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WEIRD LAMENTS
And then it happened again.
It was about the dozenth time or so it had happened in the past two hours. I scratched my chin musingly, thinking it over. Then I reached in my pocket, pulled out a cigarette, sparked it up and puffed away thoughtfully.
From my perch on the brick wall I was sitting on I had a pretty good view of the comings and goings of the campus around me. My last class was over about two hours ago, and I was in no hurry to get back to my dorm room. A few months after moving onto campus I had learned that my roommate was a chronic masturbator, and because I was always forgetting his name I simply dubbed him 'The Jerkoff King'. A dozen times in the past two months I have walked into the room to catch him with his pants around his ankles, face broken out in a sweat while his fist furiously pumped up and down. It's really gross.
Anyway I was sitting on the brick wall, thinking about nothing in general, just watching the general riff raff pass by me. You know the people I'm talking about, all the strange little American sub cultures that spring up whenever you have more than a couple hundred people under the age of thirty. You have the those jocks with the greek-god bodies and vacant eyes, you have the fraternity brothers avidly declaring their house is the best (I cant tell the damn difference), the people on skateboards whizzing by, falling on their ass more times than actually doing a stunt, the loners who hurry by with their eyes fixed on the ground before them, afraid to make eye contact with anyone they passed. I could go on forever.
It first happened out of the corner of my eye. This one guy was ambling along, minding his own business. I sort of subconsciously picked him out in the back of my mind because I noticed his socks were a dullish pink and I mildly wondered how long ago he had had his little laundry catastrophe. Anyhow the guy was walking along, sort of bobbing his head to a little musical beat only he could hear, when the big green tentacle whizzed out of a nearby sewer grating and yanked him in.
I froze. I had heard the term 'my heart skipped a beat' before, but this was the first time I had ever actually experienced it. I stared at the sewer grating on the ground, but there was no evidence that anything vastly weird had happened. The sun was shining brightly, the air had a nice little gentle breeze to it, and there was about three dozen people around me who must have seen the same thing. But there was nobody screaming, no shouting or yelling or even a curious glance towards the sewer grating.
I thought about screaming. I thought about laughing out loud. I thought about hopping off my little comfy wall perch and leaving. Finally I decided to pretend that it didn't happen. Hell, no one else around me was doing anything, then why should I?
A few years ago I had tried acid. It was the usual peer pressure 'everyone does it' type situation. It did some funky things to me, making me see little purple trails and causing me to giggle at inappropriate moments, but that was about it. No pink elephants or visions of the wizard of Oz or anything of the sort. But the word 'flashback' had always hung over my head like some dark cloud. I began to think that perhaps the unsightly little thing I had just witnessed was perhaps caused by the proverbial flashback.
Nonetheless, I peered at the sewer grating suspiciously for a few moments longer. Just one of those anonymous sewer gratings that are dotted across the roads and sidewalks of America like some sort of steel acne. Nothing real special about it, certainly not something you would point out to a buddy and say 'Gee, isn't that a rather NICE sewer grating?'. Most people probably walk over it a dozen times a day and never even know it's there.
The next one was a girl. This time I watched very carefully, eyes absorbing every speck of information. The girl was medium height, wearing a pair of denim shorts so tight they could have been painted on, fake blonde hair piled up on top of her head, books clutched protectively to her chest in that odd, almost insecure way girls carry them. A half-healed hickie on the side of her neck winked at the world as she flounced by.
This time I was waiting.
This time I was watching.
And this time I saw it.
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