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February 20, 2007

2.20.07

You just picked up a hitchhiker...

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David: What Are You In For?

The doctor showed me the x-ray. “It looks like you’ve picked up a hitchhiker.”

“Where?”

“See this dark spot in your corpus callosum? That’s the bugger. It’s run tendrils into your auditory center, here.”

“So, I’m not crazy?”

“Not in the clinical sense,” he assured me. “You really are hearing voices. We’ve seen a lot of this lately.”

Kill him, said the voice between my ears. Now.

The doctor continued. “The cure is lengthy, and not pleasant. But the success rate is very high. We can start you immediately.”

He wants to kill me. Don’t let him.

It was self-defense.

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Jeff R.: The Low Road from Houston

She was tall, thin, flat-chested with wild blonde hair. She smelled like fruit and had a strange accent and was bound for 'Arkady'. I was going the right direction.

She told strange tales of her childhood, and listened to mine, as I drove, heading home for summer. After dark, I stopped at a hotel.

I had them bring a cot, but after midnight she climbed, naked, into my bed and "taught me all a man need know of pillow-tricks". Her words.

That afternoon, as I crossed the Georgia-Tennessee border, she vanished from her seat, leaving only the scent of apples.

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Jim: An Ode To A Lump Of Putty

The electronic Sub-Etha Auto-Hitching Device had gone through an especially hard day and needed time to recharge. So Jeltz found a quiet spot in a passing ship behind some pipes with the words “Hot Steam” written in large and very convincing letters.

It is quite common for boys his age to be told “Get Out” by their fathers. Most boys, though, simply left the house, some for only a couple of minutes. Very few left the planet. And, as far as Jeltz knew, none left without the required paperwork.

It’s not easy being a Vogon with poetry in your soul.

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