself into one of the holes - I wondered if his foodbroadened frame might give him trouble and get him stuck in the tunnels - and I peeked into another to see the very broad to pointy end of a giant worm, which I knew to be the tail of another boy, protruding glisteningly from the dark. It was still, so he was probably already asleep.

I turned around and this morph mix of two girls I want stood in my garden. She wore some kind of figure skating dress, in red with something sparkly sewed on it. She performed a neat acrobatic trick and then looked at me. I grinned and did a backwards somersault. It was her turn and she walked on her hands, holding her torso and legs up above the grass horizontally(!) somehow. It was eerie and very impressive. We sort of circled each other a bit, she gave me bits of information about her, and I smiled brightly, came closer, and when she lay on her back in the grass after her latest stunt (wearing regular jeans, t-shirt and button-up shirt now), I took her hands and kneeled over her, straddling her waist. She tried to push me away, but not very hard, and I didn't budge and she finally let me lean in really closely and kiss her. She kissed back, too, and all the while we were wrapped in a giant brochure portfolioing all the information about her she'd brought with her. This was what I kissed and through which she kissed me. It caught my attention and we studied it a little, because we thought it would be good for her to see a doctor. Two addresses on her big sheet didn't match and she explained she'd refreshed one of those earlier. We moved from the grassy garden ground to the ground floor of my house, the hallway to be exact, where I learned that she had sung a song called "When Nothing Else Matters" in a "WSKRIM" (Women "Skrim" = meaning scream) contest that had been presided over by a famous band she liked. Several times I saw a lovely photograph of her on stage with brown, glinting backdrop and atmosphere, holding the microphone in one hand, tilting her head with tousled soft short brown hair back with closed eyes, holding the mic stand in the other ... the photo and its caption changed ever so slightly each time I saw it. She held an envelope in her hand now and proceeded to open it. It informed her that she'd won the SKRIM contest and her joy made her hug me tightly. I was impressed and proud and wanted to hear her sing.

Rapid Guilt

I used an old black and green desk chair I haven't had since summer last year to skate around in the streets, or mostly the pavement of this city, probably supposed to be my own, but a bit more consequential (metropolitan and pretentious, if you will). I knelt on the seat and had always at least one hand on the back, because that was really necessary, as rapid and wild as this thing was.

It was fast and nearly uncrontrollable, but that was why I used it. It was cool and exciting.

It was also my job to cook some sort of snack, or I was asked to, or I wanted to, or all of the above. I botched up something with chocolate that I put into a box of something else... not important, I was just a little guilty for messing it up, because it was supposed to be for a friend.

He chanced a look at me and my bad snack. I also soaked a few old slices of white bread in a sweet mix of egg ,milk and flour, to roast or bake with raisins or something, but looking at the pans on the stove and the grill plate (the ones we have at work - this was my restaurant kitchen) I knew or feared that it wouldn't work.

I had to turn away anyway and take care of something.

You, Matt, were sitting with a friend or acquaintance of yours at a crossing I have in my neighbourhood. One of the low houses there seemed to be yours. Both of you sat on stools at a small high round table like the ones they have in front of chipper vans and coffee stalls, in front of your front yard on the pavement.

It was dark, either early morning or late evening or whatever. It was nightly dark. (but streetlamp-lit, of course)

I came out of your low front yard gate with some card in my hand, like a greeting card. I placed it on the table where some similar things were already stacked and standing, and turned away from you to the traffic light, ashamed of something (being there in person for you and your friend to see?) and guilty for not acknowledging you.

You acknowledged me and the card, and mentioned me to your friend. I was sorry as I stood there waiting for the lights to turn green for me.

Then I came out of some building onto a dark early morning street (or was it evening? Who the bloody hell cares) that was lined with parked cars, those in turn framed again by a typically German patchwork of appartment buildings. The concrete and pavement glinted wetly.

I looked to a street corner where I'd left my chair.

There was a young man in half a suit (jacket wasn't on), who looked around and lifted my chair, apparently to take it with him.

He appeared to be saying something to himself along the lines of "If no one's there..." with a shrug in his voice.

And he proceeded to carry my chair towards the opened trunk of a car.

I hurried to him, calling: "Heh, that's my chair. Oi! That's MY chair!"

He acknowledged me the second time I called but didn't put the chair down.

He put it into his trunk and somehow made me understand that since it had been on the pavement by itself it was free for the taking, tough luck for me. But I happened to know the law.

He shut his car and left it standing there, and put on his jacket and began to walk across the street and over a bridge rather briskly, and I followed him closely, and kept next to him as best I could.

I said "Are you a lawyer or something?"

He said with some kind of pride: "Well yes, I happen to be" writing a book something blah di blah.

I said: "Well, for a lawyer you don't know the law very well. That's still my chair."

The sky lightened a bit.

And I was woken up.

For Girls

Like a large setup and dressing room at a fashion show the carpeted room was filled with bustling people, the make up artists, clothespeople, hair stylists and those who had come to let them work on them. A short grey haired man I should have known from TV greeted me very politely and took my jean jacket to a room with racks of jackets and other apparel of visitors. He gestured to the chair in front of a large mirror, his work space apparently, for me to sit down, and asked me what I wanted for my hair. I had neither the money not the wish for a new haircut, so I refused and went to the racks to get my jacket back to leave. I picked it out among other jean jackets and found something that didn't belong to me but I wanted to take as well. So I waited a little and looked around for witnesses to take it nonchalantly when no one was looking. I was eager to leave, but still took my sweet time with this.

I don't remember if I did take it, though. Because I ended up in a room not far from there (without actually moving there), part of that place apparently, which was exactly the room I live in in reality right now. A strange woman was in bed with me. I had nothing to do with her, she was just there, sharing it, awarding me only the simple, quiet kind of attention you would pay a fellow train seat occupant, without any talking. I was going to leave but it was not quite the right time yet.

So in that idle moment I peeked into the nightstand and saw a small but colourful collection of dildos and vibrators there. I recognised one of them as my own, and as moans and gasps of an unmistakable nature faded in and wafted in through the open door, the realisation dawned on me that I had brought the toy here to use in ... some action. I suppose I was in a brothel or swinger club of some kind. I took the vibrator back, knocking it against the nightstand door and the door against the bed, and apologised to the occupant, the stranger who kept looking at me with only very mild interest. ... And I suppose I packed it up somehow and was ready to leave then, because I stepped halfway through the door of my actual room into the corridor of my actual house, looking straight into my father's room, where a girl was positively nailing another with a strap-on on my father's desk. The blond woman lying on the desk moaned quite deliciously. I gaped for a few seconds until the strap-on girl noticed me and broke her rhythm. I tried to mitigate my staring intrusion by giving her an awkward thumbsup accompanied by a rather confused embarassed smile, and she smiled back a bit proudly and I think she was panting, and then she turned her attention back to her ... uhm. Work.

I turned away, trying to give them their space, and found myself at a hotel strip on a beach. This part  is patchy and boring, involving buffet food, a cute trannie woman and derelict beaches, but it goes over into a dark chase.

Some kind of sci-fi agent woman was looking for someone, she told us. My vague friend and I became curious at her waterspeeder vehicle and got a pair of our own to plow the seas. We had only to start them and zoom out to open sea when she began following us. We rode through black glittering, roiling water with no land in sight, into gloom that gradually but quickly turned into night, and managed to evade her with speed.

We reached a white-lit, open platform out on the ocean, that had two walls like a shop showroom and two tiny helicopters on display. It sat fast just above the water's surface, so it must have been built on poles or stilts. We might have remained camped out and hidden there, but I itched to try out one of the mini helicopters. The black one, to be exact, that looked like it might have weapons on board. Indeed our enemies did come closer and into view and my friend and I each squeezed into one of those toys. You really had to fold yourself into it and zip it up around yourself like a shaped sleeping bag.

I never learned if I fit, though, because then I stood at a terminal door to Arabia.

Barefooted with only my wide cargo bermudas and a long t-shirt, I stood before a stunningly beautiful girl with long black hair, and I smiled at her hopefully. She smiled back and lowered her head a little as if she were flattered, then gestured for me to step through into her home country. I was grateful that she allowed me to enter (after all, that's what I was standing there for, right), and understood somehow that she also let me know I should wander around the city for a while and then find her. We would be each other's destination.

So I stepped through the door and found myself in a short brickwork tunnel. Well, this wasn't very Arabian. It looked rather German. I took it as it was. So I began to wander. Exiting the tunnel at the end I had faced, I looked around and saw a city around me, a very German-style one, not at all Arabian... the right side had some higher buildings and one with a big clock on it, so I took it as more central and more likely to lead me to the girl, so I wandered in that direction. I padded around on my bare feet very dreamishly, deliberately naive, and it felt really peaceful.

However, this was supposed to be Arabia, so maybe it was smart to hide somewhere? Given my attire, looks, nationality, and everything?

I passed a kind of open stall which was very tall, like an insanely huge shelf, where there were old records (also big) and old Donald Duck comics. I liked it. And it had a convenient hollow space behind the first row of records on the very top. I jumped up there and curled up in it to hide and sleep a little.

The rest about people coming to watch me, purple crisps and pancakily flattened children's corpses is too muddled to recount, which is a shame. It was quite fascinating.

Oma

My Oma was telling me something and I listened with a specific but undirected sense of seriousness. She was right, of course, but I knew something impossibly important, but she knew it, too, and she was right in everything she told me as she set the round white radishes into the flowerbed one by one. They had long, entangled, bushy plantwork on top of them. The red brick steps she sort of stood-squatted on and that I sat on were trembling. All the stone- and brickwork here outside of the house was trembling. The house itself was not. I stared and squinted hard at one of its outer wall corners, the one behind my Oma, which was in my view all the time. It stood perfectly still. It had really been built by my family? Half my mind was on the unnamed serious matter with a very vague sadness of loss. Of course she was dead, I knew that, but that wasn't it. It was the other one again, wasn't it, the one I keep dreaming of because knowing and accepting that we're over and I never even had a chance aren't enough. Thick parts of my brain still need to adjust and process it, so they secrete all this moulding jelly night after night to get rid of it. It even crept into this one, a dream about my Oma telling me something important while the humanbuilt world crumbles around the foundations of .... me. My heritage is all that's certain.

The Lizard People

(translation)

In the dream there was a hall
in a mountain
with many colourful boxes and containers
like in Sokoban
my people were led through it
while men worked there
and pushed boxes.
I fell back two paces
and in my way they pushed a wall of open boxes
and cut me off from my group.
I jumped onto a stack that was several metres high
to jump over this wall
behind which my men turned around towards me and waited for me.
It did not work
I took a detour
displaced as a little prank a flat chocolate box
so that they would have to look for it.
That was when the trap snapped shut.
They had ambushed us.
The workers were now lizard creatures
and we had to get out of here
But my men were now in the centre of the hall
cut off from the exit
and separated from me
they were quickly scattered further
But we managed
with good fighting
and a little high wire acrobatics
in the upper half of the hall
to kill several of them
and reunite a few of us.

In a critical moment
the hall trembled
and the lizard men listened up.
They ceased fighting
and tried to leave the hall
Through the windows high up in the walls
a few made it.
I do not know how,
but I was transfigured into a dragon
and was able to carry one of the men outside.
In the snow on the quivering mountain
I dropped him off
He wanted to go back, to fight
I flew without him
back into the hall
it was not trembling anymore
into the leader's room
small again
no one saw me
our captain stood there.
He demanded from the lizard man
to be made into a dragon as well
The lizard leader agreed
I was surprised
because he was our enemy
And at
how something like this should be possible
and watched intently
I remained undiscovered right there in the room
as the leader gave the captain
plates and scales, one by one
sewed them onto his body
He bled and panted
Liquid leaked from him
but he stood still
I watched with fascination
and found it incredible
When every part of his body
except for the eyes
was sewn into stiff carapace
he waited for the transformation
which did not come.
I saw that he could neither breathe
nor move
But he looked at the lizard man with pain
and still much too much hope
for my liking
out of his oozing eyes
He wanted to speak
and surely also move
he fought for it
but couldn't open his mouth
nor breathe
nor draw his sword
nor lift his hand
He would, standing up
with thousands of pinpricks in his skin
imprisoned in unyielding plates
suffocate miserably.
The lizard leader laughed at him.
I was annoyed by the captain's stupidity
and became angry
I approached him
to tell him that I would defect
but noticed the sun
and woke up.

Die Echsenmenschen

In dem Traum war eine Halle
in einem Berg
voller bunter Kisten und Container
wie bei Sokoban
meine Leute wurden hindurchgeführt
während Männer dort arbeiteten
und Kisten schoben.
Ich blieb zwei Schritte zurück
und vor mich schoben sie eine Wand aus offenen Kisten
und schnitten mich von meiner Gruppe ab.
Ich sprang auf einen mehrere Meter hohen Stapel
um über diese Wand zu springen
hinter der sich meine Männer zu mir umdrehten und auf mich warteten.
Es funktionierte nicht
ich nahm einen Umweg
verschob dabei als kleine Schelmerei eine flache Pralinenschachtel
damit sie sie würden suchen müssen.
Da schnappte die Falle zu.
Sie hatten uns einen Hinterhalt gelegt.
Die Arbeiter waren nun Echsenwesen
und wir mussten wieder hier raus
Doch meine Männer waren nun in der Mitte der Halle
vom Ausgang abgeschnitten
und von mir getrennt
sie waren schnell weiter versprengt
Aber es gelang uns
mit gutem Kampf
und etwas Hochseilakrobatik
in der oberen Hälfte der Halle
einige von ihnen zu töten
und ein paar von uns wieder zusammenzubringen.

In einem kritischen Moment
bebte die Halle
und die Echsenmenschen horchten auf.
Sie hörten auf zu kämpfen
und versuchten, die Halle zu verlassen
Durch die Fenster hoch in den Wänden
schafften es ein paar.
Ich weiß nicht, wie,
aber ich wurde in einen Drachen verwandelt
und konnte einen der Männer nach draußen tragen.
Im Schnee auf dem zitternden Berg
setzte ich ihn ab
Er wollte zurück, um zu kämpfen
Ich flog ohne ihn
in die Halle zurück
es bebte nicht mehr
in den Raum des Anführers
wieder klein
man sah mich nicht
unser Hauptmann stand da.
Er verlangte von dem Echsenmann
auch zu einem Drachen gemacht zu werden
Der Echsenanführer willigte ein
Ich wunderte mich
weil er doch unser Feind war
Und darüber
dass sowas möglich sein sollte
und sah gespannt zu
Ich blieb unbemerkt mitten im Raum
als der Anführer dem Hauptmann
der die Zähne zusammenbiss
Platten und Schuppen einzeln
auf den Leib nähte
Er blutete und keuchte
Flüssigkeit trat aus ihm heraus
aber er stand still
Ich sah gebannt zu
und fand es unfassbar
Als jede Stelle seines Körpers
bis auf die Augen
in starren Panzer genäht war
wartete er auf die Verwandlung
die nicht kam.
Ich sah, dass er weder atmen
noch sich bewegen konnte
Aber er sah den Echsenmenschen mit Schmerz
und immer noch viel zu viel Hoffnung
für meinen Geschmack
aus seinen triefenden Augen an
Er wollte sprechen
und sich sicher auch bewegen
er kämpfte darum
konnte aber den Mund nicht öffnen
und nicht atmen
oder sein Schwert ziehen
oder auch nur die Hand heben
Er würde stehend
mit tausenden Nadelstichen in der Haut
in unbewegliche Platten gesperrt
jämmerlich ersticken.
Der Echsenanführer lachte ihn aus.
Ich ärgerte mich über die Dummheit des Hauptmanns
und wurde wütend
ich trat auf ihn zu
um ihm mitzuteilen, dass ich überlaufen würde
bemerkte aber die Sonne
und wachte auf.

Wasps, Closing Time, Tower

We followed the trail of the two racing horses through the muddy path in this park, around a bend on a grassy hill with a white house, and from there they went on up another gentle slope into the small forest. We stopped there at the bend and looked up at the people who came down the broad gravel path towards us. A pensionist was the main part of them, a man in his sixties with mean humour in his face. We wanted to continue following the riders, but it was unwise to move quickly now, because the wasp nests sticking to two of the trees looming over the path were very busy. There were five of them in all, four on the tree closest to the house, and a single one on the other. The wasps were of different races or they weren't all wasps, but they certainly weren't afraid of us. In fact, they became more numerous and frisky, and I wasn't sure whether I should move at all, watching the four nests, when we heard a slight commotion coming from the single nest on the other tree and the half-old man made a sound and started running. I wondered if he had damaged the nest on purpose, but only vaguely, because I was mainly grateful that he pulled all the wasps from us and we could move again.

The supermarket is busy almost until closing time. Everybody hurries out and stands around in the dark parking lot and waits for the last handful of customers to come out, because they all know that if they don't make it outside before closing time, they will be locked inside and we don't know what will happen then. I use the restroom before I leave and when I float out onto the nightly plane of parking spaces in my thickcollared, grey bundle of cloak I see a small group of young men standing there. They are nervous and the one in the middle, facing me, stares at me with round, terrified eyes. I give him a dreamy, mildly curious, questioning glance as I hover towards them and he tells me that he has forgotten his glasses in the restroom. I turn back and hover towards the supermarket's glass doors and hear him call out that it is already too late. There are less than forty seconds left until closing time. That is enough, my shredded thoughts tell me, and I open the door and hover inside, push open the white restroom door, through the small white-tiled anteroom, the next white door, there are sinks but no glasses, the next white door, there are stalls and sinks and no glasses ... I turn and turn and see them sitting on a sink. Relieved, I take the glasses and open the white door, float hastily through the sink room, open the next white door, and I can tell, this is a different room than before, I might be trapped and there is so little time, I yank open the next white door, hurry to the next, hurry through the next, there is another, and grim and harried I finally step out of the restroom and push open the glass door to the parking lot. I hover to the astonished young man and hand his glasses over. He is very impressed. I turn back and watch the supermarket close.

The tower was newly built, it had wallpaper in fresh colours and comfortable rooms, large windows facing the sea, and it was really all new. The storeys of this tower were a little offset. We didn't know how much, but the ground floor was one or two storeys above ground, so when we entered it on ground level we ended up at least one or two levels above ground, without taking stairs or being lifted up in any way. So there was something more below us, and we were curious to see what that was. There were levels below us and maybe even below ground, who knew, so we took the circular staircase and looked forward to exploring the lower part of the tower. As we descended, rhythmic rumbling began to waft up to us and at first that only peaked my curiosity, but after only a few seconds I realised what it must be. I turned around and ushered my companion up again urgently, and even as I did that the rumbling and drumming became louder. We ran up the stairs as fast and as far as possible and went up into the top level of the tower, hoping the orc horde would pour out of the tower exit and ignore the higher storeys. Up there a friend of mine had furnished the highest room for me to use and to live in. I would have to rearrange some of the stuff but it was nice, and I thought that it meant that we were going to be stuck up here for a while now.

Magellan

I was collecting and ordering information on something, archivist-like, when a letter was dropped onto the desk of the person sitting opposite me. It was typed and from you. It was a response to something they had written you. It started with the usual, a paragraph of politeness, and then: "Yes, I am Magellan." I snatched the letter and went outside with it. I'd known about the time travelling, of course. We all did it once in a while. I went to the balcony, it was raining a bit and I sat under the big umbrella on a bench from which the pigeons fled as I came, and I hunched over the letter to read it. "Yes, I am Magellan," then followed something about a sea map that you'd been trying to decipher, "I understand the map a lot better now," and I was excited, curious, and proud. Then out came the person you'd written this to, joined me on the bench, and you. Both of you began talking merrily about the map business and I squished the tomato pieces I was holding in my right hand (apparently I was eating them - don't ask me why, I hate tomatoes) and started sobbing dramatically. It was a bit embarassing, but it was serious. That you would have all those adventures, do something so important, be one of the most famous explorers of all time, and not mention it to me at all! was devastating. And that you would address it so matter-of-factly now, as if I already knew everything about it, was equally disturbing. I got up and tried to check myself against another onrush of The Sob, but when one of you asked me what the matter was, it started again, and I turned to leave.

There came a bit of something else aftwards, but it was pretty much just before waking up. I found it really interesting. Still do.

World Shells

F‧: Hey, something DID come to me in a dream
It had nothing to do with knives, but it's fascinating.
It had to do with world-shells.

E‧: Go on..

F‧: Or rather... bubbles
In each other

E‧: I see..

F‧: There was this chaotic, hostile world with warlords
With powers that shouldn't exist, and 'normal' people didn't have them.
Somehow there was fear hovering around in sort of immaterial large clouds, or planes, and you just happened to 'enter' it sometimes
And you were always hunted.

E‧: What.. me individually?
Or others in general.

F‧: That is, I was. Because I dreamed it and I was the main character of that dream
I was always hunted, but had there been other 'normal' people, they'd have been hunted too.

E‧: Interesting.

F‧: The most interesting thing is that this world contained another world.
Like a big tropical birdhouse with a forest in it, it was a replica of the original, 'good' world outside of the feary, feral one.
I happened to stumble across this place with a companion and discovered that it was safe for some reason.
But it was also fenced in, it was smaller, and surrounded by the wrong world, and artificial, but it reminded us of what should be. So I took this companion and left the safe space
to travel to the end of the 'wrong' world and leave it, and get to the larger, original, natural good world that was supposed to be all around the wrong one

E‧: Fascinating..

F‧: We even made it.
Almost.

E‧: Heh.

F‧: I'll tell you the rest later.
It's interesting, you'll like it.

E‧ nods.
You have the most imaginitive mind..
E‧: How old are you..?

F‧: About 110.

E‧: .. Seriously now.
E‧ smirks

F‧: Why do you think I'm so fascinated with WW I ?

E‧: Seriously, seriously

F‧: Why do you repeat yourself?

E‧: Exaggeration.

F‧: Good show
I like the expression. 'Good show.'
I learned it from The Charioteer.

E‧: ..
Hm.
Can you answer my question?

F‧: What question?

E‧: How OLD are you?

F‧: 25 years.

E‧: Your imagination is.. extraordinary.

F‧: Thank you. I wish I could use it better.
Will you be there in a few hours?

E‧: Possibly.

F‧: I hope so, because I want to tell you the rest, it has details.
-
F: E, do you remember what I told you so far?

E: Yes, of course.

F: My companion and I managed to get to the edge of the world, and for some reason we were a freshly married couple when we came there, and at the edge (It was a wall/shell/whatever) was a honeymoon motel.
We were in a disgusting pink room.
The back wall was the wall of the entire world, we knew that we had to get behind it.
In one corner of the room was a door frame with a screen of black.
I stuck my head through and saw Jeremy Irons or whoever on the other side. It was all white there and he was sitting at an easel.
When I looked through Winona Ryder with a red barocky dress came towards me, and I turned back to the motel room.
She walked out of the black and vanished somehow.
My companion and I couldn't go through the door yet for some reason, we had to figure something out first, but I don't know what exactly.
We went to bed and erm

E: ...

F: We tried to have sex

E: And you couldn't?

F: My companion was a redhaired boy, by the way. And very cute. We both couldn't.

E: Heh, interesting

F: There was something going on in the room that distracted us, and the black doorway of course..
I could feel him.

E: Who?

F: Well, that was it. I could describe how things looked, but that's irrelevant.
The redhead.
I mean, it wasn't just pictures, I could feel his body. That's what I meant
I'd like to go back to the wrong world and see if I can deal with it.

The End of the World

I was in a mall that we have close to where I live, it didn't look like it, but it was it. I was just passing through, or at least going to leave, but for some reason I was wearing clothes that I didn't want my old asshole classmates to see me in, and for some other reason I knew for a fact that right here around this mall was where I was most likely to encounter them, although it's not even in the city where we went to school and where most of us used to live. So I was thinking about that as two of the more obnoxious slags from school suddenly turned up, but they were not obnoxious this time at all, they were helpful - not friendly, but sincerely helpful, and told me they were going to help me with my clothes, and they dressed me in a T-shirt. Just that, a T-shirt. I still had my Springer boots on, but nothing else.  Then we were somewhere behind that mall, on some open field with strawy dry grass and a few building fences of thick wire, and I was going to go through that to leave, but that fucking T-shirt fluttered up and I had to pull it down and walk reeeeeally slowly. The two slags just watched and stayed behind. Then to my right in this field there were people climbing into some underground build and I wanted to have a look at that and went into that bunker thing after them. I had normal clothes on now. Down there there were quite large rooms, and one of them had maps on the walls and a big table, like a strategy room but the people there were just everyday civilians, I saw a young to middle aged man with a plaid flannel shirt and jeans walking around carrying stuff and ordering things on the table as if he lived there. The two girls had followed me down there and were standing in the hall just outside of that room, looking in through the doorless doorframe, and then the ground outside broke open and lava came flowing out. It flowed into our bunker and into the hall and everyone came into the strategy room. There was a phone on the wall where I was standing by that one huge map, so I took that and looked up an emergency number on a list beside the phone - it was for some reason an international number and rather long and complicated - and I explained to the man on the other end exactly where we were; city, state, country, and so forth, and explained really calmly and factually what was going on: earthquake, did this and that damage as of now, lava, came from there to here, is now just so and so many metres from my feet, and so on. I wasn't really afraid either, not even excited. That whole scene vanished and I was near the north pole. The poles were the only places where ground based living beings like humans and the likes could still survive, even with all those turbulences going on, but of course only with the right equipment. We'd flown there with an amphibic aircraft which we were watering now, beside a pod-like submarine that was really fancy and which we knew contained several of the most brilliant people. They threw out a rope and pulled us two by two on a little raft to the entry of the pod, on a really stormy icy ocean surface. The first two of those people were the Doctor and his companion. The next were two unknown men. Then I knew that we (not the Doctor, companion, and the two men, but some other group of people and me) had the assignment to sort out particular German comedians in that submarine pod, to take them with us, and to kill everyone else. We went in there (I met the others of my abduction/assassination group there for the first time), and we assembled the people who were down there (it looked like the inside of an office) in groups of four or five, in a room with a big sofa, so that my colleagues could find out who they were and pick out the right ones. I was one of those who were responsible for seating them on the sofa and killing them if they weren't the right people, so whenever my colleagues didn't say "That is " or something like that fast enough (they had a list with names), I slashed their throats open with a Japanese sword. By the end, we were short of one woman whom I had accidentally killed because we hadn't known it was her. And I knew I'd killed a few of the wrong people and the wrong ones were in our selection now, but didn't say anything because I knew it didn't matter. They're only comedians, after all, not as crucial as physicians or physicists or engineers.
Then I was in the kitchen, standing by the table telling my brother excitedly what was in the big book I was holding in my hands. A story, written by Edgar Allan Poe, in which Sherlock Holmes gets to assist the Doctor in an adventure!