Track 08
The ceiling above my head is the only thing in my entire life that isn’t an embarrassment at this moment in time. I lay in my bed thinking this the following morning. I was a fool to believe sleep could heal me of the curse of embarrassment. I flung a pillow over my face and expressed this with a muffled, but high, volume. The memory wasn’t affected by this.
The fact remained: I almost walked out of my life-savior’s house wearing his pajamas. And my reacting scream was loud enough for them all to hear down the hall. Then there was the part where I picked a fight with his friend… was she a friend? Comrade? Fellow sell-soul? . . . I made a whimpering sound. Who was I kidding? she was wrapped around him like a lover! I was in his pajamas picking a fight with his lover!!!
“AAAAAGGGHHHH” I rolled off my bed in a violent display of memory erasing. Blankets and sheets fell over me in a massive bundle. From the floor, I reached up to my bedside dresser and snatched the little spherical alarm from its cute little, trapezoid pedestal thingy.
1:12pm. That’s a decent time to start my daily job-hunting grind right? I sighed. Breakfast; that’s what I need. I got up to find my washroom through the sand crisps that clustered my gaze. Then I brushed my teeth while avoiding the mirror like it would kill on contact.
My breakfast was a fancy assortment of leftover cereal bits from a variety of unfinished boxes, with a side of 3.25% milk, which was precisely one quarter cup under the perfect milk-to-cereal ratio. As I chomped on the final tidbits of my half-dried, half-soggy cereal flakes, I checked my phone:
2:00PM
What the heck did I even do to waste all that time? It’s still a decent time to go job hunting right? By the time I change it’ll be like 2:10-ish, then to find a street train; that could take an eternity. Maybe I should just hit the library and apply to a thousand places online. I would do that here… if I had a laptop, but I don’t. I would buy one, if I could afford one, but I can’t…
SMACK! My cheeks buzzed from the impact of my own hands clapping against it. I told myself I wouldn’t do this: complain.
That’s it! Screw the time! If I’ve got time to think about it, then I have time to go. I’ll visit the library and go to at least one plaza with my rezu-chip. I chucked my plate in the, what I like to call, procrastination-dish-storage-system 9000 AKA the sink. Then I made a flash dash for my business-y-but-not-really clothes, ran a comb through my hair once, and made for the door. I backtracked a few steps and analyzed that reflection I avoided before through a nearby on-your-way-out mirror. Hair: okay. Face: could be worse. Clothes: a semi-formal, yet extremely comfortable hoodie disguised as a blouse, but I could still stick my hands in distant pockets so it was perfectly fine. I then took this opportunity to sacrifice some of my precious time by making joke-poses like a model who was her own photographer with a high-end, finger-framed camera.
Stupidity put to pause, mad dash resumed. I ripped my keys from its hook with practiced precision, the cat-shaped key-holder spun around its axis as I did. I wedged my foot into an ankle-high boot and hopped over to the door along with my other boot.
Outside at 2:21pm, according to a wandering news blimp. I smirked, see that wasn’t so bad, I can do things if I really try. I marched off.
. . .
And marched right back. Phone. I kinda need that. I flipped open the case revealing the new time of 2:24pm on the screen. “Why do you hate me?” I shook the device with abusive intentions. A paper slid out the back. I managed to catch it before it could reach the ground. My pace slowed as I scanned the piece of paper.
This was the map Kaia drew for me… “AAAGGGHHH!” my hands sprang up and thrashed through my hair in another violent attempt to rid my mind of embarrassment. A pedestrian may have passed by while I was displaying this divine savagery, but I’d rather not turn around to make sure.
Half face-palming and half staring at the map, I wondered if I could ever show my face back there. Kaia wanted me to, though. She made that clear…
“Any anger or concern I may have felt while hearing this yesterday died off when I realized Axel made a friend from this experience.” I was the friend. I remembered everything from her tone to her content expression. ‘How could I not go back after hearing her say that?!’ I heard a curious echo of my own thoughts. Shoot. Did I say that out loud? The person sitting beside me on the street train had a face that answered my question. I shook my hand to brush her attention away.
And then there was his lover. I can’t be his friend when his lover already hated me… she was a rude lover though. I subconsciously started slamming the library’s keyboard much harder than I intended, from the memory of her shoving pass me. I’m a person, how can she treat me like that?
“SHHHHhhh!”
“Ah, sorry!” My hand reached the back of my head as I smiled apologetically to the gothic-dressed librarian man who shushed me. He was holding a book along his shoulder in a way that suggested he was about to beat me with it. His eyes had the condescending vibe to go with it, but he merely walked by.
Plus there was that Bollywood star; the scary one. He could rip me to shreds if he wanted to, and based on that one threatening shoulder grab, I’d say he doesn’t like me all that much. I think. And that evil kid went and gave him reason to rip me to shreds! If I got hold of that little loud mouth and his little shoulders I’d wring him senseless till he understands the delicate nature of human life!
“I’m a single-soul species! I can’t afford to be expendable with it.”
“What?”
Shiz! I said that out loud!
“Oh, I mean. I really need this job… for my soul to… be happy. Aha”
The teenager behind the counter tilted his head away in slight recoil, making the mascot ears on his cap flop over. “… riiighht… well, uh, I’ll be sure to let our boss know... when she steps in.”
I sprawled my body across the lounge chair once I reached it. Ugh, I’m exhausted! I flung my head back and ripped through my Ferret King Fajita.
I really don’t belong there. Their business seemed like serious business, if they were all sell-souls I wonder if that meant they could all fight like Axel. Could they self-heal their wounds too? Were they constantly doing the kind of things that would give them injuries to heal? What if they were all murderers or something? I tried picturing the body-builder and the pig tailed girl with twisted, diabolical smiles on their faces as they held a bloodied weapon… it wasn’t hard to imagine, but I wish I didn’t imagine it.
*click* I blinked at the upside down view of a phone camera lens staring at me. Did someone just … take my picture? While I had a half-eaten fajita in my mouth?
I rose my head off the back of the lounge chair and turned around, still blinking in a daze at the lens and the stranger holding it.
“…?” I gawked.
“Your that girl on the internet. The one that started a pillow fight with the news reporters.” At the mention of the word internet, a few fellow Ferret-king eavesdroppers started peering in on this one sided conversation. Seeing that I was still trying to process the photography session, the boy tapped around on his phone before spinning it around and showing me. “See, you’re a meme.”
To my horror, the image on his device was a picture of my wild angered face, with bulging eyes and coloured feathers in my hair and in the air. The caption underneath said – in a bold, capitalized font, “SPIDDLES: TASTE THE [censored] RAINBOW!!!”
I evolved from a gif to a meme. Game over. The life of Rei Zykophona ends here. Now I’ll forever be a cyberspace tourist attraction.
A sudden shift of phone-shuffling movements spread all around us as people began to verify my identity from their phones. Eyes were flicking from me to their screens like strobe lights. As if realizing I was standing in a pit of hungry hyenas, I reached for my soft drink as slowly as I could. Somebody’s chair scraped away from their table and I treated it like a track and field bullet sound. I was outta there. I felt the video cameras on me like sniper lasers. I didn’t look back as I burst out of the shop.
Before I knew it I was skidding and panting into a monorail surrounded by people pretending not to notice me. I don’t know if anyone tried chasing me this far out, but either way, I didn’t want to stick around long enough for someone to create another meme.
I made a final obnoxious sigh. I don’t think Axel would want a psycho like me for a friend. I should keep my distance, I mentally told the map in my hand. Sorry Kaia…