Symptoms of an Overactive Imagination

[Roberto]

IQ Tests don't measure how smart you are, they measure how good you are at doing IQ Tests.

[LOON_ATTIC]

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[Vatman]

Printers, finding sheets of paper...students...5 minutes before class. Find the paper faster.
............
I've lost count of how many nights have passed since I last heard her laugh.

She tells me that he should tend to the garden before the heavy rains crush the flowering Mandrinette shrubs and the strong winds uproot the giant palm trees which have towered over this place for years. Hours pass and eventually I look outside to find her sitting alone in the midst of a flooded paradise with her head tilted back against the bench, completely oblivious to the pounding rain. Tiny twigs and flower petals have become entangled in her unkempt golden hair and eyes as gray as the storm clouds above stare into the heavens as if imploring them to open wide and swallow her whole. The clothing she has been wearing for the past few nights are torn and smeared with mud and her shoes have been forgotten once again. She is no longer the shining Aphrodite, but the primordial Erebus surrounded by mist.

She doesn't notice me standing in the doorway. In fact, she doesn't notice anything at all. She has withdrawn to some dark place inside herself, locked away with her own thoughts, unreachable even to me.

Though it troubles me to see her like this, I know that the storm will soon pass.

*****Paper jam. The annoyed graduate student behind the counter hits the machine in vain. He's going to have to call the main office.

I miss her already.

[HarvestLife]

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read in my entire life. I'm trying not to cry at the sheer beauty of it. The way that you sink into someone else's consciousness in a daydream is odd. I'm rather jealous of your talent, to be frank.

This stuff needs to be published. Now.

[Vatman]

Why thank you, it's not so much a talent as it is a necessity...right now I'm supposed to be doing something productive, can you believe that. I hear keystrokes all around me, I see people touch typing, unable to find the z or the q... Every 20 seconds, I imagine someone being born, no, thats not right, that's just the elevator deciding to announce itself and relieve it's passengers of the higher floors. I could be...I could be ;; ;;;;;;;

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

The crowd was like a wave, pushing me this way and that. I couldn't fight it in this state so I was forced to move with it. I felt strangely lost in a city I once knew so very well. One building blurred into the next until nothing seemed familiar anymore. Neon signs flickered above me and when I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the harsh florescent glare I knocked the glasses from my face. It fell to my chest pocket. If I had lost them entirely, I wouldn't have minded at all since I was not wearing the gaudy thing by choice to begin with.

It was at that moment that I saw her. She was weaving her way through the crowds as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I knew it couldn't be her yet at the same time it could be no one but her. The way she moved, the scent of her, the taste of her – it was all imprinted in my memory. Locked away in a sacred place, one which I did not dare to visit often. There was an unbearable pain that came with even the simple sound of her name.

Alma.

She was just as alluring as I remembered. Long dark hair hung loosely down her back just barely touching the crimson scarf she had tied around her waist. She turned in my direction briefly and I could not suppress an astonished gasp when those too familiar eyes met mine. Before I could act, she had spun around once again, turning her back to me as she smiled and laughed at the offers of drinks from those who could not resist her bewitching beauty. The distance between us was growing with every passing second.

I stretched out one arm towards her as if my will alone could draw her closer yet she was as far beyond my reach as she had been for these past six years. Desperately, I tried to push my way through the wall of people that separated her from me. There was an outraged shout to my right as I grabbed some strangers arm just a little harder than I should have to move him out of my way. Another step forward and I nearly lost my footing. All sense of balance had been obscured and I was no longer capable of the grace which has so often been attributed to me. I was staggering like a drunken fool, clutching the shoulders and arms of those around me to keep from falling. My stare remained fixed on her. I refused to even blink for fear of losing sight of her.

It was when she paused to adjust the clip that kept her long hair from covering those gorgeous green eyes, that I was finally able to catch up to her. My hand caught her shoulder just as she was about to make her way into one of the crowded clubs. I spun her around quickly, gripping her slender upper arms as gently as I could. Her almond skin was the most exotic shade of bronze beneath the glow of the yellow light above us.

;;;;;;;;;;;;; ding ;;;;; Two people walk out of the elevator, both are wearing green in a library where no one else is.

[Alistoriv]

I must agree with Harvest, if you could create a coherent storyline and piece it together with short stories like this, I would definitely buy your book.

[Vatman]

"By manipulating local results a marketeers work becomes wholly more effective!" Dr. Rangest is excited at the prospect of bringing his advertisements closer to you. The projector filling in the white board with white noise, as he navigates google ad sense the way one lines up scissors before clipping a coupon. An hour into class, not even halfway through.

"Content mu st be geared towar...... "

Dusk is magic, the fleeting light of a lukewarm afternoon leaves its mark in half seen shadows and glancing perspective. I am the fault in your best laid plans. I wait by the trendy shops, your husband may not have noticed those toeless sandals or the purse that perfectly matches it; I did. I notice the make and model of your car, the luxury settings you couldn't live without. I've been waiting to appreciate you for weeks, I know the way your keychain chimes when your Lord and Taylor membership card bangs against it's LA Fitness keyring.

I'm no ordinary thief you see, I've nabbed those keys before. I don't intend to hotwire a car on Greenwich Ave. I have bigger plans, hell, I've burned a CD for the occasion. Talk about a joyride.

Last week when that nice cashier ran out to bring you your missing keys back, I'd had enough time to have a my guy copy it and even get a cup of coffee. Vanilla bean.

"Get off the fucking phone" I whisper to you, always two cars behind. I'd like to think you subconsciously hear me as you get out and walk to the salon. I called ahead and have it way overbooked by now, a fifteen minute wait on a monthly chat with your friend Santiago, I hope you know that it's not the coloring you're paying for.

I get out of my car now too and slip my copy of our key in. Brown leather seats don't come standard in this model, they're nice. I relax for a bit, remembering how this time last month I got my ears lowered beside you. Santiago knew the names of your girlfriends from college, he agrees that they've never been able to find a way to grow from those days. I didn't like the way the hairdresser ran her fingers through my hair, the small stretch of contact more intimate than I'm comfortable with.

I drive two miles south, under the bridge that lets you know it's the bad part of town. I smell your perfume on the wheel, a smoother ride than I'm used to. I pull up to what used to be an old sausage factory, the garage door has the blue-gray spray painted words, "Welcome Home, Meat"

The door raises after a single beep, the man I affectionately know as, "Chop" asks me, "how in the hell did you manage to pull this one."

That's easy Chop, I just fell in love.


***************************************

Shifting folders, zipping bags...shit, what was this a lesson on?

[Vatman]

The elevator announces itself with a, "DING!" occasionally. A person will walk out and be bathed in the leaking blue light of a missing wall covered up with tarp. It inhales, the wall adjusts to the breeze like the sail of a ship. The library here is under construction and I'm the foreman, no, the victim. I'm in the layover between classes, using the only computer left up here presumably because the desktop has been attached to the wall in such a way that it would be more worth it to risk its damage than to move it.

The sky glows as it does before it decides to start its decline....

..........I'm not quite here.

We disembarked at yet another town I have never heard of. The people here have formidable energy. They plant legions of carrots in their back yards and tramp indomitably through the town at all hours with heads held high. Everywhere there are blue and white buildings, most with peeling paint, and a pin cushion of church spires and Orthodox crosses pricking at the sky. Here is where I meet him, behind a fruit stand lacking anything foreign. Home grown, thats the man I'm to meet.

White sneakers on grey concrete, I move closer and his dark green jacket is heaving against the brick wall; the jacket so encompassing that he looks consumed by it, a man in a moveable sleeping bag. The hole at the top where his face should be is half filled with only the top of his hairline and his nose available to the world. I pull the plastic clump out of my pocket that my sister managed to steal from her doctors bag. He takes it without looking down, his hands fiddling with it while making eye contact. It disappears into the world of his jacket and just as I see a sign that something new might emerge. THWAP, crash, I hear running and cursing. The man I'd been waiting for sprints out of the alley past the fruit stand and I'm frozen.

I turn to see his jacket disappearing down the street and suddenly men on either side of me run by knocking at my shoulders as they trample along the uneven concrete. I'm still frozen. The bag. The cool disturbed air. I hear an authoritative yelp. Two officers, lean and confused bark at me in a language I don't understand. They continue to shout, their arms like descending bridges. One looks pained and nods to the other who starts to reach to the side of his belt. I move for the first time, my arm attached to the old fashioned pistol in my non plastic clumped pocket.

I raise it with rigged assurance. My grandfathers gun, empty. The commanding officer places his arm on the chest of his subordinate like a mother holding their child away from an animal.

I close my eyes. DING! The elevator opens. A girl with brown skin and dark hair takes two steps forward until the lack of a wall turns her blue. She notices me, then turns around back into the elevator. The computer lab has been moved to the fourth floor.

Click. I pull the trigger.