Hiro

TEMP_FAILURE: Could not initiate SMTP conversation with any hosts
Warm blankets and milk put me in a natal cocoon. I play pretend. The rubber teat on my sippy cup is a real living flesh-tit; the tangle of electric blankets is the womb. Analogies fall apart somewhere around umbilical cords, a tangle of IV tubes around the neck as I twist and writhe, a sickening pop of needles jerking out of veins. That will bruise, someone tells me. Inside and outside are undifferentiated, words and thoughts running together--

I feel exasperated. Why can't I stay still? I want to escape. I feel restrained. I see leather straps through someone else's eyes. I feel the click of belt-notches on my wrists, rectangular edges fuzzy and blue as they cut into skin.

A vague, unspecified want, intense and directionless. Television, a cigarette, my sippy cup. Needles probe, burrow back into my arms. Did I want phenobarbital? Saline? I see the nurse's clipboard and know I have these things. The want dims.

The alienation and schizophrenia comes in so many hues and keys that I know I am not alone; a polyphonic pink floyd laser-lightshow of desperation. Three rows of eleven stacked ten high, identical cells stuffed with the variously ill. All of us wound up and turned inward and being pushed further and further away from reality, society. It is not the internal state that makes us mad; it is the separation from Outside.

Driven inward, we exist inside as a tangled lattice of light against a nothingscape, pulses running against each other, our signal-flow jerky and confused: all dead-ends and recursive loops. At night, when the nurses pad through the hallways with their wants and desires and neurosis running into ours, I spend my hours untangling knots, playing hop-scotch across mind fields.

Somewhere, at the infinite horizon, square pigs snuffling at the network's edge. Somewhere, just at the periphery of my vision, a drunk bitch and a sodding cunt.

Penny

They did not just have Dodi Al-Fayed say to Princess Diana "I'll be right back,".. did they?'..

I'm not supposed to speak, they tell me not to. They scold me and I know I don't like it but I can not keep these thoughts to myself. They do not feel like my thoughts, they smell like someone else and they taste ..clean.

She's dead. I'm telling you, she's dead by the end.

He shrugs at me, stares hard at something I can't see and I watch as he seizes. I am not concerned and somehow I believe this is natural. This is nature taking its course, this is well-deserved. This is justice. The whites of his eyes look silver to me. They shine.

What. It's KEVIN SMITH behind a convenience store counter playing a CLERK wearing a WE'LL NEVER FORGET t-shirt with a BUS with WINGS and a HALO. Wait.. is that THE WHO playing under the dialogue?

The channel changes, tuning into something that looks like a broadcast but could very well be video tape. Worlds are colliding in a jungle. A dense, wet jungle.

I could do something with the television if I wanted to. Turn it on. Turn it off. I know this because the nurse, with her gentle touch, keeps telling me to use my hands. She tells me my hands will get better, that it's all in my mind. She tells me not to use my mind so much.

She is concealing a syringe in her cold, waxy hands. Why do I know this?
The channel is changed again.

IS THAT THE PIXIES?

He is sweating and it looks silver to me and I think I know why. He used to do it to his nails. Silver. "Look," he says, his eyes closed and his lips dry "you were right."

GSW to the gut. I wince like the bullet came through the screen and caught me; I taught ..someone how to do that. I taught him the pattern to write, the proper annunciation, the correct offering. The frequency to use. The word.

I know that word, too.

Pobble

"Oh, Dave. Good to see you again."

Dave. Dave. Dave. Right. Dave. My lips pull into the somewhat uncomfortable configuration of a smile, an expression that feels like it belongs to someone else, some kind of hand-me-down emotional display. It has been a while since I saw Dave. I wonder why that is, I'm sure I know, just can't quite remember right at this moment. Maybe he went off to work out of state? Maybe.

I reach up to my hat for cigarettes, although my fingers only find coarse strands of overwashed hair, reflexively spreading and drawing tips along my cheek, hanging from the collar of my tee-shirt. I don't smoke now. I remember. I'll just take some pills instead, I know I made some. Made? Here, put them in this cup I did. Not very artsy, just some numbers. Not like me. Hmm. Either way, they go down smooth enough, the bitterness dissolving into the brackish water.

Where was I? Dave was here. I turn, expectant, as if seeing him will free me from this fucking fugue. Some guy is there. Terrifyingly unfamiliar. Talking to someone else in a chair by the pool table. I realise the words I reflected on were not my own, I'd just hijacked them for some nostalgic purpose. Maybe I knew Dave.

I turn back to the window as the first flecks of rain land on the glass. I feel the nurse's hand on my shoulder, reasurring me. It's good. For a moment it felt like something was wrong. Like, I wasn't meant to be here. As if I were missing something.

Someone on telly is doing magic tricks. I used to do magic tricks I think.