Quote:
|
Originally Posted by lisarea
See, all I'm saying is just maybe things aren't going to work out that way this time. Not this time.
From that first day. I didn't even know the bastard. It was random. Everything was random. We sat next to each other because that's the order we came in. That's all. Nothing important. Nothing that doesn't happen every fucking day in every fucking configuration you could imagine. But, you know, the universe has a memory. It doesn't give a shit one way or another, but it remembers all the same. Every random seating assignment, every double-blind study, every randomly generated number writes itself into the fucking cosmos in indelible ink. You can't take this shit back.
So, yeah. Some random-generated double blind study decides that day which one of us gets to meet God and which one of us gets a fucking vitamin B shot. At first, you know, my cheeks go prickly and flushed, and he's fucking mesmerized. I could see him swelling with that heady combination of fear and envy, and I knew I had to reel him in then. Just at that moment. The moment his neural pathways are realigning themselves, I'm etching myself into his new life. It's me, baby. Yeah, it's me. Ego death is the moment you have to interject yourself. You're me, baby. Me. Yeah, baby, I know.
Later, he's telling me we can't buy extra-large eggs anymore because he was a chicken that day. We can't make them do that. Yeah, I know, baby. I know. I freeze into that placid knowingness I carved out as my domain all these years ago, stealing off for that niacin flush indelibly associated in his mind with enlightenment. My face is hot, but I need to remind him. I need to trigger him, convince him I'm something more than some sloppy second, also-ran, control group subject. Juanito is an afterthought. A speculation. A statistical probability. A genetic anomaly. Juanito can be erased. It's me, baby. Me.
So yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's not going to turn out this way this time. Maybe next time they come around for the followups, it won't be Maturin with his genes intermingled with history, but me. Maybe this time, I won't be the baseline or the red herring. Maybe I'm not just some MacGuffin after all.
I just need time. A week, ten days at most.
|
Beautiful. Gave me tunnel vision.