*
I took my Psylocybin. I made myself breakfast. I went to work, propped up my feet, and ate bacon, eggs, and grits. I gave the camera a thumbs up. So far, this was the best job I had ever had. I pulled the laptop onto my lap and spent some more time on the website, adding information about how committed GP&A was to employee safety through surveillance. Since I knew Ron’s name now, I added him to the partners’ page, and I added Wallace to the associates’ page. Soon, it was going to be a pretty respectable website.
I looked in the fridge and then decided to take a break from work and go to Jack’s Grocery Mart to see how they were situated for juice, because I had only one empty carton to my name. Maybe they’d have my old brand of juice back since I’d been away so long, and if they didn’t maybe I’d give a new brand a taste. It wasn’t very far away, and since I was enjoying my life more now than I ever had been, and I wanted to enjoy it even more and for much longer, I didn’t take my car, because it’s healthier to walk.
By the time I was halfway, though, I regretted that choice. Walking may be healthier, but it doesn’t have quad-directional air conditioning or lumbar support. I took what I thought would be an easy shortcut off the main street and also regretted that; after a few turns, I was lost. There was no moss on the telephone poles and no spiders building webs, so I couldn’t know north or south. I deduced that towards the sun was east, because it hadn’t yet risen to its zenith. That wasn’t actually any help, because I didn’t know which compass direction Jack’s Grocery Mart was in anyway. Sections of this part of town had been abandoned, renovated, and abandoned again. I followed a rusted, bent sign which said ‘Main Street,’ but it only led me down an alley which was newly bricked up at the end, and I had to come out again. The other side probably held a new housing development and the developers didn’t want their residents having an unsightly view; their unspoiled view was quite inconvenient for me. On the bricks, there was graffiti of a large red fist ringed in gold, which was somehow familiar. I couldn’t quite place where I had seen it before, though.
Zenithal or not, the sun was roasting me; I wiped my forehead and my hand came away slick with sweat. I sat down in the shade to cool off, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. I looked towards it, and my heart leapt for the safety of my throat. Down the street, a dark shape had just dropped out of sight behind a car. Someone was watching me.
I felt faint, and my legs threatened to abandon their support of me as I stood up. Behind me, I heard a sound and I quickly turned, losing my balance and stumbling against the wall. A cat froze in mid-stride and looked towards me; it must have caused the sound, probably rooting through old cans. Once it saw that I was just a human, it went back to its business. I pressed my back against the wall and felt the firm roughness of the brick with both hands. I took comfort from having the solid wall covering my back so I only had to worry about what was in front of me, and I was able to calm down a little and think about my situation. Someone was definitely following me, and it didn’t seem like any kind of paranoid delusion; this was real, one of the first real things that had ever happened to me.
I was sweating and I was nervous, but otherwise I was in a fine mental and physical state. I decided that I would flank them and confront them; I would make them tell me why they were following me and what they wanted from me. Could it be Ron from the old days, from before Maple Ridge? I hadn’t thought about him for weeks, but now he filled my mind.
I dropped down onto my hands and knees behind a trash can. From there, I rolled behind a car, and then to another car. I peeked up over the car’s door and through the window to look across the street, and I immediately dropped back down; he had been looking directly at me, waiting for me to show myself. He knew what I was doing. I could be quicker than him, though. I could outsmart him. My hand was resting on a stick which had been lying in the road, and I closed my fingers around it. It felt nearly rotten in my hand, but it looked thick and solid. It would be enough.
I held my breath and waited for my chance. The sound of dogs barking in a fight somewhere nearby gave me the opportunity, and I rushed across the road, using their noise to cover my own. Now I was on the other side of the road, and we were both on opposite sides of the same car. I had kept a watch on the car as I crossed the road, and I knew he hadn’t seen me because he hadn’t looked up from behind the car. Even I hadn’t heard my own footsteps as I crossed the street like a daylight ninja, so he couldn’t have either. I had the advantage, now. I knew where he was, but he didn’t know the same about me.
I waited for a few moments to steady my breath, and then I crouched up into a ready position. In one movement, I came around the back of the car and raised my weapon, ready to strike him. He wasn’t there. My adrenaline had surged, and I stood there shaking, drenched in sweat. How had he gotten away? Then, even worse, I realized he had never been there at all. I’d had a brief attack of paranoia, even under the influence of Psylocybin. This was serious, and I decided that I would talk to Penelope about it after I had found my way out of there and to Jack’s, because I still had the juice to think about.
Then I felt the barrel of a gun pressing into my spine.
The sun was still burning hot, but my sweat turned cold. I had not been wrong. My skin seemed to shrink in on me and I felt dried up inside. My ears filled up with the sound of my breathing, and my stick clattered onto the ground.
“Put your hands up, mister,” he said. His voice was deep and rough, like a man talking through thick cloth, and it made my stomach tremble. The front of my pants became moist and warm, and it wasn’t because they were self-warming, self-moistening, comfort pants. My hands rose up on unsteady arms, but then the gun was pulled away and I heard a child’s laughter behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and saw that there was only a small boy standing there. He was holding a stick in one hand and a thick cloth in the other.
“Pew, pew, pew,” he said, pointing his laser gun stick at me and pretending to experience recoil from it. I had been routed by a seven year old – or so he thought, except he probably didn’t think words like ‘routed’ yet. I knew what I had to do. I clutched my hands to my stomach to cover up the open wounds and try to keep my most vital organs from tumbling out into the unforgiving atmosphere. The car came up behind me as I stumbled backwards, and I slid down against it, down to the ground, leaving a bloody trail behind me on the body of the car. He still kept his gun pointed at me. My legs splayed out in front of me and my head slumped forward; I was losing blood fast, and the energy for holding my head up was needed elsewhere. I had to be quick, and I knew I would only get one chance against this villain. The pain was immense, but still I waited. At last, he lowered his gun. He had defeated me, and he knew it. When he was well and truly convinced, I seized my chance and lunged for my own gun which I had dropped to the floor. I took it in my hands and twisted my body towards my enemy, ready to give him a taste of his own laser-flavored medicine. He was ready for me, though. Before I turned back he had his gun already pointed at me and I was looking directly up its barrel. He had never really dropped his guard. My hands opened weakly to let the gun fall to the floor; I knew there was no use in trying anymore.
I had been beaten by a superior opponent, but still I didn’t want to die. I tried reasoning with him, even though I could see the righteous madness in his eyes. “Killing me won’t bring her back,” I whispered.
“Pew——” was the last thing I heard, before I heard, “Michael, come in for lunch,” when his mother called him.
“See ya,” I said, waving to him with a grin. “You’d better go.” He returned my smile with his own before running towards the sound of her voice.
“Aw mom, I was having fun,” he complained to his mother in the distance, and I trained my sights on the back of his head. But he had been such a worthy opponent that I couldn’t pull the trigger and end his young life.
He had left his cloth, and I used it to wipe the sweat from my face. The cloth came away so
aked. I allowed myself a laugh at the situation and myself, at how paranoid I had been over a small boy playing on the street outside his house. It had ended up alright though, and I’d actually had an enjoyable time with the game.
By the time I stood up, the adrenaline had mostly worked its way out of my bloodstream, and my legs were steady, or at least as steady as you’re ever going to get with normal human bipedal locomotion[33].
I worried that maybe the Psylocybin wasn’t working, or even that I was becoming resistant to it and I would fall back into constant, total paranoia. I worried that my worrying about the Psylocybin was itself a form of paranoia. Eventually, though, I passed a man on the street and asked him for directions to Jack’s Grocery Mart, and I followed them without worrying that I was being led into a trap and having to follow a more circuitous route, which is what I would have done before Psylocybin, so it seemed like it was still working. I also hadn’t had any headaches when I was paranoid about the boy; Psylocybin seemed to have completely stopped those. Maybe Penelope would be able to explain what had happened to me.