Chapter 8

The seniors were jumping in on their own free will. I was not so eager to commit, but backing up was not an option. There was a wall preventing that. The entire inside plane of the circle was still dropping away, and only stopped just under our heels. My toes were out over space, my heels on solid floor. I think I began to understand why seniors were jumping. Jumping and sliding down the wall seemed like a better way to get to and through the narrow opening that was quickly speeding away from us, curving away from us. I was the last one standing on the wall, staring down into a gaping whole. It was a straight cylinder one moment, and then funnel twisting away the next. Have you ever like been at an Olympic size pool and you look up at the high dive and thought, “Hell Yeah!” and then you climb all the way up, all psych to do it, get out on the end of the board and you’re like, “Oh, hell, fuck this!” That might help you understand where I was in the decisions making process. The walls of the funnel moved, with faces and hands imprinted outwards. I couldn’t help but think of walls of a stomach or intestines, pushing stuff through and down towards digestion.

I carefully turned facing the invisible barrier, my toes on the ledge, my heels over empty space. I purposely met Lester’s eyes. I am not sure if he meant this to go this far. Maybe he thought I would cow down and runaway, embarrassed in front of the whole student body. I felt like Luke Skywalker, hand gone, faced with the realization that the ultimate evil was my father, and thought to myself, fuck it, and pushed away. I cleared the wall. I saw the opening of the pit closing behind me, winding itself back up like a sphincter, drawing the sides of the wall back in. The closing cyclone chased me down the tunnel.

The tunnel itself was bright and sparkly. I felt like I had dived into the inside of panty hose, and I was heading towards the narrows of the ankle hug. It became narrower as the contracted around me. It was slippery, and warm, and you couldn’t help but get it in your mouth and nose and it was sickly sweet. My descent slowed. The wall seemed to be grabbing at me. I am sure I saw a face push in at me. I felt tongues licking at me and fingers grasping at me but the hose kept it from actually touching me. You know the Great Pit, the Sarlacc that Jabba was going to through Luke and friends into to be digested over a millennia? Yeah, that’s where I think I was. Welcome to hell, Boba Fett. Okay, but you know me by now, right? I could have just been swallowed whole by a giantess, and I would be like having orgasms all the way down her throat while the muscles squeezed up against me. Yeah, I was about to splash down into digestive juices and be consumed, but hey, how many times has my dick been coated with saliva and not been eaten away? So, when the wall pushed into me, well, I pushed back. Fuck it, why not?!

I arrived on the first floor. It was unceremonious. Just, plop, out and into an open space, perhaps like being pooped, perhaps like being spit, but gentle, like a rabbit dropping jelly beans. No, better. Like a queen ant, lowering her oversized abdomen to gently lay the next egg down, where nurturing ants would haul the babies off to their designated spots. My placement was loving in its release, with the sound of a kiss.

That was the extent of the loving, as I had to duck to avoid being hit by a magic missile. I barely had time to orientate to the landscape. The seniors were battling each other. It was a free-for-all, paint gun tournament, only much more serious and deadly. We were in an ancient ruins, maybe a Greek Temple. There was a water fountain that seemed to describe the center of the playing field which was being fought for. A magician made a break for the fountain. A volley of magic missiles and arrows followed him. At the last second, he diverted away from the pool to defend himself, blocking with a magical shield. He collapsed, appearing dead to the world. There was a scattering of bodies.

“What the hell?!” I yelled. “We could help each other.”

“Only seven get the reward, dumbass!” someone shouted back.

“No reward is worth all of this,” I mumbled. Have you ever realized just how many great lines were in Star Wars? Maybe that’s why Lucas has plagiarized himself in every Star Wars movie that has ever been released, because he was a one hit wonder trying to monopolize on his initial success. I swear, if I hear “I have a bad feeling about this” in one more movie or episode, I am going to break something. That said, I had a really bad feeling about this. Clearly, I needed to get to the pool and drop through. The only way out of the rabbit hole was down. That’s kind of an “Ender’s Game’ philosophy, right? Maybe being eaten by the giantess wasn’t a bad analogy. We needed to get out before we were digested, and so, unless we make the Goddess vomit, the only way out… Well, it was a shitty explanation away.

If there was one thing I did well, it was shields. I left my broken pillar, running for the pool. I wonder if the columns had been broken by mages from previous Challenges. The slings and arrows of life’s outrageous fortunes came at me all at once. I blocked, putting up a perfect sphere of protection. It was successful. Perhaps, too successful. My bubble became an insulated world, all unto itself.

It was surreal. I found myself standing in my kitchen, back home on earth. It was not actually my kitchen. I was certain it was an illusion, or perhaps a memory. Visually it was perfect and stunning, and crisp, like a movie producer who suddenly used better lighting and better film, compared to the rest of the production, so that it felt like a different movie had been spliced in. It was silent, as if the sound had been edited out, and I felt the compulsion to grab the remote and adjust the volume. The silence was that disturbing. It was creepy and I felt like I was being examined. My cell phone was on the counter. I moved a little closer to it and got a sense of vertigo and had to stop to process what had happened. The world hadn’t moved right. It was sort of like being in a badly pixelated video game, and it took a moment for everything to fall back into place. That was how I was able to discern the contours of my shield. For the most part, the world was being projected, like a hologram, onto the surface of the sphere. There was also some parts of the hologram inside the sphere, like the counter, I could now touch the counter. So, when I had walked, the sphere had rotated, and I now knew what it was like to be a rat in a hamster ball, only the hamster ball was something I had created to protect myself. The sphere touched the kitchen window, and I could see the fire fight outside, distant, like a movie, but when I turned to observe other windows, it was daylight inside the memory artifact. So, the window to the outside world was likely just a quirk of memory window hitting the actual sphere.

I considered the times I had withdrawn so completely into my own world that the outside world couldn’t touch me. Was this what I had been doing? Only now, as a magician, I could make it solid! I could see a real danger coming here. Had my usual propensity for fantasy kicked in and I had been with a woman, beautiful or not, my normal need to engage intimacy for the sake of comfort would have kicked in, and I would have been lost in fantasy. And on thinking this, LT, my internal Loxy Tulpa, entered the scene. Loxy Tulpa was mirror image of the real Loxy who lived in my mind.

The front door open, LT entered, her shoes echoing against the tile. She paused, framed in the arch that led from entryway into the dining area that led to the kitchen. She paused, flared her hips, bringing her arms up, as if saying, ‘tadaa.’ Her dress was a lively, solid green, with a red belt. She had gold, sparkly hose, and ‘hugging’ boots. The outfit could have easily been Christmassy, but there was a gold pendent over the right chest, which could have also made it Star Trek-y. Even though there weren’t green shirts in the original series, the way Loxy modeled it, you would have been hard pressed not to create a memory where this primary color was not suddenly added to ‘extras’ in the back ground as a way of identifying functional roles.

Oh, and this made me cringe. Loxy entered, and there was suddenly applause, catcalls, whistles, laughter, and genuine good cheer when a beloved character enters a scene. I nearly said out loud, ‘OMG, I am in sitcom hell.’ LT rocked her hips, ringing the bell of her dress, pushing her knees together, breaking character just enough to allow the audience to know she was appreciative, but not so much that she was suddenly out of my universe.

“Miss me?” LT asked, when it was quiet enough that she could commit to her line.

OMG, I wanted to unwrap her like the Star Trek Christmas present she resembled and spend hours devouring her from head to toe, or toe to head. Never quite sure where to start with her, because I wanted her all, and I felt compelled to say, we’re going to need multiple sessions, so make sure you have set aside a minimum of two hours, because there’s just no way ten minutes is going to suffice, and she would be like, really, two hours, and then I would be compelled to make reality fit my imagination, because saying that is like commitment, and it sucks when you are so overwhelmed, you spend the first ten minutes recovering from the accidental overload and consequential release, which was blamed on, “Sorry, it’s just been a while since I was with someone.” And most the time, that was actually truth, it was a while between episodes of intimacy with a real person, but also, it was likely that solo sessions were rarely about taking time to enjoy but just getting to the point of the exercise as quickly as possible so that the chemical release would quiet the urge to be with someone in order to better endure the loneliness that highlights your life.

I find myself unable to respond to LT’s question. The silence was unbearable. There was a tangible pressure for me to say something, as if I was actually on live television and my boss was going silently nuts behind me, and holding up a cue card with my line, and freaking cause having silence on live television was the greatest sin one could do. I nearly sang the chorus of Mighty Mouse, anything, just to push a voice, even if it was unintelligible. I wanted to say something endearing and funny, and though I knew I was loved, there was no way I could compete for the love that LT got from just being present. Even in my own mind, every cell and every character deferred to her as if she was the primary reason for our existence. We were the supporting cast. I could be replaced. The show would go on without me, just like Bewitched with a new Darin.

“Yes,” I finally said. “I need your help.”

“Oh,” LT said, coming towards me.

The Pixels of the world moved around her, but she was perfect, no distortions in person or movement, which made it hard to look away from her. My eyes followed the outline of her aura. The world was lensed around her, like the sun bending starlight. It was subtle, but it was there. I wanted to dive into her, time-warp around her and back out to the beginning. She touched my cheeks with her hands. They were warm. My eyes fell to her cleavage before ascending to her neck, her lips, her eyes. She smiled, genuinely. I had to resist my urge to engage her sexually.