• I wasn’t always like this. I used to be normal. I would get up in the morning, drink coffee and eat granola while reading the morning news. I would watch the daily show, and drink beer while leaving multiple voice messages on my ex’s phone. I would also build model airplanes on my spare time.
    I worked as an account for this soda company, I had a horrible boss and a coworker who would come in everyday and say “Hey just Mr. employee-o’-the-month, walking through,” He would laugh at his own wit, “Just Mr number one coming through.” It sounded really annoying, and every time I heard it I wanted to sock him in the face.
    I remember sitting on a bench. waiting for the bus. My boss had suggested I work overtime, if I ever wanted a raise, even though he was never going to give me one. It was late and the street was empty, besides the occasional car. A man sat down next to me. He had a plastic bag, which had the words, “Cooper Model Aircraft Company.”
    “Just got my first plane,” He said. He had blonde hair which grew over his ears. His beard connected with his side burns, his blue eyes stared warmly at me, and his smile seemed so warm I could roast marshmallows of his face.
    “Awesome,” I replied, “I’m a bit of a model builder myself, what kind of plane you got there?”
    “P-51 Mustang, RC” He said.
    “Nice, very good plane, I just finished a Thunderbolt.”
    “We should try flying together sometime, what’s your name?”
    I remembered I had a business card with my name and number on it. I handed it to him. I took it out of my wallet and handed it to him. He grabbed it, and as he did, his other hand swung around and hit me in the arm. I felt a sharp pain and dropped the card. There was a syringe sticking out of my arm. I stared up at him. He was smiling. I was about to yell “What the ********!!!” and punch him in the face, but I couldn’t. I suddenly felt very tired, I was too tried to do anything. I tired talking but what came out was mindless blabbering.
    “Just sleep big guy, don’t worry about a thing,” he said while smiling.
    I fell over and slammed my head against the concrete; I couldn’t feel the pain just heard my brains rattle around, as I blacked out.

    I awoke in a bed. The room I was in was empty. I got up and walked to the door, it was locked there was one window in the room, I looked out it. It was night but there were no stairs. Outside was an endless forest. I stared down at the grass. There was a girl at the base of the grey building. She was glowing. She was floating. She began rising up the foundation. It was then when I recognized her, she was my ex. Her ginger hair danced around her head and neck. Her green eyes fixed on me. She was wrapped in a white sheet which was drifting around her body. I backed up against the wall. The window opened, and she drifted in like some angel of death. She floated up right against me. Her eyes stared blankly at me. I could see the depth of her green eyes she was so close, her nose millimeters from my face. She raised her hand and touched my chest. She dug into my shirt then my skin with her nail, and cut open my chest. I felt nothing as blood began to drench my shirt and drip down my body. She reached inside me, and took out my hart. She held it in the palm of her hand; it was so dark in blood. Blood covered her hands and forearms. It was beating. She squeezed it and blood pumped out onto her hand. She began rubbing it on her pail skin. She smiled devilishly while she applied my blood like a lotion. She then held it up in front of me and smashed it.

    My eyes shot open. I looked around. I was in a basement. I was standing Dust covered the walls and floor. The basement was filled with the hum of machines, and the smell of mold, there was another smell to, but I couldn’t recognize it. The only light came from a light bulb hanging from the ceiling, all around me where tables with various tools a doctor, or a mad scientist would use. I tried to move my head but it was clamped to back of the wall. I looked down, and tried scream, all over my body where tubes and wires going in me. I was paralyzed I couldn’t do anything not even talk. The only thing I could do was move my eyes, and think these tubes where ether pumping something into me, or pumping something out from me. All of a sudden an alarm went off. I heard foot steps come down the stairs. It was the bearded man.
    “Good evening sleeping beauty,” he said, “I trust you slept well?” He smiled and fiddled with some wires on the table next to me. He looked up at me. “You don’t seem too happy. By God, have a little more enthusiasm. You’re being used for science!"
    I stared at him.
    “Hmm I suppose I owe you a few answers, don’t worry about the tubes there used to extract waste from your body. There hooked up to you bladder and colon. Your p***s must be awfully dry. No matter. You won’t feel any of this you’re tripping on dosages of Novican. You could feel nothing for quite some time. Now the wires are life monitoring systems and they tell me when you’re awake, asleep, passed out, and dead. The reason you’re here is-” a bell tingled up stairs, “so sorry but I have to keep a business you know,” he said as he walked away. I looked up it was only plywood floor. I could hear foot steps and even a “good evening.”
    I heard a man say “Holy heck these whites are amazing! What’s your secret?”
    “There’s a 24 year old man tied up in my basement the secret lies within his pancreas.”
    I heard the man laugh “You’re quite the joker, I’ll take four.”

    I was alone with my thoughts. I wondered: this is what it must feel like to be a potato hooked up to a light bulb. I heard foot steeps coming down the stairs.
    “Frito?” asked the bearded man, munching on a bag of Fritos.
    I looked at him.
    “Hmm you don’t seem to be talking.”
    How could I, I thought.
    “I’m gonna poke you with this stick,” he said, grabbing a broom handle and poking my side.
    As soon as he touched my side, my stomach began to erupt in a tight pain. I made a groaning sound.
    “Hmm I’ll just write that down,” he said, he approached a chalk board and wrote the word “among.”
    He poked me again more tight pain and another groan.
    “Alright, thank you,” he wrote down the word “food.”
    Again he poked me, I groaned the loudest.
    “Hmm,” he wrote down the word “good.”
    He read off the chalk board, “among, food, good? Well that doesn’t make any sense, and I’ve taken all the things I need from your pancreas. I’m sorry I think its time to put you down.”
    He took out a needle from a box. My eyes widened, he noticed my shock. His voice began to crack.
    “Y-you’ve been such a g-good man-n,” he sobbed, “This is gonna hurt me more than you.”
    How do you think I feel!!! I thought.
    “G-good night prince of main,” he said as he walked up to me, “you k-king of New England.” He took the needle and uncapped it, grabbed my white arm and stabbed it into my vain.
    I held on to life as much as I could but as minutes passed by I began to close my eyes the last thing I saw and heard was the bearded man sobbing while I slowly went under.

    I awoke on the wooden floor of a room. The room smelled like dust and old books, I looked around. Old tape was located on spontaneous locations along the off-white walls of the room. A chalk board was the only thing in the room. I looked at the door. ‘It’s locked’ I thought. It was. I could hear children laughing and playing outside, there was but one window in this room. Outside was nothing, but dirt endless dessert of dirt and dead or dieing trees, and one rusted swing. The children’s laughter continued however. I stared at the chalkboard. On it was written:
    The end is nigh, I’ve got a pie, eat too much and you will die, are you shy, do you like guys? Touch your thigh and be a fly.
    Touch your thigh and be a fly? I thought. I began to hear children singing what was on the board.
    “Touch your thigh and be a fly, touch your thigh and be a fly, touch your thigh and be a fly!” it was as if they were singing around him.
    So I put my index finger on my thigh. Suddenly I began to shrink down and down. The chalk board seemed mountainous. I looked around I must have been no bigger than a fly. I spotted a red toy 1970 Doge Challenger like the kind I had in my childhood. I was small enough to step inside the car. My childhood dream was coming true.
    I got inside the Challenger and fiddled with the mirror. Then after pretending to drive it, I wanted to explore the glove compartment. I touched my thigh. I shank down but a big too far I was so small the seats of the Challenger where the size of houses. Well no turning back from here, I thought. I touched my thigh again. Suddenly I was drifting down and big spheres were all around me. I landed on one it was the size of a planet. I looked around the spheres were grey and felt hard, maybe I could live in one. I touched my thigh.
    I drifted into the sphere, all around me where stars and darkness. I began free-falling deeper and deeper into the darkness. I could barely move I closed my eyes. A ring appeared drifting closer to me, if I kept my mind on it I could drift right through the middle of the ring. I thought this to be something special. Every time I drifted through the ring I awarded my self a ring pin, in my mind I would pin these pins on my full dress uniform.

    Magnificent, I thought, magnificent.



    “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
    -Edgar Allen Poe