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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #107 |
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- Pop -
by Ironhorse
I have to admit Janet always was a little bit strange. That's why when she
came into the Taco Bell that long ago day and told me she was hearing
voices I didn't think anything of it.
It must have been about two months ago now that she met me in that rainy
Toco Bell. It was November and the tourists that populated our town in the
summer had long gone home for the winter, leaving me to stare alone at my
Chicken Soft Toco while I waited for her and the few workers busied
themselves in the back doing god knows what, I still can't conceive of
employment at Toco Bell as a challenging occupation.
Just when I was about to dive into the gracious feast before me I saw her
walk in. She smiled at me and headed straight for the counter. Damn, she must
be hungry, I thought. Janet hates Toco Bell.
I found myself even more surprised when she came to the table with no
food, just twelve large sodas.
"Thirsty?"
"No," she said and apologized as some water splashed off her coat as she
sat down.
"That's okay. What's all the soda for?"
"The lids."
I looked curiously at her.
"Let me explain."
"Please do."
Janet looked around to make sure no one else could hear, which was
obivious, we were alone, and then told me she had been hearing voices for the
past two weeks.
"Okay..." I didn't really put anything behind this. As I said, Janet was
weird. Janet was like many of the women I've dated who, ironically, were
all into the occult. Oh I'm sorry, the modern term is Wicca.
Whatever, I didn't care. I'm male, they're female; usually when it comes
right down to it, that's all that matters.
"No really," Janet said seeing my familiar disbelief.
"This happen because of one of your spells?"
She and her Wiccan friends were always casting some sort of spell it
seemed. I'm sure the results they received had a lot to do with a certain
illegal leafy plant.
"No, you son-of-a-bitch, listen!"
Janet never did like the fact that I didn't believe in her hocus-pocus
mumbo-jumbo.
"How did it happen?"
"Well, you know how I love to pop these stupid little bubbles in the tops
of take-out soda lids?"
"Yeah, everyone does, but not everyone hears voices."
"Yeah, well, not everyone has been doing it as long as I have."
"You mean to tell me by pushing down one of these," I lent over an pushed
in one of the buttons on one of her dozen lids, "I'll go insane? Come on, I
think you've been smoking too much."
"You got to believe me. But it's not insane. They're real voices. Real
people. I've heard them."
"So have mental patients all over the world. You're telling me these
freaks are actually sane?"
"If they're freaks because they hear voices, then I'm one of those freaks,
and yes, I think we are sane."
Oh yes, I've definitely found a winner here. Why didn't I just stay
with Amy? She only thought she was a vampire. So what if she had a biting
fetish.
"Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I can hear voices. I think the reason
why people go crazy over hearing these voices is because they're in
a different language."
"So you have a multi-lingual hallucinations," I asked rather sarcastically.
"Not even! I don't think they're from this world."
Oh yes, now was definitely the time Janet and I should be going our separate
ways. Still, to humor her...
"Oh, and what world are they from?"
She seemed to know I was humoring her, but it didn't matter, I was finally
listening.
"I'm not sure, like I said, I can't understand them, but I think it's a
parallel one."
"Ah... I think I saw this on Star Trek once."
"I'm serious damn it!" At this point she began to furiously punch in
all the buttons in her many drink lids.
"Okay, okay, calm down. Go on, I'm sorry."
She continued, but she also continued to punch in the buttons on the
drinks.
"Well, I see it this way... The people who hear these voices are actually
some how attuned to a parallel world, just like this one, with its
own buildings, people, and everything. The reason why some
'freaks', as you call them, hear things and then don't is because we are
moving and so are they."
"The parallel people? You mean they're walking away from the people who
can hear them?"
"Maybe. But I was thinking, what if their planet spun in the opposite
direction of ours? Then those people who could hear the voices would hear
nothing when, say, our New York was passing over their Atlantic Ocean."
"That is if they have an Atlantic Ocean," I interjected. She did
seem to think this thing through. Delusions were like that.
"Exactly."
Yes, definitely a space cadet. At least she was pretty to look at. The brain
dead ones usually are.
"You came up with all this from popping the tops of a few soda lids?"
"Not a few. I figure in the thousands. You know my dad was a truck driver?
Well, he always took me on the road with him and a large portion of my diet
was fast food."
"So you say that all the people who pop these little buttons on their
sodas in fast food joints all over the world are going to sooner or later
hear the voices of people on another planet that's somehow in a parallel
dimension to this one?"
"Yes. Actually, I think there's a little more to it than that. You have to
be open to the possibility."
Oh no, not that again. That is the backbone of every Wiccan's arguments
to a non-believer. 'You have to be open to the possibility for the magic
to work.' Bah, magic is magic, it should work whether I believe in it or
not.
"And I suppose you are open to the possibility? How come no one else has
heard these voices?"
"They have, there's institutions full of 'em."
"How come no sane people have heard them? Like your Wiccan friends? I
would suppose they are 'open to the possibility'."
"Well, unfortunately most Wiccans are vegetarians and won't step foot into
a fast food restaurant..."
"Which is the only place they could get these kinds of lids... I
understand. Plus I'm sure they couldn't possibly have been exposed to as
many as you have."
"Yes!"
"And the people in the asylums haven't figured this out because they are
being 'treated' and told it isn't so, so they lose their openness?"
"Exactly!" She was getting quite happy. She felt I understood. She
thought I actually believed her. She told me to wait a moment while she
went up and got twelve more sodas.
"What are you doing," I asked when she returned. "If you're 'tuned in'
now, aren't you afraid of 'tuning out'?"
"I'm going to prove this to you," she said, popping buttons like, well,
like a mad man. "It doesn't work like that, it seems the more you pop the
more in tune you get."
"Oh...." We sat in silence for a while and then I decided I needed a
break and may as well get some desert. I excused myself and went to the
counter for a Choco-Toco, shrugging at the questioning stares of the
employees.
"PMS," I whispered to the manager as I passed and he smiled as I returned
to my seat.
That was the last moment the doctors tell each other I had in touch with
reality. I know different, but who's to say? They keep bringing me take out
soda lids, and I keep popping away.
The papers say Janet was another of the freakish cases of Spontaneous Human
Combustion, but I know a different story. That night while I was smiling at
the manager in our lonely Toco Bell, Janet was punching her eighty
second thousand four hundred ninety third button on the lid of her Mountain
Dew, and she crossed over.
She's in that parallel world now. I know it. I'm been punching my buttons
and I know it's true. I've heard the voices, and I've heard her tell me so.
I'm coming Janet, only fifty thousand more buttons to go.
Pop.
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