I wasn’t expecting the police to be at my apartment. My heart was pounding. I hated interacting with the police. I did not call them, so why were they here?
Side-walking forward just a tad to enter my apartment proper, I realized that I would have to talk and so I entered first person mode; one short stare at my hoodie later, and poof, I was seeing things through my body’s own eyes.
Once I entered first person mode, things got trippy. Difficult.
In my apartment were several police officers. But we were in a partial dimensional space, not three or two dimensions, but somewhere in-between. With the whole world looming toward me, not unlike— in cinematic terms— like a wide angle or fishbowl lens, the policemen seemed to almost fade into the background of my apartment, like they were outside of accessible space.
Walking up to one of them, the one who seemed to be the lead officer, as he was giving others orders, I said, “hello. This is my apartment and what is the reason for all of this?”
I should have said for them all to get the fuck out, but I didn’t want to be placed under arrest for exercising my first amendment rights.
“Your neighbor called in a noise complaint last night. Thought someone was being murdered. Then little old Abor Maybrook went missing. So we decided to search your place and see if they were connected. In fact, you’re going to have to come down to the police station and answer some questions. Mates?” he said.
To say that I was freaking out was an understatement; my heart was jabbering, my lungs were a wobbling; and my mind a racing faster than light on a substance.
“What? No. PLEASE! I just want to chill at home. I had an emergency situation last night and—”
“Likely story, bud,” the lead officer said cruelly, his words appearing as a sort of italicized font in its box. “Take him away.”
Before I even had a chance to do anything, several officers from the background scrawl suddenly appeared at my back and forced my arms to my back. And like that, I was in cuffs, being escorted out of the building and into a police car.
As the officers approached from behind, I felt a tingle at the back of my brain. I could not see them as they approached but I did hear their steps; as they made their approach, at a certain intervals, I heard a clicking noise. I had no idea what any of this meant, but this was the first time I was encountering other people in a partially dimensional space. I could not see around me, but that space was there in some way . . . I just had no idea how the police could move around me in this mostly two-dimensional environment.
“What should I do?” I asked Felix, desperate.
Calm down. They are only going to ask you questions. Answer their questions honestly and they will let you go.
“Yeah, true. True. I just have to . . . be honest. And try to be collected. And not lie about the impossible?”
Obviously, don’t tell them about the recent trampings in the under-reality. They would never believe you! Try not to get tossed in an insane asylum.
“I’ll give it my best.”
~ ~ ~
“How long was that?” I asked Felix, mentally. “It felt like forever.”
Not forever. Four hours. Wait, no. Sorry. Five hours. Five hours we were at that police station.
I groaned. Looking at my cheap wristwatch for the first time since all this craziness started, it read 12:06 pm. I yawned. I was tired. And I had work tomorrow. Yip-yip.
My outing to the police station had been an awful trip in first person. Reality clipped in and out of my perception as people brushed past each other on a limited speel; officers passing by each other on this one-directional, partially-dimensional sheet had their outline fade in and out as they scooted by others along what I was calling the “dimension strip.”
As much as I could tell from my forced outing with the authorities, the dimension strip was everything in the world contained in that little stretch of partial dimension. Obvious enough, but it went deeper than that. The dimension strip was limited. It was a part of that wider world— that 3-D world which I was no longer privy to— but separate from it at the same time. The dimension strip, then, contained the most relevant information from the lost 3-D world while boiling it down into that partially dimensional, two-point-five dimensional perspective.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Movement on this dimension strip was tricky. While being hauled around the precinct, I saw many people come in and out of my path. But since reality to me was now centered on this tiny one-way runway, so to speak, people could not logically pass me. Whenever another person approached from behind or came at me from the front, they seemed to collide into me but by so colliding, slide around with just leaving me gently grazed. It was wacky to see dozens of people lightly bump into me and then side-slide around me like quicksilver. Especially if they came from behind and I only heard that clicking noise announcing their arrival when they came within a certain space of my being.
Although I did slide in and out of cosmic and first person mode as they were manhandling me, and dragging me along, it was almost more trippy looking at the situation from up in space; seeing the many officers mill around the background of the dimensional strip— something that was nigh impossible to do in first person mode due to the difficulty of moving my head to either side— it gave me a scope which was hard to gleam in first person. But as I glared at the station in cosmic mode, seeing more of its girth, I realized it was a small little station, more of an outpost, and I was at least calmed by the fact that I wasn’t being taken to a bigger station, where they might imprison me as they figured out what to do.
I waited. They asked me questions in a condescending way, and I answered to the best of my abilities without telling them the truth, and by extension, giving them reason to think me insane and possible psychotic, and therefore, imprison me definitely for a crime I did not commit. It was bullshit through and through; I felt sorry for that small boy who had, evidently, gone missing last night, but as Felix and I both knew, I had no part of THAT whatsoever, as I was busy running from zombie hitmen in suits and asking ghosts to send us along hidden pathways— when not striking bargains with strange monk-like entities, that is. I felt empty. Exhausted. Like I needed sleep.
Every part of me yelled to take a nap— along with Felix. But I couldn’t.
Why not? You’ve been up all night, then struggled with perception-orientation shit for the first time, and then were questioned by the police. You need to rest, mate.
“I know I need to rest,” I mentally said to Felix as my physical body milled around my apartment, looking at the damage done. “But I can’t. I have to be up early tomorrow for work. I open. If I take a nap that will throw off my circadian rhythm.”
Then what will you do? Down an energy drink? You still have another six hours, at least, before you can head to bed at a normal time.
“Now, there’s an idea!”
I walked along the dimensional strip that was my apartment. As an environment, it was simple, straightforward (for once): the door was to the left and beyond it the entrance proper to the apartment complex. While to the right of the door was my actual apartment. My living space was rendered in this partially dimensional world as if on rails; by that I meant that there was only one way to go, only one central path, and to wobble onto other paths, I had to enact a frequency trigger to enter those spaces; in a way, walking back and forth in this apartment gave me a deeper insight into how this partially dimensional space worked and I ultimately related it to bending the psychology of a person into two-dimensions and then placing that 2-D perspective into a fishbowl, with the fishbowl actually being the world; in this example, there might be that third-dimension— the actual space of the fishbowl— but it was empty space. I, however, lived along the edges of the bowl. I could only traverse the glass surface of the bowl, not that interior space that was lost to me. If I wanted to access that iffy part of lost reality, I needed a frequency trigger to take me to those jutted along alcoves of a slightly deeper reality. By happenchance, as I walked back and forth along the strip, there was several areas which encouraged a frequency trigger to strike: one for the bathroom, one for the fridge, and another for the door leading to my bedroom. That was it.
Walking over to the fridge, I felt that now familiar tingle of a frequency trigger and indulged it. My body opened the fridge and I pulled out one of several Wild Beast-brand energy drinks. Each can had 400mg of caffeine in it, so it should do be fine in keeping me up.
I sipped the drink. I took another sip, letting the caffeine flow through me. Everything was silent.
I honestly don’t even know how I spent that six hours before I went to bed; I mostly thought and over-thought. I thought about the missing boy, how the police suspect it was me; I thought about my destroyed apartment, about Felix and I being bonded. My mind went a million miles a minute, so it was unsurprising when Felix scampered down from my head and shoulders and said, I will be back. But quite frankly your mental machinations are driving me up a wall. I will return when you aren’t a manic disaster.
When the time for rest did finally come, though, I was ready, despite the two extra-strong energy drinks I downed in that time.
Walking to the furthest point in my crummy two-bedroom apartment, I moved my body over the image of my bedroom in the background. A frequency trigger sounded and I latched onto it in record time; suddenly, my body turned on its heels, faced the bedroom, and walked inside. In a smooth movement— it taking every fiber of my being not to call it an ‘animation’— I laid sideways on my bed; in first person mode, this meant I now saw the world on its side, but it still came toward me in the same looming way as before. Now, I was just too tired to care.
I closed my eyes.
Then, my alarm rang.
Time for work.