Glitch

Glitch
 written by Pedro Lins
  Instagram: @rockemquadrinhos

Sonny hasn’t turned on the power supplies that day. Woke in a jolt from his bed, something that mimicked a plain, warm surface. All was dark. Truly pitch dark around him, and he felt blue for an instance. Once, he heard that the sight of a blind person was not all black, but, they see in a reddish white. So he sought comfort with that thought. He soothed. He wasn’t blind and was in desperate need to pee.

He jumped out from the floating bed, that shook pending lightly to one side and letting out a low hum because of the thrusters that kept it above the ground.

Sonny was a guy with problems, big ones. He was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder with traits of schizophrenia and was dependent on Stabilizer Chips of the most assorted formats. They kept him down-to-earth. No chips meant that, everything was distant and at the same time, intimately threatening and hostile. A real chaos, this world, where he sometimes, only sometimes, felt more real than over determined stimuli.

He put his hand on the socket implanted in his neck and had a slight tachycardia, then he remembered that he had forgotten to plug in the sleep-inducing trode. He decided, “willingly” that, that night, he wouldn’t connect or plug anything, because he was tired of peeing in bed, as the gadget where the trodes came from were programmed to make him count sheep for twelve uninterrupted hours. That way, on certain mornings, on the end of the countdown, embarrassed him feel soaked under the sheets made of field-permeated matter – a peculiar fusion between matter and energy that molded his body when covered – firm when serene, cozy when moving. Cleaning that sucked. It was a drag. But the tick was peeing in bed. That was… it sucked.

That’s when the images came. He was with his eyes open and, even with all dark, he could clearly see thorny bubbles and tentacles that barged through the floor. He was having a sensory overload. It felt like a war: the bubbles were lashed by the tentacles and exploded, releasing something slimy, green and disgusting. He could see clearly and even smell the ocher of those goo. In turn, the bubbles assailed the tentacles, sticking to their surface and freezing them, which withered and stood there, gathered in front of him like wilted flowers.

Behind him, lots of people could be heard screaming. Howling. It was like barks of different melodies. And that started to disturb him more than the very sight of the war between the gooey bubbles and the tentacles that withered in front of him, and by his sides.

Sonny started to feel around, but felt that his hands touched the bubbles and some snapped. Herewith, it was surrounded in something smelly and green. How to feel the “green”? “Green” was his favorite color. But a lighter green. The thorny bubbles were a darker tone.

He was starting to think that he was going to pee right there. At least, he thought, it wasn’t on the floating bed. That’s when he felt the barrel of a gun nudging his neck. A hazy and deep voice threatened him in an inaudible way. He closed his eyes. Everything was still black. Slowly, he brought one of his hands, that were up, to his eyes and heavily wiped them. When he opened them again, he noticed a luminous rectangle right in front of him, just a few steps away. The barrel of the gun (or it was a shotgun?) still touched his neck under his badly shaved hair, worsening his slip-up.

- Damn it… - he mumbled and desperately ran out, like a mad person, jumping over the wilted tentacles, pushing the bubbles away with his wavering hands.

He stumbled, smashing the tentacles, and the sound of glass spread, bouncing across the floor. He jumped through the luminous rectangle and, when he passed through the fissure, the light was so strong and intense that he felt like as if he was being carried to an infinity space, that was not physical, far from that place. It was like those trips that you have when connecting to Cultrix. So, suddenly, he was coming back to his physical body in a frantic speed.

Immediately, he realized that he was still with his eyes closed, and, once again, he opened them, noticing that he was in front of his own life-size image, reproduced by the bathroom reflector. He calmly walked to the sanitary throne and unleashed a strong gush of a very yellowish urine. Breathing deeply, eyeing the rusty ceiling, he thanked for having forgotten the bathroom light on, on that physicday.

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