It opened up with me being at my desk at work at around lunchtime. Not too many people were in the office that day, and the three of us in the lab were deciding what was going to happen for our mid-day meal. My friend Jeff brought his lunch in from home so he was set, and Chris and I had nothing to do. Following our stomachs we hopped into his car and took off for a noodle house on Haight Street that we often frequent (I started calling it Nüdel Haüs one day and the nickname has kind of stuck - don't ask why). As we were patting our bellies and agreeing that we had yet another mighty fine meal at the Nüdel Haüs, Chris looked around the empty restaurant and, leaning in, he whispered, "Hey Ben. Want to go to a really trendy and hip yet secretive book shop that only people who are really 'in the know' know about?" "Sure, what the hell." On foot we walked off our lunches, taking odd lefts and rights down narrow streets and alley-ways that I'd never seen before, until, at the end of a dead end street lined with odd chalk drawings of flowers on the cracked sidewalks, we ducked under an awning and into a dusty book store. The walls were plain and clean white, but all the books were dusty and used yet still retained an air about them of having been original prints. "Buy these," Chris began to say, pointing out J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. "It's an original printing," he went on, "you have to have it." More interested in exploring the store, I pretty much brushed him off and admired other books of my own interest at my own pace - my hands clasped behind my back, I strolled through the aisles. However, always at my side, was Chris making repeated attempts to sell those books to me - each sell better than the last. Even though I did spend plenty of time exploring the store, Chris' persistence paid off and I bought the books. I didn't really care about them, but I had them and I was going to go home and read them. "You can't just read them at home," Chris started anew, "you've got to go to the beach and read them there. Nothing beats reading those books, literally the very ones you just bought, at the beach." Well, he sold me thus far, why doubt him now? Off to the beach we went. It was nearing sundown, and reading light, although still available, wasn't going to last much longer. I began reading the first book, while I handed the second to Chris to read. As time flew by with the pages, Chris, yet again, after having looked around to be sure nobody else was listening, whispered, "Want to know what REALLY makes these books wonderful?" "Sure, Chris. What?" With that, Chris sprung to his feet, grabbed a well-charred log from a long extinguished bonfire, and charged an elderly couple just a short ways away. Upon reaching striking distance, Chris let out a shrill cry and clubbed the man in the head. When the man crumbled to his knees, Chris had at him in the middle of his back, then his chest and ribs, then the back of the head again and again until he was relatively sure that his elderly target was dead. A bit of blood splattered on his cheek, and a huge smile reaching from ear to ear, Chris came back and kept reading. While reading he said, "Now I'm REALLY enjoying this book." He went on, but I wasn't really paying close attention to his words at that point. He continued to be the perfect salesman, making every word of every idea he had sound like gold. I pieced together most of what he was telling me, and he convinced me that by killing the elderly while taking breaks from reading these specific books was the greatest and most fulfilling high one could achieve. So I joined in. We timed it so that we read together and took breaks together. And even though I'd be clubbing away at an elderly person with my bit of used firewood, my eyes would be set on Chris who'd have a piece of wood in either hand, each arm swinging and clubbing independently of the other, killing two, or even three, old people at a time. And that's pretty much it. We read, took a break, read, took a break, and so on. It was a creepy dream, yes, but strangely interesting too. So, you can see how I jumped to classify it as a nightmare, but you can also understand my wanting to think it was something else. I'm deranged. |
