Savage Tales

seconds ahead and every frame has a familiar taint. But it can be moved, and may be, for who could sit and watch? Not I.
    But back on mother the flies feast on and for this one it is too late, best move along. Perhaps some things will always be out of reach.
    I enter the hall and its jaundiced walls tell me nothing new. There is still this calling – humming me down its way, until I reach the stairs. A tendril begins its itching in my mind's furthest corner and I wonder if something about these stairs – what is it? Something is coming. But these stairs must be traversed, soldier on. I am extra careful and reach the bottom sure that whatever caution was needed has passed, has –
    No... it lingers... it's worse... the – What is it?
    I stop and look upon that street out of doors, the glass keeping me back. My oily forehead presses on th glass and I don't know what to do. If the dark is in all directions, what can I possibly –
    The decision comes. A man behind me pushes open the glass and I stumble out into the bright of day, turbulence. He and not others gives me notice, though they are all about, automatons of the city street. Beyond the peopled sidewalk are the screaming wheeled engines that hold the men behind their wheels, fondling innards and gears as though they were in control, perfectly obvious that the metal beast itself is driving, the driver merely a witness to its design. I stare into this and feel a repulsion as I have never known. I step back, away from the black street.
    "Hey, kid," says a voice, "where's your parents?"
    He has a uniform. He is of the police.

    And again it transpired that even without the crippling strain (I remember is all so clearly now) that he found himself fallen into the path mathematic scientific and engrained like in a train in groove to repeat, and perhaps it was borne of a knowledge always felt (I feel it even now) to stay that line, to traipse that course, and not depart from what he had already known (how had I known it?).
    It was his first day at college, and he had driven there alone in his new car, purchased from joint funds of two jobs held over the summer, one as a lifeguard at the YMCA, one tutoring calculus. Everything was going swell.
    "I'm here to check in," said Phil to the fellow behind the desk, and instantly recognition was felt, telling him he was on the same path once again. This fellow and his video games. It didn't seem to matter that Phil had legs now.
    "What?" He didn't look up from his screen.
    "Here to check in. Phil Sucitta."
    "You don't need to tell me your name. Just go pick a room."
    "It's not assigned?"
    "You're early. You get first pick."
    "And my roommate?"
    "We'll figure that out when more people show."
    Phil wandered the quiet corridors until he found a room on the end of the building. Good light. He unloaded his clothes. The airy dust reswirled and he wondered, I wondered, how much was different, now, here, how interchangeable were those little atoms that had landed him here in this new room... and when would Joaquin be arriving? Who was Joaquin, but a form in the fog not yet come into being? He would take a nap and wait, reap the benefits of inevitability.
    In his dream his legs had been sapped once again. He was a little boy, rolling toward that classroom where other students would see him for the first time. His arms seemed to freeze up like his legs, eager to enter, lazing to nothing, but a subtle soul behind him with other ideas would have it otherwise and gave him a push. And into the class he rolled, and it was not as a boy he entered but as an old man, once again pushed over the edge to the clashing sands below. The little boys and girls looked into his wrinkled, sandy face, tight, bitter, confused. Nothing seemed to move, like the pause button had been pressed.
    Ronald Cunningham stood up and pointed at Phil. "He's dead!"
    All the children laughed. Ms. Wertham smiled.
    "No!" said Phil. "I'm a robot. I mean – I'm not dead! I assure you."
    "Go to bed," said Ronald.
    "What?" said Phil. "I already am. I can feel the bed."
    He rubbed the bed and slept no more. The false clarity of dream-thought gave way to the grog of the waking mind.
    He rose and heard noises, cluttery sounds in the hall. Other students were arriving at the college. A knock on his door.
    "Come in," said Phil.
    The door opened. He was surprised to see that the face was not that of Joaquin Linkselo.
    "Who are you?" said Phil.
    "I'm looking for a room," the man said.