A Fever Dream

     I bit off my ex-boss' nose and part of her face last night, her flesh like gelatin in my mouth, just as tasteless as her soul ultimately proved itself to be. I had approached her with murder in my eyes, and though she held off her panic at first, certain that I wouldn't do anything in full sight of the other people present, she swiftly was disabused of that notion. I didn't care about their presence, they didn't matter to me, only she did. Her eyes widened and she raised her hands to hold me off as she began to realize that, whatever I intended, it was going to happen, regardless of the consequences. I grabbed her shoulders, her long-sleeved shirt like silk beneath my fingers, cool and smooth, no hint of the warmth a body should have. I gripped her and, as she began struggling ineffectually, I pulled her close to me, my head moving forward, as if I was leaning in for a kiss. Oh my, the impropriety of the situation, and here in front of customers no less. And then I sank my teeth in her flesh, piercing skin and the sense of an untouchable self. Violation.
     I took a mouthful and, letting her go, I turned from her and spat out the piece of Wormwood, with a disgust wholly appropriate to the situation. It wasn't the taste mind you, it was more that I wanted to show my absolute disgust at her, at her identity, at this person, this vile thing.
     I looked at the wooden rafters above as a small uproar began behind me. It sank in that this was an opening salvo and that the echoes of it would resound for a long time. Then, aware that I shouldn't really have done this, aware that the consequences of this would be severe, life-changing even, and from a growing sense of disgust with my self, feeling soiled and stained, I turned reality into something that did not have my last action in it.
     I walked away, out the door, deliberately giving no attention to the scene behind me, knowing that reality had bent itself to my will, but at the same time not entirely sure of it, and aware that in either case I'd be best served getting away from here as fast as possible.

     Kevin was waiting for me in the car, and as he asked me where to, I responded that he should just get us away from here. Now, who is kevin, I hear you ask. But the truth is that I don't really know. His name wasn't even Kevin. I can't remember his actual name, but there is a glimpse of it, a feeling as if Kevin would be a good approximation of his name.
     In the grey light, but clear and perfect grey light as if it's very sunny out, we move out onto the highway. I sigh as I feel the mental drag of the situation start to sink in. The stress is telling. It's settled into my limbs, and my head has started to hurt. I'm on the passenger-side, with the man who's not Kevin, smooth-faced and clean, easily turning the car onto the turn-off to the highway. His hair is pepper and salt. Hair that's neat and shiny, but a shiny as from an over-exposure to sun not from being unwashed or from product. He has dark brown eyes aimed at the road ahead and radiates a sense that the world might just be grey for him.

     The pain in my head is starting to dominate the trend of my thoughts. The whole situation is pretty much a headache. Not just the building feeling in my head, I mean, but also the events that have just happened, and the feeling of discomfort they've given me. And you can bet your ass that somehow, there's a record of this somewhere, and one day it'll be used against me. Maybe it's just my conscience railing at the violence, a piece of my soul having just died, a bit of innocence lost, or something, but either way, the spleen of it, the psychic pain of it, is pretty awful. It turns the world into quite a narrow place, a tunnel-vision brought about by emotional discomfort. The future has become a thing fraught with horror and anxiety.

     Maybe I just need to eat something. On the dashboard there's something wrapped in aluminum foil. Something the man who isn't Kevin bought from somewhere that isn't anywhere I know. Take it out, he says to me, give me a piece. He must have seen me looking. I pull off the foil from what turns out to be a brown chocolate cake on a silver platter. It probably isn't really silver, and rather it's just some hardened aluminum-type metal, probably. I don't know, I'm not a metallurgist or even the remotest bit knowledgeable on any of the things normal people are. It might be the newest thing in tupper-ware and I wouldn't know. I break off a piece and hand it to him and he scoffs it down like he's starving. I ask what it is, and he say that I should help myself. I do and gulp it down. It doesn't taste like chocolate but if you asked me what it tastes like I wouldn't be able to tell you. I ask him what it is, and responds that it's just something he's bought recently. That's okay, I think to myself, I don't really care, there can be a few more mysterious things in the world that I know bugger-all about.
     We've been driving for a while, the foliage flashing past, the green the only indication of an actual living world beyond this highway, if you don't count the other cars. But then, I realize, there might not actually be anything past the tree-line, the shrubbery and the tall trees both conspiring to hide the vistas of cold grey nothingness that lies beyond, waiting to swallow me whole.

     My eyes feel dry, my head feels warm and I can feel a frown starting to take shape as I look at the other vehicles.vWhere once the cars, the trucks, the buses and all the other assorted types of vehicles that I know bugger-all about moved sedately in straight lines forward, only ever deviating from their course to switch to a faster lane, or to take a turnoff to parts unknown, now they are moving in noticeably erratic motions. I don't mean that they're speeding up or slowing down, or switching lanes in a way that could be construed to be the work of dull, or psychotically suicidal minds, itching for some high-speed entertainment. I mean the cars, the trucks, the buses and all the other assorted types of vehicles that I know bugger-all about have started to move in ways that should not be possible.

     There's a white gas-truck with a horizontal red stripe spinning like a damn Beyblade in front of us, its wheels inches above the road, judderingly turning in a mad high speed. If the laws of physics where still operating as they should the centrifugal force it attains by spinning that fast should have ripped the truck apart, never mind what speed, gravity and the asphalt of the road would have done to the wheels and the lower carriage. Maybe juddering is the wrong word for it. Stuttering would be better. The truck isn't even losing speed, or deviating from its course in any way. It's for all the world going about its business as if it just hasn't royally upended just about half the laws of reality by behaving in such an abnormal way. It's almost insulting, as if it doesn't care that it's just transgressed in a profoundly upsetting way. I pause. Or maybe it's just unaware. Maybe it's me that somehow just has started seeing more than I'm supposed to.
     Because the other cars are likewise misbehaving. I turn to look over to other lanes, and the cars that are headed in the other direction are also acting out of sorts. Not one of them is moving in the same way as any of the others, but nevertheless, there's a strange, delirious harmony here somewhere, I feel.
I look back ahead, fixing my gaze on the twisting vehicles ahead of us. There's something strange going on, I remark to the man that isn't Kevin. My gaze drops to the dashboard, where I didn't cover the cake.  Maybe an inch from the outer crust the cake is chocolate, probably even actual chocolate cake, but in the center the cake is revealed to be green, and very moist-looking.
What is that, I ask aloud. Kevin responds softly saying it's something he bought.

     It's not weed. Shit, whatever this is it's heavy duty, I think to myself. That motherfucker.
Still, it could be worse. At least the pain in my head is being pushed back by the visions swarming past the side of the highway. One doesn't complain when a gift horse is looked in the mouth, or something. I grit my teeth and clutch my head as a spike of agony slides deeper in my brain. Hunched over, I wait for the moment to pass, watching the saliva unspool from my mouth, clear ropes threading their gravity-loving way onto the floor of the car. After a while it passes and I sit up again.

     I look outside and I notice the trees and shrubbery have given way to an actual world beyond.
I grimace as I realize that the madness hasn't stopped. The world beyond the highway is inconstant, changing every moment, every second becoming profoundly altered. Farmlands, a house here and there with countless rows of planted stuff, are momentarily populated by windmills, old-style, dutch or holland-esque, not the technologically advanced kind, and then as fast as they came, the windmills are gone. Or rather, they've become something else. Buildings multiplying, morphing together, changing in material and style, as fast as thought. It goes too quickly for me to try and see it, and I'm already nauseous as it is. I wish I had some water, I comes to me that I might be dehydrated. I bend over and hold my head between my knees. For long moments I breathe in and out.

     As I look out again the world has become glass and steel. We are enclosed by skyscrapers, blue glazing reflecting the blue sky above, dotted with clouds as woolly as only dreams could be.
The landscape now doesn't alter anymore. It's become constant even though we're still moving past millions of different windows, all blue glazed, all beautiful as only my favourite colour could be. It comes to me that this all is one big mighty building, endless and infinite. I look at the windows, and realize that there must be people beyond them, untold thousands of them passing every second. How many of them notice our car, I wonder. I tell the man who is not called Kevin that I realize what is going on, that the landscape is informed by the dreaming of the people who populate this country, that the most dominant dreamers' dreams inform the dreams of the others. That it probably all started with one guy that dreamt about a blue-glazed sky-scraper, and whose dream infected others' dreams, like an infection spreading outward, like a ripple in a pond, until the only possibility that remained was a world of steel and dark blue glass. But I'm thirsty, and with the nausea and the headache it follows that I must be dehydrated.

     Ahead of us the concrete road begins to slope downward , it's become unmoored from the place around it, hanging in midair, surrounded by miles and miles of skyscrapers. The catch rails have turned white as if we're on a bridge. I look ahead and I see water. Ahead and below lies the dead-end of a canal surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers, blue glass and cold steel. The road ends abruptly and we barrel off of it. For some reason I'm no longer in the car, and the man who isn't Kevin has disappeared. I fall towards what is probably a very cold and very hard expanse of water. But really, I've only myself to blame, as I really was almost wishing for something to drink. I'm sure I was in it too, the water I mean, my head breaching the surface, exulting in the taste of fresh air. Then I wake up, and the nausea and the headache make me realize I'm probably very sick.