THOUGHT EXERCISE: A PERFECTLY CONTENT REALITY.

[zygote]

Hello. Are you feeling well?
Welcome to our team, let’s introduce you to the other personnel.
This is Patrick from management. Patricia from HR.
This is Joan with you in deliveries, she’ll show you to the car.
“Hey new guy. This is our van, we call it zippy.
There’s not much to do, do you want to take it for a ride through the city?”

You arrived in this strange new town with no memory of how you got there.
You were called into this new job, and woke up in a new bed inside a different house with no idea of how you got there.

Hey you, did you like your co-worker? She’s quite rambunctious and loud.
Come with me into this office area. Please put your feet up on the couch.
OK for delivery you have two roles, when you’re not on the road you do books on this console.
Your boss smiled and left the room. You move your hand near the air conditioning – it is not hot and it is not cold.
It is just room temperature air. Your first day finished. Joan invited you out.
They want to have drinks with the new guy at work. You’re the new guy in town.
The bar is nice, it’s a little quiet; the music’s kind of muffled.
Just people still in work clothes, talking in small groups and in couples.
Joan is nice. You notice her looking at you.
You ask her - So besides work, what else do you do?
“I take a night class in interior design, I enjoy interior design.”
You smile and she smiles. That’s all you need to do for this time.
Hours pass. They feel like hours. The alcohol tastes kind of soft.
You’ve been drinking, and nothing. You think that something’s off.

It tastes fine, it is OK even. There’s nothing really wrong with it.
Everything is OK. It just seems a little different, just a little distant.

You split a cab with Joan and walked her to her door.
You’re smiling, she invites you inside and you say – sure.
Missionary, she didn’t make a sound, she didn’t move an inch.
It felt OK and she had a great body, but she also never flinched.
“Do you want to move in with me?” You answer - Yeah, OK.
Your own house doesn’t have any furniture and she seems quite OK.
Months pass. Everything’s OK. Work, life, you stick to your position.
You and Joan have plans this evening. You’re chopping celery in the kitchen.
You taste the celery. Well, you reason - I guess celery always tastes bland.
Then you start to wonder what would happen. You chop the index finger off your right hand.
FUCK. Your finger is detached at the middle knuckle.
Blood spurting out. You grab your hand with your other hand to stop the blood spurting out, and you begin to stumble.
You slowly sink down to the floor. Joan enters smiling. She looks at your mangled hand.
Why are you sitting on the floor? We have guests at 6. Did you forget our dinner plans?

[Darth Yoda]

whoa..

[Split]

Did you just watch Wristcutters: A Love Story?

Meaning your main character seems like they are in purgatory. Or maybe Scranton. i enjoyed the full sentences here. Lots of immersion breakers like in the movie Inception when the projections begin to notice something is off and become less at ease

Are you aware of the Shepard tone? It is a sensation created in music, where a progression of notes is played in a manner that creates the illusion of constantly ascending/ descending tone, and generally gives a feeling of unease.

This piece captures that feeling


Interesting things to note- your boss tells you to put your feet up and relax, weird.

you are only explained one of the roles in deliveries- the other is sitting back and doing the books. Maybe it's implied that it is just dropping things off, but I didnt get that from the context. Your house is empty, and Joan is in interior design.

You move into her house because it has furniture, which is a strange way to rationalize such an intimate move

Also lol at "you stick to your position" I c u

The feeling of perfectly synchronized clockwork seems to act like water torture here, eventually the complacency overcomes the main characters psyche without changing a bit

Generally, I ended (having read 3-4 times) believing it was about an outsider who feels blindly accepted beyond the limits of normalcy, which makes him feel disconnected entirely. He feels trapped in something and he can no longer see how he is trapped- much like Eyedea's Birth of a Fish- until a moment of revelation when he chops his finger off in an attempt to break the fugue

Unfortunately, his terror comes to a crescendo at the end when he has not changed anything at all. A testament to a rut.

Excellent writing and a nicely crafted conclusion that carried the tone/ mood throughout the piece, in a snowball effect that made a dissonant note consume the entire rhythm.

Always look forwards to reading your stories, keep keyin Zygote

[Pent uP]

Didnt like the ending. ..too abrupt, never finished explaining anything.
Was written like a weird dream diary entry more than a verse. Lots of holes.

It was very captivating at first but I just lost me altogether at the end

[PancakeBrah]

I DISAGREE WITH PENT.

I read this with that Reverse Mario track Split posted and this took me to a Radiohead level of malaise in regards to life.

I liked this one.

[Certain]

So when I read the first section a few hours ago, I decided to put this aside until right before I went to bed. The reasoning was because I get a little nutty anyway at 6:30 a.m. I'm dead sober right now but might as well be tripping. I put on Split Eight's Mario music. I'm reading this thing through a second time. I don't even know what life means. It's like I'm realizing that for the first time. It's like I want to call you on the "how you got there" thing, but it seems perfect. This story envelops you if you let it. There's like science in it. I feel as trapped as your protagonist. I am your protagonist. Well, I lack Joan. Maybe I'll meet Joan. I've been thinking about quitting my job, moving somewhere and forgetting my life anyway. Why not move in with my great-bodied fellow driver? I mean, Joan seems pleasant enough. I don't like that the van is called Zippy. It's a van. It can't be that fast. There's a certain degree of fascism to any work place, and the propaganda is half the battle. You have to think the air conditioning might still be helping with allergies, right? Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to hurt myself. Then I decide it would hurt and don't do it. I don't think it's weird to think about what it would be like to hurt yourself, only to think about actually hurting yourself. I've never gotten to that stage. I've never intentionally injured myself. I did make a drunken, stupid decision to tear my anterior cruciate ligament nine months ago. I probably need to do some rehab on that tomorrow. I slack sometimes. Celery's good with peanut butter.