THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: THE STRANGE PEOPLE (Patreon)

I can see them, and I think I know why no one else can.

They stand out to me. They feel different, even though they somehow look the same in those differences. Each one is carefully nondescript. None share the same characteristics except maybe a flatness to their eyes; a look that says, "I will consider you with equal import as the wall, or the door, or the car—you are a thing to be cataloged." I call them strange people.

Anyway, no one else sees them, and it's because of the accident.

For nineteen days when I was twenty-two, I was unconscious, and while unconscious, it wasn't like the movies told you. It wasn't the record skip of a coma, or some portal to the after-life. Instead, I dreamt I was like a slug in some vast, stone room. But that's not right. I was a slug. Because this was not some vague feeling. The dream held the certainty of reality that the best dreams hold. Only I didn't want it to hold that, you know? I didn't want it to be real. So it's not.

Sometimes, I can think about it in a way where it's not a dream and it's still alright. But most of the time, if I do that, things get bad. So. The dream.  

In the dream, I crept and stared, somehow swinging my point of view to great heights above my body, and I hummed. I hummed like the air being let through an old car horn. Like a fat man sitting on crushed bagpipes. And I slid and stretched, leaving a trail behind like an oil slick.

And my hands weren't hands. They were clackers. Blue.

Like a lobster or something. Ha.

Don't you think I know how it sounds?

The world beyond the room, was indistinct and green and red-lit. My skin tasted the wind, and it was ripe with rotten meat, rotting plants, and the sea...

There were books there, too. Someone...told me they were books, anyway. Metal books. At first, some of the others...there tried to get me to do things. Things with the books. But after a time, they left me alone. They said nothing, but I knew they thought there was something wrong with me. Hysterical. I know.   

When I woke, there was seven months of rehab where I tried to forget the slug-dream. It was an ischemic attack they said, or a minor stroke. I was lucky, they said. I would make a near full recovery, in time.

I was a slug, I said.

People smiled, and laughed uncomfortably. I learned not to say anything about it anymore after the prescriptions came. I ditch the pills now. They interfere with the machines.

I built my first a week after moving into the new apartment. I'm not sure how, but it makes things slow. Whatever. It was a broken toaster oven, a remote control, and an iPad with a smashed screen before. Now at least it's useful. I dropped a Snickers wrapper above the machine when I first built it, what? Two years ago? It's still falling last I checked.

I just know things, too. Like how the Ukraine thing went? Yeah, I knew he was going to get killed, and then the bomb. I knew all about that. So much, that when I told Jenna how it was going to go, and she laughed me off, that was the last I ever heard from her.

Only now, the people are here. I see the people because they were there with me, then in the slug-dream. They're here now to fix me—the mistake. But I've been building a lot of machines. I've been buying a lot of gear and making the shapes I can see in my head when I close my eyes. They do things. They make things happen.

When they finally try and come for me, they'll get a nasty surprise...