why i woke up sweating:
it had become increasingly more obvious that we were trapped in this place, though the fear had spread slowly because of its immense size and twisty grand hallways. at first we tried to hide everywhere. there were officials in uniform marching about at random, but as if they were guarding a treasure, not moving objects, not human beings. then the tickets started to get handed out. a girl crouching under a staircase was suddenly handed a blue ticket, an airline ticket, and then the officials beckoned her to follow and she did, meekly. she was led away and the spot under that staircase became vacant. there was ample suspicion. but then the blue tickets became more frequent, it was as if they didn’t want us there anymore, had no reason to keep us; which we believed. girls and women crammed into the high places, everyone still in their nightgowns, calling out and reaching for the tickets as they went by. the joyous look on the faces of recipients created such a deep yearning for those small slips of paper.
finally i was given one, a blue ticket. i followed my official away from the tense crowd and through a series of corridors, some of which i had already explored in the night. but they all looked the same, high ceilings, white walls, wooden parapets running up and down. torches on the walls and stark white light from nowhere. stained glass in some places, people had congregated under these at first, praying. but the light behind each pane was fixed, not daylight. there were no other windows. this was some kind of prison.
i was led through a large wooden door and told to stand on the other side at the foot of a small flight of steps. at the top was another door, looking much more like the kind in an old house. one official stayed to watch me through his globular black goggles while the rest marched away down the hall. something was happening at the top of the stairs, behind that door, but i couldn’t tell what. i asked the officer what was in that room and was told it was for medical examinations. i believed this for thirteen seconds before he said without warning, ‘Go. It is your turn.’
“What kind of examination?” I tried to keep watching him but I was already moving up the stairs. i pushed the door open into a dark room, in which i knew someone was sitting very still. the door closed behind me and i felt eyes on me as i tried to adjust my own sight.
“Come in,” came an older man’s voice. there was a sweet smell in the air, as if everyone had just eaten a particularly nice apple. as soon as i moved forward an inch i began to feel better. the man asked me my name, and other details, and scratched them down on his pad of paper. we were in a small room, with chests of drawers pushed against the walls to make more room, and a bay window at the far end from the door. it was stuffy and warm, but i realized that the ceiling was back to standard size and accounted it to this. the curtains were drawn and the only light in the room came from distant sodium glare through the drapes. as my eyes adjusted and my body accepted the space i discovered the other person in the room. whoever he was, this silent being, he was sitting against the windows so that i could only see his outline, which was very large and a bit triangular, his head making the tip of two sides angled way out. he did not move, and as far as i knew, did not blink.
i became giddy in the sweet air, relaxing all my fears and chatting away to the man on the wooden chair with the pad of paper. he would mutter things in response to my natterings, some of which i heard and retorted to, which seemed to impress him, and he made more notes. ‘Very heady’ he muttered once as he wrote, to which i said ‘Yes, but only because of this air, it’s made me giddy,’ which i must have worked out but didn’t fully understand even as i spoke it, ‘Really i don’t usually talk this much. my favourite thing is to climb trees. i just run straight up them. well, not run, more of a climb really, but you get the image.’
he told me they were building a new city, an entire new world. everyone had to make sacrifices to shed the old faults, and that after the transition was finished we would be new beings, fresh and whole and unblemished. this sounded ok to me. but then he said “you have to be reborn”.
“Reborn?”
“Yes. That is why i am writing down different things that make you uniquely you, so that you’ll be the same person on the other side.”
I thought about this for a minute. then i said, “could i have a tail? like a monkey? because that would make climbing trees a lot easier, you know.”
The man thought, and smiled, and made a note. Then he closed the pad and turned towards the figure against the orange light of the window and said, “it’s time.”
i was beckoned forward and told to sit on the floor in a small round spot, near the feet of the massive, unshifting thing. in the shadow i couldn’t tell what he was, whether he was blue or had seven eyes or a scaly back. i could hear his breathing now that the scratching of the pen had stopped, ragged and shallow. he picked up two pipes beside him out of the shadows, which looked like they belonged to some large smoking mechanism. then he moved one end to his mouth and put the other at my thigh and began to suck in. “ow!” i said, and pulled away as far as i could, which wasn’t a very effective amount, given my enclosure. the gargantuan thing made a sound, a laughing sound, which rumbled through the floorboards and up my spine. the man with the pad of paper chuckled too, and crossed the width of the room to a large machine i had taken for stacked furniture. he pulled knobs and twisted latches, pressing buttons until it whirred into life. satisfied, he angled something toward me and returned to his chair.
“What is it?” I asked, good feelings gone.
“A radiation machine. we have to nuke you before you can be reborn.”
“WHAT?”
“You’ll be regenerated inside Scallag’s belly,” said the man, pointing to the thing by the window. “First you need nuking, and then he will slurp you through those pipes. the radiation will make you reform more quickly so he can birth you very soon. Just relax…”
At this point i began to struggle. i hadn’t realized that i was sitting in a snug bowl, with sides now gripping me, unbreaking. i looked at the machine, it’s ugly head pointed towards me. the noise of it changed from a whirring to a deep chug, chug, and a whine. i was stuck. the more i struggled the tighter the bowl gripped me, my knees against my chest, arms around my knees. i looked from the machine to the man, and back again. i didnt’ look at the creature whose feet i sat near. i did not want to know what sort of thing it was. i wanted the old man to take pity on me, to let me go and send me to a real airport where i could use my blue ticket and go far, far away. i began to cry.
“don’t worry, it won’t hurt. it won’t take long. look at me, look over here. here, look out the window,” and he pulled back part of the curtain. the bottom ledge of the window was very low, and i could just see the array of city night lights twinkling a long way away. from the corner of my eye i saw the side of the looming mass illuminated, and looked away. i had glimpsed rolls of grey flubber, dotted with small spikes and spineties. i began to feel something in my stomach, a feeling like i was being liquidated from the inside out. i turned back to the man, panicked, and he told me to sing. so i sang. i looked out the window, through that small corner he held open, and sang myself out. the last thing i remember hearing was the hungry slurp of the pipes…
fact of the day: all tissue boxes should have to colour the second last tissue a bright colour, so that you know the end is coming.